It’s been 9 months and 20 days since I last wrote anything on this blog. Over this time period, it stands to reason that worldwide a significant number of children were conceived and quite recently, have actually been born. In dedication to these Blog-Void-Babies, it’s about time I gave a vague retrospective so I can leave whatever has already happened in the past and instead actually write about recent/current events – “blogging”, you might call it.

So, four significant things from my aforementioned Blog-Void:

1. I played support for Colin Hay - which was awesome! Colin used to be the lead singer of Men At Work – a band I only really know from that 80s-tastic tune “Down Under”. Since they split up many moons ago he’s been doing his solo stuff – and has had a good bit of success in recent years with his song “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” used on the Garden State soundtrack and a few of his tunes like “Overkill” and “Beautiful World” being used on Scrubs. He’s even guest starred in a few episodes of Scrubs, which is pretty damn awesome in my book.

Anyhoo, his solo stuff is fairly acoustic-ish, and is wicked – can recommend having a listen. He was in the UK touring, and was playing at Peebles’ best local venue, the Eastgate Theatre. Peebles is well out in the sticks, so we were lucky for him to be playing there - which makes me triple lucky for being asked to play support! He really is one of my favourite artists, and I was so chuffed to play support for him. He played a big-ass set, with a huge amount of banter, and he was even better than I could have hoped as a live musician. He came back for a drink to my mum’s place in Peebles after the gig, so got a wee chance to speak to him and discovered a new fun fact - that his niece is in Zero 7!

2. Songs In The Sun – a songwriting-based week I went to in Crete last summer. My mum’s a fan of Kevin Montgomery, a sweet country singer-songwriter from the US, and for me this particular story began one time when my mum was seeing him play in Glasgow. At the end of his gig, he told everyone about a course he was about to lead in Crete the following week, called Songs In The Sun. If I remember correctly - my mum told me about the course on a Friday, I decided to go on the Saturday, and I flew down to Heathrow on the Sunday to catch a flight to Crete first thing Monday morning. Which was obviously hectic and ridiculously impulsive - but totally worth it.

The week was lead by the aforementioned Kevin Montgomery and a dude called Tommy Allsup. There’s a curious Buddy Holly connection to both of them btw - Kevin’s dad Bob co-wrote loads of Buddy Holly’s famous songs with him, and Tommy used to play guitar in Buddy’s band. Another fact for ya: Tommy was originally supposed to be on the plane that killed Buddy Holly. A few of the guys from the band (including Tommy and Buddy) had chartered the plane because the bus they’d been using while touring was freezing and kept breaking down. One of the other guys in the band wanted Tommy’s seat, and eventually Tommy agreed to flip a coin for it. That guy won the coin toss, but obviously that flight didn’t play out the way he’d planned.

The whole week in Crete was well surreal. Ten, maybe fifteen amazing musicians/singer-songwriters - mostly guitarists - some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. Met a fella called Adam and played a lot of music with him while I was there - we wrote a song called The Ice Cream Man about a coke-dealing ice-cream van - check it out on it’s very own myspace page. Incidentally, the pink skin on that myspace page is pretty glorious. I’m not able to make it out to the event again this summer, but I’m sure as hell gonna go again next year if I can!

3. The awesomeness that is James Gibson!! I used to play bass in a band in high school, and this lovely fella called Jim was the drummer. Since mid-to-late last year Jim has been accompanying me on viola when I’ve been playing gigs. He’s got a way of making music that sounds half-decent sound awesome - so you can understand that I’m pretty damned lucky to have him playing with me! He’s been orchestrating for the full string sections on the album, adding a bit of piano and will also be playing drums (when I eventually get some more recording done). If you fancy having a listen - checkout the videos, the myspace page, etc if you fancy a listen!

4. Piano - hehey! My mum’s moving house soon, and she decided ages ago that she wasn’t gonna take the piano - so has lent it to me on extended loan. That’s right folks, I’ve got a nagdamn piano in my bedroom! I learnt some piano when I was younger, but had the winning combination of being lazy and incompetent. Truth be told, I’m glad I quit when I did - I was far more excited about playing guitar, and I eventually learnt drums as well. Anyhoo, coming back to the piano after so much time was strange, but really great. I’ve been playing on the piano a lot, and writing a lot of new songs on it too. I’ll probably squeeze a couple of the piano songs on to the album if I can - cos I love em!

Sod it - that’ll probably do for now.

FYI, I’m about to go cook some Spring Rolls that I made - filled with Chilli. I realise that in the process I’ll be disrespecting several of the finest culinary traditions of this planet simultaneously. It’ll be worth it.

Date: Saturday 9 June 2007

Time: 8.00pm

Cost: £8

I’ll be supporting Kristen Marie Holly (myspace.com/kristenmholly) as part of her European Tour.

Date: Saturday 2 June 2007

Time: 7.00pm

I’ll be supporting Duncan Chisholm and Ivan Drever (see www.duncanchisholm.com and www.ivandrever.com) and doing a half hour acoustic set. Should be a class night, look forward to seeing you there!

Tickets £7 in advance, £9 on the door

Tickets and info:
Tel/Fax: 0131 623 0168
e-mail: mail@juniperberries.co.uk

In unrelated news, tomorrow I’m going to Cyprus for a week! I’m half Greek-Cypriot, which from my past experience leads me to conclude that any holiday there will be mostly spent seeing random relatives and stuff. While I know very few words in Greek, only the most basic please and thankyous plus a few choice swearwords, I most definitely know how to eat Greek food, and those mad extended family types seem duty-bound to provide masses of it when they have guests! I’ve heard it’s been a bit cold there the last few weeks, but apparently the Cypriot definition of “a bit cold” is still significantly hotter than any Scottish summer. So I’ll be back soon, hopefully full up and tanned!

Rob

More videos from the same night on the video page.

Date: Sunday 25 Feb 2007

Time: 5.00pm

An Unplugged Session at Hamilton’s Bar and Kitchen:
I’m playing first for about half an hour - then Underbelly are playing - a wicked band that I saw last year. They aren’t a big fan of covers at this place which is great news for me! Should be a good gig all round!

The shop only lets you order CDs to the UK at this point btw - but leave me a comment if you’re somewhere else and you’re after a CD!

Also - Merry Christmas! Plus, it’s a double bonus because it’s New Year in a few days - we’re having a phat party at our flat which should be wicked.

I’ve had a domain name for a few years now, first playrob.com, then just recently I managed to get robhowell.com. They now both show the same website btw! Anyway, the last few years I studied computer science at St Andrews - so got I naturally got hassle from my geek mates there about the fact that I always had a holding page online - or a website that was so crap it would’ve been better used for a holding page. Now I’ve finally got a website with a complete set of functionality so can no longer be laughed at by the geek community. One of those geeks is Roja - please check out his spraff on his website. Note: I am in no way responsible for any questionable cookery tips or outlandish claims he may make.

Open Mic night at the Eastgate - should be playing one or two of my new tracks there - a few covers, maybe something Christmas related. I wish most Christmas songs weren’t so crap though - any suggestions?

But this is progress. It’s a step in the right direction, like (insert relevant simile here). An interesting sidenote: somehow I managed to spell relevant wrong just now, and the computer suggested that “lavender” might be the correct spelling. Sometimes Firefox is an idiot.

Anyway, since the new site’s currently as useful as (insert another, more offensively-worded, simile here), any interested people might instead want to watch this video:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=5IrE7CXlnIQ[/youtube]