THE APPLE ROOF GIG
I’m delighted to announce that Apple have invited me and the band to perform a special concert at their Covent Garden store on Friday 15th July. They don’t hold these too often so it should be quite an exciting experience.
Here are the key facts in the style of a Steve Jobs bullet point presentation: Continue reading »
FESTIVAL DIARY PART ONE
Were there always this many festivals in the UK? Maybe there were and I just never noticed them, playing Street Fighter II on the SNES at aged 7 when I could have been watching early Radiohead smash it in some regional field.
I just want to play as much as possible, so I’m delighted to be doing one (or sometimes 3) each weekend of the summer.
I KNOW WHAT I KNOW
I’d love to apologise for being too busy to write, but I’m just too sad that I didn’t get to go see Paul Simon.
What makes Graceland one of the best records of all time is a question I’ve often referred back to. The lyrics seem like utter nonsense half the time, so why do I care about the woman with diamonds on the soles of her shoes? Does it matter to me whether he knows the girl from the cinematographer’s party? And will someone please tell me how to make the sign of a teaspoon?
BBC RADIO 2 LIVE SESSION
When your manager gives you 3 missed calls by 7:55am, you know that it’s either going to be a very good day or a very bad day.
On this occasion it was very much the former, as we got offered a live session on Janice Long’s Radio 2 show. Needless to say we almost bit their hand off in accepting – big national radio slots can be hard to come by for people without massive radio plugger budgets.
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100 REASONS
Tomorrow’s City Showcase gig is hugely significant for me for lots of reasons, partly for my career but also because of a strong connection to the venue – London’s 100 Club.
Sometimes lots of paths just so happen to converge at a single point in space and time. Call it fate or coincidence (in fact can we just grow up and call it coincidence?), it’s nonetheless equally magical and amazing.
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MY TOP 3 DOUBLE FIRST VERSES
Jake Morley - Double First Verses
Everyone knows the chorus is the heart of a song – the hooky bit that sells it and gives everyone what they want. But whatever happened to screwing with people? We don’t have to give them what they want, not yet, and that’s why I like a good double first verse. My top three in reverse order:
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RADIO 2 AIRPLAY
Feet Don’t Fail Me Now has now been playlisted by over 40 radio stations, and had some big airplay on Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday afternoon Radio 2 show. Thank you Dermot! By all accounts he actually cares passionately about the future of music and young songwriters, contrary to what you might expect from watching X-Factor… (sorry X-Factor fans but it’s true!)
I’ve done so many radio interviews I have to be careful not to launch into a traffic update every 5pm. Although you can’t beat the big all-powerful Beeb, I’ve been so impressed with some of the smaller local and community stations. They’re often staffed by volunteers who do it for the pure passion of it, for the thrill of having a microphone in front of them and a big bag of CDs Continue reading »
RISE AND FALL
A rather belated but no less emphatic thank you to everyone who helped make the Bush Hall album launch the most incredible night of sell-out wonder I’ve ever been part of.
Everyone from all the fans who piled in, sat down, stood up, hung from the chandeliers, to the band and an enormous army of helpers – made the night the most incredible gig I’ve ever done. There’s nothing I would have changed, which is saying something from me as I come away from the good gigs wondering Continue reading »
MANY FISH TO FRY HITS THE SHOPS
This time last year I started taking my first steps into the studio to record my debut album.
Along the way I found a hurdy gurdy player, conducted a choir, added more cowbell, recorded the sound of me snoring then starting a car, snuck into recording studios that cost £1000 a day to record ‘This City’ in one continuous first take, mixed the record twice and had the time of my life.
The resulting album ‘Many Fish To Fry’ is now available via my own independent label – Sandwich Emporium Records. You can get a copy from my own shop, Amazon, iTunes, and selected record shops.
If you are interested in helping further, there’s loads you can do. Tell your friends, post my videos and songs, email music blogs and discussion groups, email your favourite radio DJs, come see us live or even buy the record! I hope you like it, it was made with love and passion and honesty. With your help I can make another one day…
Jake x
DEBUT SINGLE + VIDEO
After a particularly memorable day walking and clapping in slow motion down the streets of london, and quite a bit of Tom Munday‘s time slaving over a hot animation machine, I can finally show you the video to first single Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.
You can watch the video here, or use this link to share it: http://bit.ly/feetvid
The track is available to download on iTunes, HMV digital, Amazon and loads of other digital retailers.
The video was directed by my extremely talented friend Alex Genn-Bash and turned out to be a rather torturous process. There were just so many ideas we had – how to choose which one to go with? In the end the idea we had settled on was deemed ‘unsafe’. Something about the ‘risk of being sued if 10 extras fell off scaffolding designed to hold 1 or 2 people’ or whatever…
So we had to come up with something new, and quickly, as time was running out. The message of the song wasn’t lost on Alex as he grappled to arrange an idea we’d had at the last minute. We decided to make a drastically slower version of the song in the style of Justin Beiber slowed down, film me singing it and then speed the footage back to normal speed, resyncing it with the track. The slowed down track sounded like this in my earphones:
Feet Don’t Fail Me Now 5x Slower by Jake Morley
Alex chose locations and planned the shots and we headed down to east london in the freezing cold.
I have to say it was one of the strangest experiences of my life as I marched down the street, Alex hastily backpeddling in front of me as I euphorically punched the air in ultra slow motion. It was a real exercise in letting go of yourself in public!
My favourite bits were when passers by, curious as to what the commotion was, were asking one another “ooh is that someone famous?” followed by an inevitable “nah….”
After we’d finished the edit of the video (inlcuding scrapping a whole days worth of footage from Dungeness in Kent) we were pleased but felt it could be better…
Step in hero-among-men, all-around titan Tom Munday. We’d already collaborated on a project in the past for a musical we’d written that involved an animated otter destroying Victorian London. He agreed to get involved and worked extremely hard extremely quickly, adding the school-book doodling style animation on top which I think totally makes the video.
Please do share the video if you like it – lets make sure it reaches out as far as it’s feet will carry it
jake x