Dodgy keep it in the family and what does 'Free' mean to you

The responsibility of music vibes in the bus on the tour so far has been left to 'Handsome Chris', Nigel's nephew who's helping out with selling the merch, so we've had a mixture of Jurassic 5, the Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix - it's like 1993 all over again. Chris was 8 then, bless him. In fact there's quite a nepotistic thing going on as our tour manager is Jack, who is the son of our original tour manager, Danny. Also my nan is the drum roadie. Not really. We had to sack her for having it too large. Not really.

OK, SOME THINGS THAT WE'VE LEARNT ON THE TOUR SO FAR:

• we're still interested in the idea of 'free' but noticed that when you offer a gig ticket for free, there's always a 40% drop out rate. Does this mean that by offering the tickets for free for some people this devalues what is being offered? Let's mull that one over...
• Dodgy are liked by boys and girls in equal measure
• The new songs are "better than the old ones" and "much better than I ever expected"
• It's not a joke, the folk from Blackburn and Burnley REALLY don't like each other. We're thinking of doing a Bob Marley style peace concert.
• Manchester really is one of the most vibrant cities in the UK
• Girl's, especially drunken ones, have a much more colourful palette of swear words then their male counterparts. Quite wonderful.

GLASGOW was a vibey, sweaty little acoustic gig in the bar of King Tuts at an alarmingly early 7.15pm, we managed to play 5 new ones. Burnley the next night was the first gig where we played all the new tunes and the first one with Stu The Fugitive on bass, and the boy played a blinder. Luckily we beat the music transfer deadline and got him on a one season loan from a great band called Smoke Feathers (our 50 quid bid to bring in Richard Hawley on a permanent, as second guitarist was ignored).
After a year of playing gigs as just a 3 piece, like we used to do back in 1992, we decided to get another musician on board for this tour because Nigel plays so much integral acoustic guitar on this new album that there is no way we could have done it justice live with just the three of us. We'll keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't get a silly as it did at Glastonbury 1997 where we counted a total of THIRTEEN musicians on stage, and that's NOT counting Ray Davies who came on stage with us to sing a version of his Kinks song 'Tired of Waiting For You'.
And on to MANCHESTER last night and the royal gala performance of the upcoming all new Dodgy album Stand Upright In A Cool Place in it's entirety and we couldn't have been more happier with how it went. The crowd were perfect. Supportive; in to it; LOUD and happy. Probably one of my favourite gigs OF ALL TIME.
Against much drunken abuse and opposition from my good friends who had made the effort to come to see us, I managed to slip back to the hotel relatively clear headed. I know it sounds dangerously responsible of me, but I wanted to keep it together for the fair folk of York tonight. The same can't be said for Handsome and The Fugitive - Manchester was theirs for the taking and I believe they took it.
Till next time x

Dodgy are setting out on a UK tour

DODGY played in Windsor on Friday and was probably the best warm-up show we have ever done. We were at the Firestation Theatre and part of the Windsor Festival. It was advertised as an acoustic evening with an 'electric encore'. Thankfully we managed to get out of that. I think that little arrangement came about once when an old agent was trying to sell an acoustic gig to a stubborn promoter and 'an electric encore' was dangled and taken without much consultation with the band. Whenever we've had to put down the acoustics and crank up the amps in the encore it's never worked - it's like having a fight and a curry after a night of warm cuddles by the fire.
We sold it out, which is always such a relief, apparently "Glen Tilbrook never managed that", according to some fan afterwards, "Yeah, but I'm sure Squeeze would sell out the enormadome down the road" I reasoned.
We are about to go on a series of dates where we will be playing our new album in it's entirety, so this was the first time that we played a load of new tracks. They seemed to go down well, which was a bit of a relief, one of the candidates for a potential new single is 'What Became Of You' where Andy gets possessed by the spirit of Carlos Santana and my favourite of the evening was 'Did It Have To Be This Way' - it was a real pin drop moment and we left there with our tails wagging and our confidence really high.

Today, Wednesday (28th September) we travel up to Glasgow for a show at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, the first of two shows we are doing where entry will be free (you might still be able to sign up for tickets via the dodgyology.com* or Dodgy@Facebook web pages. As things change in this business we call show it seems that you have to give something away for free (read Chris Anderson's book 'Free'), so we thought what better than offering two free live shows to get things under way. We'll let you know what what we think and the feedback we get. After Glasgow, our feet won't touch the ground until Sunday, after we've played a warm up in Burnley at The Mechanics on Thursday (29th September) where we meet up with our tour manager Jack and the newest addition to our touring party, Stu The Fugitive, the second of the free gigs, in Manchester at (newly resurected?) Band On The Wall on Friday (30th September) and then York at The Duchess on Saturday (1st Oct). I will explain who jack is and why we call Stu a fugitive in later posts, it will give me something to do. Until then xx

PS * In an ideal world we would have taken the name 'Dodgyology' for this blog but unfortunately that has already been taken by dodgyology.blogspot.com this was a blog started in 2004 made 2 posts and then gave up - apparently that's enough to have your blog carved here on the internet forever.. shame... hopefully we'll manage more than 2 posts ;-)