The SpikedriverS Website

It is actually in our own sweaty little hands. For the moment, it is only available at gigs, but will soon be available from our website and from the High Barn itself.

This is a fab live CD containing fourteen of the best tracks from the show, beautifully mixed in stereo by Simon Allen who was also the man behind the sound desk on the night. You can finally have the much-requested Spikedrivers’ arrangements of Lil’ Red Rooster, Shake Your Hips, I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom and a killer version of Ghost Train Shuffle to play in the privacy of your own home or car. Thanks for your patience.

The story on the DVD is that the High Barn finally decided it was not good enough for general release. We're obviously disappointed because we thought they had finally cracked the technical problems that they were having with it. But it was not to be. High Barn will be sending a limited edition copy of the DVD plus a copy of our new CD to everyone who came to the concert within the next few weeks. The following quote from them pretty much says it all.

"At long last we are delighted to send you the enclosed DVD and CD of the Spikedrivers concert you attended at High Barn last year. We are sorry that it has taken so long to get it to you but we have been trying to resolve technical difficulties.

Although we think (and I hope that you will agree) that the video, sound and performance are all of a high standard, we haven't been able to satisfy ourselves that it is as good as it could be and so we've decided against putting it out on general release and to send you a 'limited edition' copy instead.

Please don’t think we have given up on the DVD idea at all. It may be a while yet, but we will try again. In the interim, we are concentrating on writing the next studio album.

We are planning to record this new CD in a different environment away from the traditional recording studio. Over the years we have been building up our own mobile recording studio which now gives us many options on how to work.

If anyone knows of an interesting location that would be suitable, please do get in touch. Our fantasy wish list for this one is an old wooden barn, or village hall, or anywhere with great acoustics that we can set up in for a few weeks.

And to show we are seriously working on this, we are heading off to Brittany to do a promo tour and some intensive song writing sessions, reminiscent of the ones we did in darkest winter on Orkney for Ain’t It Real. Only this one will be so much harder, what with the summer sun, lovely wine and cheese and chocolate crepes. We’ll just have to tough it out. Your sympathy is overwhelming. We can tell…

We are so looking forward to playing at the Upton Blues Festival on Friday the 18 th of July. After the terrible floods of last year, those plucky people of Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire are back and determined to make up for lost time. We will be performing at the King’s Head stage at 5:30pm located on the riverside. Check out their Website: : www.uptonbluesfestival.org.uk for more information. Its definitely gonna be a serious party! Miss it at your peril.

We return once more to the Star Inn in Hampshire on Sunday 17 th August to play this marvelous little festival, which is more like a backyard BBQ and drinking session with your mates. Great food, great beer, and great music. If you like your festivals friendly and intimate, this is the one for you.

Darn. More great food and drink, only this time with added Alps. What can we say? Get there if you can. www.bluestobop.ch

Jon Emmett was a friend and a fan of Spikedrivers and a regular at our gigs at Dusty's in High Wykham. His enthusiam and presence is much missed. On this, the first anniversary of Jon's death, his best friend Graham came up with the idea of a compilation cd of some of the bands they had seen together, with the profits going to the British Heart Foundation. Its a great compilation. If you are interested, please follow the link to the website below to read more about it and how you can get copy.

Two gigs affiliated to our buddiesThe Crawley Blues Club. Tony and Co. are expanding their territory and there is a special night at the Pizza Express. Please come down and support this new venture.

Crawley Folk Festival
The Hawth on 28th June
&
Pizza Express in Crawley,
The Boulevard on 9th June

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Odiham Festival:Blues & Boozes in the Bury
on Saturday the 14th of June.

We have had a literal heads-up from Bob Long and I have to say, this is a photo op not to be missed.

"There will be an RAF parade through the town which terminates at the festival site with speeches etc and will finish immediately before we start at 1200. (so we have a ready-made crowd before we start.) At 1225 (while I'm doing my set), there will be a fly-past of 3 tornadoes. This will be noisy but very brief! The RAF will also supervise the parachuting teddybears who will bravely leap from the church spire. I hope your sense of humour is in good condition!"

Last weekend was absolutely wonderful fun. Cromer is the best place I know of for Lavender Ice Cream and watching the tractors on the beach. Yes.. Still obsessing about tractors. I will be posting reviews, live photos and such about it as they come in. Till then, here are a few of Maurices prize photos from the weekend.

Our travels take to some surprising and wonderful places. In our continued efforts to share the joys of life on the road, I must tell you about our weekend in Essex. Such a surprising and beautiful place. Manningtree and Maldon. Both excellent shows and great fun. The countryside is lovely and the sun was shinning. With a few hours off, it was a perfect time to delve into our extensive collection of travel brochures from motorway services. You didn't think anyone actually read them did you.

Tacky and bizarre dosn't really do it justice. This roadside attraction must have seen better days. A woodland walk through legions of sadly negelcted gnomage. Surprisingly we had the place to ourselves. The mystery of the missing fishing rod vandalism just added to the strangeness. Still, we loved it and Maurice seemed perfectly at home.

June takes us to Crawley Folk Festival as well as to the Blues & Booze in The Bury Festival. Details on the giglist. Hope we see you out and about in the sunshine. Constance

Best of Thursday Blues Compilation CD
We are proud to announce that one of our favourite blues venues, Third Thursday Blues at The South Street Centre in Reading, has just released the Best of Thursday Blues. It's a compilation of the clubs favourite artists from its first two years. Along with Spikedrivers, there are tracks from Michael Messer, JC and Angelina, Rag MaMa Rag, Honeyboy Hickling and lots more. If you would like a copy for yourselves, you can email wilkinandy@yahoo.co.uk and they will happily separate you from £7 + £1.50 p&p. It a great CD and you will be supporting the club and live Blues in the UK.

This was one of those months that had way more than its fair share of motorway services, the Severn Bridge, late night drives and the joys of the autumnal British colourscape. Our van's stereo was blasting out Dr John and Johnny Jenkins; and the sunsets were to die for. I just love that time of year.

November started with the brilliant Cricket St. Thomas Blues Weekend and lemurs in many colours.This was followed by several trips to Wales. We take turns with the driving and the mandatory naps.

Swansea was another wonderful full house at the Tawe Delta Blues Club, followed by the Tenby Blues Festival. The Parc & Dare Theatre in the Rhondda Valley was our next drive across the bridge. Then we headed down to South Pool in Devon and Southampton for the weekend.

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This summer has been a very interesting and productive time for us. It was our first nontouring summer in eight years, but don't think that means we've been sitting on a beach somewhere. As well as continuing postproduction work on the live DVD/CD and writing new songs for the next album, we have individually been busy too. I (Constance) wrote a book, Ben has been learning all about the UK art world and Maurice has been watching his kitchen dry. We also did lots and lots of three-part harmony singing. It's been great fun

One of the high points of the summer was playing at the
Shrewsbury Folk Festival. It was great meeting up with Les Barker again and seeing all the old Bridgenorth crowd after so long. It's a beautiful festival and one everyone should experience it.

Hot on the heels of this fabulous weekend in Shrewsbury, we spent a week in the Channel Islands. This meant Gatwick Airport at first light and the joys of excess baggage. We do try to travel light but it's that extra pair of drum sticks that gets us every time.

The tour started on Jersey, meeting up with proud new grandparents, Thelma and Bob Tilling. We then did four islands in four days with four workshops and four concerts! Our heads were spinning by the end of it, but that's ok because we finished up in a wonderful place called Sark. This is a two mile wide rock where the tractor people live and we seemed to fit right in.

In between, we island hopped to Alderney and Guernsey on these amazing little planes called Trislanders. They only have two seats across and huge windows. We just couldn't get used to the absence of a co-pilot. Still, Maurice was ready to jump in at a moments notice .

Every island, every workshop and every concert was completely different. The workshops were all brilliant and wonderful fun. You can see some blurry shots of the kids from all the islands on our workshops page.
This one is from Guernsey.

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The Spikedrivers
A London-based transatlantic trio taking a different route to the blues, explains Dave Peabody.

It's hard to pin a badge on the Spikedrivers. Just when you think you've got them buttonholed they turn a musical corner, shifting pitch slightly, just to keep you on you toes. Guitarist, vocalist, songwriter Ben Tyzack (American mother, British dad) got the notion to form a group around 1991. "I'd played in lots of bands and having moved back over to England [got] a bit frustrated because here you join lots of bands, practice for ages, and never do any gigs. I had a few experiences of that...it was more sort of rock stuff and I'd always been interested in the rootsy blues stuff, so that's when it dawned on me if I started a band myself, and tried to push the signing a bit forward, then I'd always have that and if other members came and went I could kind of build on it."

Indeed, over the years many members did come and go, until Irish-born drummer (and percussionist) Maurice McElroy and Californian bassist (and percussionist) Constance Redgrave took root to stay and form the current innovative, creative and versatile Spikedrivers line-up with Ben. Constance positively bubbles as she comments; "It's been six years now and I still feel like we are on honeymoon. I've never been anywhere that felt musically so comfortable and yet so much fun. I seem to have more scope finding out where I can go here than I've ever had anywhere else. I write more, I sing more, I take chances, I play, and I don't care if I make mistakes. The mistakes are where the really fun stuff happens and those are the surprises. I don't have to worry about these guys. If I screw up they are not going to fall apart. We sort of hold each other and we all take turns just doing what we do and it's always fun to find out what happens next."

Maurice is quick to echo Constance; "I'm doing more in this band than I've ever done in any other band. I never used to sing at all until I joined this band. All of the percussion - that comes in because you can. It enables me to play with all of the elements of what I've learned over the years. In most other blues bands the chances of picking up a pair of brushes, for example, I mean, forget it. Here I can do it and I can bring in the weird stuff line the Udu drum and the Cajon and nobody thinks you are mad. Ben just does 'Oh, that's an interesting sound' and then a little while later we end up with a song that suits it. Being on stage with the two guys is about as good as it can get. I just feel like all the time it keeps changing and like Ben says, "it's growing all the time and there doesn't seem to be any limits on it."

Constance has a theory; "If it's blues... it's blues and it doesn't really matter what you bring to it if this is the format; I think that's why we can be so wide-ranging and have so much variety. We have a very wide view of what it is. I think my songs are blues... and maybe they are contemporary blues, I don't know. My history is very wide-ranging; I went from growing up with the Grand Ole Opry and listening to C&W, through a whole period of doing Gothic music... and I'm a prog/rock kid from the West Coast. So, you've got all of these influences coming into this, and now what's on in the background in my house is chill-out compilations. So those rhythms and those sounds become part of what you're writing and they come out in it."

"I don't think I ever envisioned a final 'this is what I wanted it to sound like', says Ben. 'It was more about playing the music, doing a bit of writing and kind of keeping the early roots of blues in there, but bring in lots of other influences. We all write. I'm obviously the main writer in the band but I think there's every combination. Sometimes I'll bring a song in and it's pretty much complete but needs a really good arrangement. Sometimes it's almost arranged. Other times it can be constructed right from the word go, but usually lyrics and melodies are sort of there."

'Again", chips in Maurice, "this is one of the elements of this band that is actually so much fun; getting the arrangements, of actually finding a way of saying what is it that will absolutely make this song complete, without any extraneous stuff tacked onto it."

They have produced three albums together: Delta Roots (2001), Blue Trash (2003) and their latest, Ain't It Real (2005), with all three band members, contributing songs and ideas that are sparked by many influences. Maurice; "Ben's father’s an artist, a painter, and we as a band when we're traveling get a lot of inspiration from visiting places like the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. If there's and exhibition on in a town that we have enough time to see - we'll go and see it. We look at that stuff all the time and that feeds in. When you're talking about creativity it's not all the one thing. A sound can inspire a painting the same way that a painting can inspire a song. In particular, when we were doing the last album, Ben was bringing in these bits and pieces. Some were already songs. Some later became songs. I got this impression that some of the work that he was doing was like painting but using sound. It was like a different way of looking at it."

The last three Spikedrivers albums are now available as complete digital downloads with artwork.

There is also a free Spikedrivers screen saver available from our website. This includes a selection of photos. The file is 2.2 Mb in size, on an average dial-up connection it will take about 5 minutes to download. Once downloaded, double click on the file and follow the instructions to install the screensaver.

Many thanks to Andrew Cronshaw, Dave Montier, Paul Martin, Sam Hare and Katie Dahlstrom for the photographs in the Spikesaver.

Ben, Constance and Maurice

News - July/August 2008

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