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!

**PLUS** for the very special first time ever, we’ve actually been organised enough to pull together some merchandise to sell on the road. Or rather A Merch. We think it’s pretty cool…what do you think?

It’s called the Cowper GeekStick, and we figure at $10 it’s the best thing out there. It’s basically a 4gig USB stick with the entire video and audio works of Cowper up to this point on it. They are hand numbered by me, and hand copied (well…not bit by bit) by Jay.

The idea is you buy it, you copy it, and then hopefully you pass it on to someone else. Or overwrite it with holiday snaps of you and that guy that time in Turkey (hey Jeff! How’s Lisa?).

So far we’ve only got a couple…because you can probably guess that we aren’t exactly making money on this merch. But if people like it (or are just in desperate need of a USB stick between meetings and I just happen to be out front of the office busking…) then I’ll probably do a couple more so I have enough to cover the whole tour.

SO EXCITEMENT!!!!

Tash Parker Tour

The lovely Tash Parker, whose song “I Take The Blame” was one of my favourite tracks of last year, has fashioned herself a bit of a dual state residency, and has been nice enough to bring Cowper along for the ride.  To say that Jaymis and I are excited to be taking Cowper to Melbourne for the first time is a serious understatement…check out the gigs page for times, etc and as a hint: you can guarantee that we will be staying for dinner so come and say hi and have a laugh with us!

SO much has happened in the 3 months since I left on tour to Europe that it is best to save myself several thousand words, and just include four simple photos.

In order, they are (i) The closing of The Troubadour; (ii) the ‘renovation’ of the Bear Den studio; (iii) the closing of the Lofly Hanger; and (iv) the recording of the debut Cowper album.

Oh my, two thousand and ten…what more could you possibly have in store?

It’s been a crazy year, an exciting year, an eventful year.  So much so that I’m calling it done and taking it out of the oven 19 days shy of the official end of the year.  Because if one more thing is crammed in, I think it’s going to slump into a gutter with a kazoo whistle in its mouth, a smile on its face and bags under its eyes.  SUCH has been the magnitude of the year.

I returned from Europe refreshed and ready to dive back into the studio and keep working on the album with Matt Redlich at Massive Studios (yep that’s me i the 6th photo down, looking a little tired at 1am after a few takes) .  All is going very well and I’m extremely happy with the 4 tracks we’ve put down so far.  I expect to have the album finished by the end of March, so we might drop a few releases and bits between now and then.

But that was the easy part really.  The sad, more difficult part was returning home to the news that The Troubadour and the Lofly Hangar were closing their gigging doors for good.  This very serious double death in the family has resulted in 2 of the drunkest, craziest and fortunately happiest months of my life for many, many years.   Lots of love to Cori, Jamie, Phil and the Hangar crew for giving me so much happiness, and the opportunity to play some amazing gigs with Cowper and my other bands.

WHICH leads me to the next bit of news…in addition to playing Keyboards, Odds and Ends for Surface Paradise, I’ve also joined the Edward Guglielmino fold for a while as the bass player.  It all happened rather quickly after a few drinks at the Troub, 48 hours before gigs at both the Hangar and the Troubadour closing party in the same weekend.  The next gig for me is actually with Surface Paradise @ Rics on the 21st December if you are looking for an excuse to come and hang out!

Which leaves me to the last but by no means smallest bit…I’ve been working hard in the background on the Bear Den studio.  Two reasons – one, with the album coming out early in the new year, Jaymis and I have already begun working on the touring show.  Believe me, it is going to be amazing.  The second reason is that with the Troubadour and the Hangar closed, I’ve been working with some friends to organise a bunch of music events like last week’s Tash Parker gig around the traps for all the music orphans out there.  The first one will be at the end of January…more info to come; but stay tuned also to music/Cowper fans around the world as we intend to live stream these events straight to you too

Ok, that’s me done for a bit.  Expect a lot more writing now that the mourning/celebrating/drinking has levelled out a little bit!

R.

http://www.east-of-eden.de/

So far the Europe trip has been lovely…it’s always worth the extra effort to travel around with the guitar.

I hope you are all well.

Rowley

a second home is a place you long for; somewhere you’ve banked a small piece of your heart for safe keeping because you loved it so. once you do this, you cross a line – you have traded eternal contentment for a higher level of happiness, and subsequently a higher level of yearning. for me it was 8 years ago in a cold swedish lakeside town when i cut my heart and gifted fragments; not to places, but to the people of my kind.

now, at last, it is time to return. not to reclaim, but to visit the fragments and their keepers.

i am so excited.

i’ll be in switzerland, italy, germany, spain and anywhere else possible for 4 weeks from the 16th september. if you’d like a visitor, feel free to say hello.

i’d love it if anyone has a little bar or bookstore (better!) that they’d like me to play in…i promise to smile every minute of the way.

(p.s., the picture is a teaser of more to come…an amazing weekend project with the lovely jen dainer and jasmine whelan – so much fun!)

the result is below, for your amusement.

Howard Hughes (Avid Reader Tour recorded live in Newcastle) from Cowper on Vimeo.

ps. if you don’t know the sooty show, then you really, really should.

‘busy’ seems to be the catchphrase at the moment which is great – touring, playing, side projects – it’s all happening somewhere in there i managed to finish a couple of books including “The Surgeon Of Crowthorne” by Simon Windchester; which was received from Beyond Q books in Canberra. in short, i really enjoyed this book. it’s a true story about the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary; and as dry as that may sound, it’s quite captivating. loved it.

there’s also been time to work on a couple of new videos – one truly brilliant video by Jaymis that will be added shortly; and the Ocean Grove/VIC video. however, i thought since i’m back on the road today it would be more apt to post the video below – a short insight-slash-laugh at myself to summarise the first 5,000km of the trip…

i hope you enjoy it as always, remember there’s plenty of music to download free on the ‘music’ link above. checkitout.

thanks, and i hope you’re enjoying your hot november week!

rowley

5000km (Cowper Avid Reader Tour) from Cowper on Vimeo.

It’s a busy weekend ahead!

Friday 13th is my sister Zannie’s birthday and all of Geelong will know it when I play on Pulse radio 94.7FM tonight after 6pm

Then tomorrow is the Bookgrove show – hope to see you there!

1pm Sat 14th Nov – Bookgrove (with Cloudchaser 2 Book Launch! – 2/83 The Parade, Ocean Grove, VIC
Ph: + 61 3 5255 5973)

Tune in!

They don’t stream on the web, so I’m going to see if they’ll podcast the show for out-of-towners (like you, mum)…I’ll let you know!