posted Monday, June 22, 2020

As promised, as well as the new songs, Lost Stars will have some curiosities and re-mastered old gems, a thank you to all you folks who decided to pay a few dollars for the album even though you didn't have to.  The first of these is an alternate version of Painted Princess from The California Tapes.

Painted Princess is one of my favourite songs on Tapes.  It's also one of the oldest; I wrote it in 2009 after visiting Painted Cave in Santa Barbara.  The song became a part two to Jesusita.  This version of it was almost finished when we put it aside a year ago and worked up a different take based around a tune I'd written on the Spanish (that's what you hear on the California Tapes at the end of the song).  Most of this version was recorded in February 2019, with some guitar added during lockdown while I found out what all the buttons do on the Vox, and some bass added... yesterday. 

This is a bonus track, so if you've already bought Lost Stars you should see it pop up when you go back to Bandcamp.  Here's a link: bobmcneill.bandcamp.com

posted Tuesday, June 16, 2020

The newest song on LOST STARS is Carpinteria.  I've been working on this song for a long time; had the basic tune and most of the words last year and it was going to go on The California Tapes, but it didn't have the same feel as the other songs.  I've tried numerous times to get it to work on the Spanish; it started out much slower and sounded like the love theme from a low budget Western TV movie. 

Carpinteria is on the California coast south of Santa Barbara, right under the Santa Ynez.  The Spanish called it that because when they arrived the Chumash were building canoes.  It's also the only place I've ever been that has naturally occurring asphalt.  Very good for making boats not sink, apparently.

The geography of the song is a bit messed up because it's based on a real story somebody told me.  Yep, they really did do that trip...

posted Saturday, April 25, 2020

Last year, amazing as it seems, I got two albums out of new music, one with Project Feijoa and one with Gillian.  Haven't managed to gig either of them in NZ yet for obvious reasons, but in October and November last year Gillian and I went off to Celtic Colours in Nova Scotia and then down to New England to play.  We put down about 20 shows and finished up on the Oregon coast.  The west coast of America is a place I already knew and loved, and the northeast ... what a spot.  Unbelievable scenery, lovely people, great food and coffee everywhere.  People up there really love their music too. 

All the way through the US, I was writing stuff, scribbling away wherever I had a minute.  Which is quite often actually, a lot of touring is hurry up and wait.  All this stuff went in the pot with a few older ideas I'd been carrying when I got back to NZ at the end of the year and after a few weeks at Gas Mark 5, the songs started to come out.  It turned into Lost Stars, an album about places, the skies above them, the people below, and wondering when we'll see them again.  

The songs are free - download away.  One will pop up here every so often on the music page, and I'll put the words up on the lyrics page.  There'll be 11 or 12 songs, at last count.   Anyone wanting to pay a few dollars for the album is most welcome, you'll get the tracks as they come out, plus some bonus stuff, a few re-mixed tracks from the early days with new vocals.  As the songs go up I'll post something about them here. 

posted Friday, April 24, 2020

The situation is grim.  All our gigs are cancelled.  Craft beer bars are closed.  We must make our own coffee.  I'm gagging for a good Malaysian curry.  To all those people who went through the  supermarkets and cleaned out all the dairy products and toilet paper, have you sorted out cause and effect yet?.  The ponderous, mundane bollocks that many of us have to endure during the day in our offices - what the late, great, Iain Banks called the boring, stupid nonsense of our modern world - so we can indulge our real passion of music, has now invaded our houses, and we call it Working From Home.  We've seen, on YouTube, many of our erstwhile musical heroes attempting to entertain us with at-home DIY concerts, many of which have been surprisingly terrible.  And considering what they're probably worth, a lot of their front rooms are rubbish too. 

None of this matters.  We'll get through. 

Too all those working to keep us safe, fed, and in some cases, alive;  you're all heroes, no doubt about it.  My hat's off to you

posted Thursday, January 23, 2020

Criú (well, most of us, anyway) will be at The Hop Garden in Wellington this Saturday night as part of the Burns night show. 

There's going to be Haggis unfortunately, and somebody with a thick accent will doubtless be shouting at it first, but that's beside the point.  You can get the whole deal including Cullen Skink for $18 (you pay them).  'Food' at 7pm, music from 8pm.  Tickets from the venue (www.thehopgarden.co.nz) or on the door. 

Hope to see some of you there!

posted Wednesday, September 04, 2019

The California Tapes is available now on all major download & streaming platforms, including:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/79qb1RFqXg3GmohQ78N3xd
iTunes / Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/1475331291
CD Baby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/projectfeijoa
Bandcamp: https://projectfeijoa.bandcamp.com

posted Saturday, August 03, 2019

At the end of 2018 - during a lull in recording, while Emily was changing dresses, Rob was summoning the tardis and Bob was learning the next 8 bars of the solo - Project Feijoa put a small satellite into orbit around Neptune (it's in preparation for a trip we are thinking about). Today, we released The California Tapes to streaming.  This is the most complicated thing we've done since. 

The California Tapes will be released on 1 September 2019.  It's on all streaming platforms.  iTunes pre-release is 14 August.  Hallelujah

posted Thursday, July 18, 2019

Gillian and I have been working not very hard on our debut album for an awfully long time, and awfully hard for not a very long time.  She tells me we're going to finish it, it's going to be great, and it's going to be called Race for the Sun. It's going to feature four songs, three which I've enscribed especially for the occasion, and one by a young, up-and-coming-songwriter from these parts, one Andrew London.  It's called Emily Bay and it's a belter, folks.  We're gonna try and not mess it up.  You won't have heard of Andrew; he's new and has no profile around the Wellington area.  Natty dresser, though. 

We may or may not just get this puppy out in time for our tour of Nova Scotia and New England in October & November this year (we're also playing in Oregon). I've heard of Nova Scotia; it's bloody miles away, and Gillian tells me it's warm and extremely modern. 

This is amazing.  Not having had my name on a recording for nine years, shortly two of the buggers could be finished.  Mixed blessing; all those recordings I've not had my name on have sold like hotcakes. 

posted Wednesday, July 17, 2019

OK, so I suck at updates. But I'm still alive.  And tonight, however incredible it seems, we finished the last of the masters for the new Project Feijoa album, The California Tapes.  I wrote the first of the songs (Jesusita) in California on a Greyhound bus on 17 September 2009 (I keep meticulous notes), so if we take a month to get the thing onto streaming, it'll be exactly a ten year project.  Of course, I haven't been fully committed to it for every day in between.  Other things have at times seemed important; just not recently, when I began wondering where the years beginning 201.. had gone. 

Oddly, as it became (quite recently) apparent that Tapes might actually be finishable, I've often found myself thinking back to the Scottish summer of 1995, when (- wait: I just used Scottish and summer in the same sentence; let me backtrack.  Between about April and September 1995, I finished and wrote up a PhD, which is to say, I spent those months actually doing it, as opposed to climbing and playing music in the Scottish Highlands and occasionally getting absurdly drunk at pointless conferences in appalling concrete-and-brick eyesores in various parts of England, which is what I'd previously been led to believe a PhD at a Scottish University actually consisted of). 

Yeah, anyway.  Did I put all those brackets and full stops in the right places?  My point... yes.  I haven't worked as hard on anything since 1995, so I hope you like it.  If you do, most of the credit is due to Emily and Rob; but buy it for God sakes, because the royalties are due to me. 

posted Friday, July 12, 2019

I just heard something incredible.  From the horse's mouth, as it were.  Mark Knopfler is apparently giving up touring.  Something to do with being old or something.  Marky!  Nooooooooo

Go watch any of the recent vids posted from the '19 tour and tell me this is a man who needs to hang it up.  If you ask me, he's goin back SOUTH on some of those old songs. 

Seriously, this is a man who's been showing us all what it's about for 40 years - the art of the picture-in-a-song and how to use the guitar when you're painting that picture.  Ain't but maybe 5 other guys who've ever been able to do it. 

Mark, stop this nonsense.  You got it more than ever dude

posted Sunday, March 24, 2019

OK, so you might think that I was bound to think this show was great, being a huge fan of John Mayer.  But no, actually, I was terrified it might not be great.  He's one of my favourite songwriters and one of my favourite guitar players and I knew what I wanted out of this.  He's also done stuff I don't love, he plays blues which I don't love, and at big concerts like this you just never know what you're gonna get. Even big, big talents  can get drawn into the twaddle of modern R&B pop - that sort of warbly pastiche that's on top of everything - and John has skirted around the edge of it.  Tastefully, that's the point; he knows just where to stop.  Or so it seems from his records.  But I'd never seen him live. 

So what did we get?  We got... the lost art of rock music.  For two stunning sets.  Terrific songs, great band (actually if anything too many cooks in the guitar department, you don't fly to Auckland to a John Mayer gig to hear somebody else play guitar), but more to the point, John Mayer in the front.  He's the whole package, this guy.  And rock music?  Not dead, thank God.  On the strength of this, he might be saving it all by himself.