Tim Burgess The Charlatans blog on tour
- Oct 21, 2010
The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess, blogs while on tour exclusively for Virgin.com in the latest guest blog from one of music's biggest and brightest stars.
Tim Burgess shares his thoughts on the tour, new album Who We Touch, Madchester and drummer Jon's brain tumour...
Our album Who We Touch has been out since September and we're just in the middle of our UK tour playing the tracks for the first time alongside some of favourites too. The tour before this one was the 20th anniversary of our debut album Some Friendly, with shows at The Roundhouse, Blackpool Empress Ballroom and Barrowlands in Glasgow so it's brilliant to look so far back and now be playing the songs that we recorded most recently.
The reaction to Who We Touch has been really good, we've done sessions for BBC 6Music xfm and Radio 2 had been playing some of the songs - it's been great to get out and see what people think of the songs. As well as the scheduled dates we've there's been everything from a gig in a charity shop to curating a gig for Topman CTRL so there's never a dull moment. I've got a trusty box of records with me too so I've been DJing after some of the gigs too.
We'd had to return early from our U.S. tour when our drummer, Jon Brookes, had collapsed onstage in Philadelaphia and doctors had given us the shock news that Jon had a brain tumour (Jon's own update is here)- he underwent surgery and was the driving force behind us recruiting a short term replacement it the shape of The Verve's Pete Salisbury.
The first gigs Pete did with us were a warm up show in Hatfield and a gig at Dalston Oxfam shop for the launch of Oxjam - not sure if he'd played amongst second hand coats, an old Buckaroo and some James Last albums before but it was a good introduction to the weird yet wonderful world of The Charlatans.
The first big gigs were in Scotland at the Picture House in Edinburgh and Fat Sam's in Dundee - while we were there we were asked to play as part of Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations ar new year alongside Biffy Clyro, which will be just about the best end to the year we could think of. We swapped the setlist round most nights and put in other songs to keep things fresh but this is what we played at Edinburgh:
1. Then
2. Weirdo
3. Can't Get Out of Bed
4. Bad Days
5. Smash the System
6. Jesus Hairdo
7. Bird/Reprise
8. One to Another
9. Your Pure Soul
10. Tellin' Stories
11. Patrol
12. Oh! Vanity
13. My Foolish Pride
14. When I Wonder
15. Another Rider Up in Flames
16. The Only One I Know
17. North Country Boy
18. Intimacy
19. Blackened Blue Eyes
20. This is the End
Encore
1. Love is Ending
2. Sproston Green
After the gig it was off to the Electric Circus where I was DJing - they do a night called Madchester so it was fairly obvious what records to take. There's a real affection for those records around the world, seemingly more so the further away it actually is from Manchester. Oddly enough the night I DJ'd at in Manchester was a night called Free Your Soul which where we were playing anything from northern soul to early new york disco. It seems every city looks to anywhere but home when choosing the music to dance to.
The whole band has been taken aback by the gigs on the tour and the shows at Liverpool and Nottingham were brilliant too - we love seeing the reaction to songs like North Country Boy that means so much to people but it's also great to see that songs like Smash The System and My Foolish Pride get a great reception too. There's 20 years between some of the tracks we play but relatively new tracks like Oh! Vanity Bad Days and Blackened Blue Eyes will still see a mass breakout of dancing and we always think that our fans are still excited about the songs we've just written and are keen to hear what we do next.
Tim Burgess is on tour with The Charlatans right now and we'll have the next part in his exclusive blog on Virgin.com soon.
This guest blog complies to Virgin.com terms & conditions.
