Big news of the summer for me was getting my new guitar – a fabulous-looking Gibson J200 – stunning in ‘antique natural’ maple.  The first one let me down at a gig with intermittent distortion through the electrics, so Guitar Guitar in Glasgow – who have been great to deal with – replaced it with a brand new one.  Problem is…….I don’t think I like it as much as the one it replaces!  It’s been back a couple of times for adjustments to the action, so hopefully I’ll get to like it better as it plays in a bit.  Meantime, I’ve ordered another guitar to my un-neccessarily large collection – a Loar LH200VS –  which should be arriving any day.  It costs – I kid you not – a twelfth of what the Gibson did, and I’m told it sounds every bit as good.  We’ll see……

After a flurry of activity up to the launch date, radio plays of the album have slowed a bit – keeping the momentum is always difficult, so Me and Adam at Circular Records are looking at ways of giving the campaign a new lease of life.  Too much stuff out there!

Great to get away for a couple of weeks, though.  Kintyre, Ullapool, Lochinver and Gairloch.  Marvellous – would have been even better if the sun had shone a bit!!

A few new gigs coming in – Greenock Boat Club, and a new folk club at Lambhill in Glasgow.  Time we were getting a marketing campaign going again – I really hate that side of things, though.

The new music library CD ‘Scottish Roots’, which Cy and I arranged and produced for a London-based publisher was released in July….mostly arrangements of trad works for film and TV, so fingers crossed we get a few tracks used over the next few years.

The new Clydesiders album has been mastered too, and will be released on a well-respected Scottish label in September (hopefully), so quite a year for new recordings – more to come, too!  Watch this space……….