One of the reasons that the Cowper Machine has been so quiet over the past year has been as a result of my involvement in the band Edward Guglielmino & The Show.  As a long term (and borderline obsessive) fan, I was pretty excited to join Ed and Sam Schlencker (also of Skinny Jean fame) in 2010 to play with the band and help record the new album.  Along the way Kirsty Tickle (Little Scout) joined the fray.  I was lucky to have the opportunity to record with the incredibly lovely Jamie Trevaskis of Junkship Studios; and more importantly still I got to laugh my arse off and discover just how much fun it was to play someone else’s music (without all that self imposed wanky emotional strain!).

So, I’m pretty darn excited to announce that Edward Guglielmino & The Show will launch their new album Sunshine State at the Judith Wright Centre on May 19th; and will then tour the country with Cowper supporting some of the shows!

Let me break that down into little visually digestible chunks for you.  First, the band; they look like this:

EDWARD GUGLIELMINO & THE SHOW

Then, the album; it’s called Sunshine State and it looks like this:

Sunshine State

This album will be launched on the 19th of May, but Vinyl can be preordered here! We’re going on tour together, which quite often looks like this:

WOW! THE ROCKING AND STUFF.

And, as an extra thing of awesomeness, I will be supporting some of the tour shows as Cowper, which as a reminder (it’s been a while!) looks like this:

Cowper @ Black Bear Lodge (April 15, 2012)

Now that’s a lot to get excited about! The current tour dates are listed below, with more to come.

EDWARD GUGLIELMINO & THE SHOW
THE SUNSHINE STATE TOUR – MAY/JUNE 2012
For ticket info, head to www.mucho-bravado.com

Saturday, May 19 | Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Brisbane (QLD)
with The Jeremy Neale Five and Moneet In Air
Tix on sale Tuesday April 17 | $15 +bf judithwrightcentre.com

Thursday, May 24 | Alchemy, Launceston (TAS)
with Cowper and Get The Bunny

Friday, May 25 | Oscar’s Treehouse, Hobart (TAS)
with Cowper and Get The Bunny

Saturday, May 26 | Pure Pop Records, Melbourne (VIC)
with Cowper (acoustic instore appearance)

Sunday, May 27 | The Empress, Melbourne (VIC)
With James O’Brien (The Boat People) and Carry Nation

Friday, June 22 | Oxford Art Factory, Sydney (NSW)
With Charles Buddy Daaboul (No Art) **Free show**

Right.  That’s enough excitement for a start!  The gigs have been linked on the gig page.  See you all there!

Recording at Grandma's Place

So there is news, but first I thought I’d quickly say that after a very long hiatus, I’ll be playing a Cowper gig this Sunday night at Black Bear Lodge.  It is going to be so wonderful to be back on what was the old Troubadour stage – I’m extremely keen to be back playing my own music!  So come along – it all starts from 7pm, and I’ll be on at about 8pm.

The event on Facebook is listed here

In other news, as can be seen above, I’m back in the studio recording the album.  It’s been a busy few months and it is great to get some studio time in, after finishing the Edward Guglielmino album!

With regards to that album, and the subsequent tour, there will be some more news………soon

Rowley

As I write this I have moved on from Changi…only a few hours but a great many more kilometres, where I now find myself on a train between Zurich and Aarau in Switzerland. Trains are without a doubt my favourite form of transportation. They are fast and efficient, yet smooth enough that they permit me to enjoy the view and a coffee at the same time. It’s like travelling in a high speed coffee shop. Switzerland is without a doubt the best place to do it too…one minute you are in a green valley, and the next you are exiting the depths of a dark stone tunnel to find yourself flying through cloud banks of snow amidst alpine lakes and chalets…magical. It’s a cheesy description, I know; but if you are ever lucky enough to experience it, then I am confident you will agree that it is the correct one.

I am here for work, but am lucky enough to find time to visit an old friend, her family, and her song namesake son, Laurin. My travel regime didn’t permit me to bring a full size guitar, but I’ve brought along my uke in the cutest little hardcase you’ve ever seen – think mafia violin meets Lego. In any case it will be fun to work out how to play my songs on the little four string…wish me luck!

some great things are on tonight…as i speak Sam Cromack is warming up at Black Bear Lodge; but I’m on my way south for some r&r and a sampling of the best surf swell we’ve had in over a month!

but before i get out of range of civilisation and into the hills behind the tweed coast, i thought i’d mention that next saturday night (17th) i’m playing a gig in Surface Paradise gig at the Zoo. i don’t know what time we’re on…we could be first or last! but i can promise it’s going to be good fun. i know this because i’ve just spent the last 2 hours laughing my arse off at Massive Studios with Matt Redlich and the latest in Surface Paradise’s growing roll of incredibly talented and famous drummers – Mr Jono Kirkham of YesYou fame.

what does fun look like? well, it looks like this:

**Fun!** - now with added turban.

i plan to have some fun on the night…on stage dancing is definitely on the cards; and there *may* even be the occasional opportunity for percussive crowd participation……(please don’t steal my cowbell!)

in other news, i’ve also been busy at Junkship Studio with Jamie, Ed Gug and Sam, putting the finishing touches on the next Edward Guglielmino album. just how ‘finished’? well, Ed flies out to europe on monday where he’s chasing down those magical creatures who can turn black goo into deliciously carved vinyl. yay!

cheers
rowley

"Do not what the world expects; do what makes you come alive"

So, the church around the corner from me has one of those ‘quote board’ thingos. You know the ones…they stand there on the side of the road when you are stuck in traffic, looking down their letters at you with ominous statements from John or some other fellow. Now that’s ok; they can write what they like. Which is why I like this place; because they just seem to have found a coffee book of cute motivational quotes that they’re slowly working through. Now, stuck in traffic, I look up and see this smiling wall of text screaming excitedly “you can do it!! only 15 minutes to coffee, and 2 days to Friday!!!”.

Thank you, little church near the lights.

It’s by pure accident that all this has happened, but it has certainly put me in the right frame of mind as I take this week off to focus on my album. It’s been 9 months of interruptions (mostly good ones!) including finishing albums with other bands, and touring; and it feels good to be back in the music frame of mind. It feels good to hold a guitar again. It feels good to sing.

It feels good.

FIRST AND FOREMOST!!! Watch this. It is a new web ad for ZFlex skateboards made by awesome people at Graetz Media (including Jaymis), and more! It’s fabulous. And they decided to use one of my songs!

HOLY CRAP I AM IN A SKATE VID.

**GRIN**

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song itself is called “Morning Prayer”, and I really recommend you watch the full video below – see if you can beat me at a game of stare

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you like the song, you can get the full version here!

In addition to this, I’m playing some more Open Air gigs. In particular, I’m playing on the night they screen Project Zim…I’m pretty excited about seeing it and playing.

Rowley

The album continues to prod along, and although the slow pace can be maddening from time to time, it does have a few benefits…one of which is the pleasure of playing the various ‘new’ and exciting instruments that find their way into Massive Studio, the latest of these being a wonderful synth keyboardish device known as an MS20. All I can say is that I never understood synth junkies until now – I spent a whole afternoon twiddling knobs the first day, and since then I’ve been reading up and playing with a few simulators through Ableton…brilliant.

All this ‘break’ stuff is good, but at the same time I’m pretty excited by the knowledge that the next 3 months see me a little more permanently located in Brisbane, where I’ll be able to spend more time on creating!

Happy times

Anyway, one band that I do the obligatory guitar/bass/keys/vox split for is the amazing Edward Guglielmino.  As an avid (seriously…top 10 Australian albums of all time) fan of his first album, I have been really fortunate to join Ed and Sam Schlenker (Skinny Jean) to work on the next album, which is finished and ready to cut vinyl!   I really hope you like this other project as much as you apparently must enjoy ‘Cowper’, given that you’ve taken to sifting through all my drivelly posts

Anyway, recently we took part in the 100 Songs Project where in true style we rocked up to a 4 hour timeboxed recording/mixing session with an unfinished, unrehearsed piece.  In Ed’s own words…

“We wrote and recorded this song in 4 hours. Please excuse the mistakes. I wrote the melody and chords. Sam Schlencker arranged it for us and Rowley Cowper wrote the amazing key part. Tristan Hoogland recorded and mixed the song. All in under for hours. Very proud of it. Go Team Ed G. We will be re-recording a version of this song for the record coming out in September.”

So there you go.  It’s called “Middle Of The Night”.  I hope you like it! (P.S. if you go to the link you can download it for free).

Rowley