It’s that time of year
When the signs of life reappear

It’s as a good a choice as any I guess?

Plus, this line…

And I am wreathed in these memories of you

How he pulled out that word wreathed I’ll never know. Sensation…

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‘Twas there I swear the sky became
A skylarks dream

Have you ever tried to explain the appeal of an artist you love to someone who hasn’t really heard of them? It usually involves a look of apparent interest on their face and an earnest intent to ‘check them out at some point’. Often in the end they don’t, or it’s not their thing. And that’s ok. But there’s that tiny chance you get to light someone else’s match and what a wonderful thing that is.

Over the next 2000 words and a cover song, I’m going to try to convince you that one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the history of music is a guy you’ve never heard of. He is not merely good, or great. He is definitively a master of the art, the equal of almost any other you could name. Not just as a matter of my personal preference, but as matter of objective fact.

I will lay out my case for why his music is imbued with the deepest possible magic, a great and underutilised gift to the world. If I have to burn through every last shred of credibility I have ever accrued in your eyes as some sort of authority on songwriting in service of this mission, then I will, and the cost be damned. In short, it is a desperate and quite possibly futile plea, such as you might hear from a street preacher, to convince you, an indifferent onlooker, that the grubby pavement beneath your feet is in fact, contrary to what your eyes are telling you, strewn with abundant and revelatory treasures, if only you could look at them from the right angle.

His name is Elton John. Nah only joking, it’s Freddie Stevenson.

When asked what my desert island discs would be, I’ve often joked that it would be impossible to narrow down all of the recorded works of human history to only eight Freddie Stevenson songs. Admittedly this is a glib and facetious response and probably not doing the project any favours. But choosing which to recommend is not just tricky, it is flawed by definition because they are all absolutely essential, and unbelievably perfect.

While I do go through phases without them, they unerringly then come back into my life again, as vivid as they ever were, or more so. For example, shuffling from room to room recently with a post-Bush Hall cold I found my wife listening to a Freddie song. As well as being swiftly reminded of why I married her, I was also immediately plunged back into their infinite expanse. I haven’t yet left, and why would I?

Freddie and I met playing songs around London in maybe 2008. Notably one night Lucy Rose booked me, him and Ed Sheeran to play to a small handful of people upstairs at Monkey Chews in Chalk Farm, where he wiped the floor with all of us. From the first time I heard him play I sensed something different, but slowly over time the many subtle layers of majesty in his writing began to embed themselves deeper and deeper into my being, until he became for me something beyond, apart the rest.

Around this time he would write and record a song in a day at home, then upload it for free download, a series of song / blogs he named Blongs. I knew this collection by the name Marginalia, though I can’t remember why now, and it grew into the masterpiece now called 50 Songs (or sometimes 58 Songs, but unfortunately not 65 Songs - we’ll get that), which he eventually released more widely in 2018.

These recordings share a kind of common musical language, the same few chords, the same handful of organ, cello, piano, melodica and accordion sounds from his recording software, the same distinctive percussive strumming technique that almost sounds like a drum, the same precise diction in his vocal delivery. Each one was to me a painting I would stand in awe of, rich with a meaning I had no capacity to explain, a mystery I had no wish to solve. They apparently would take him only a few hours to write mostly, yet they seemed to hold a truth infinitely more profound than all the very considered lyrics that I would spend months or years laboriously writing and re-writing. I’ve grown to know every single detail of these recordings as intimately as anything else I’ve ever known. The phone that rings in the background during Happy Hour, the count in before Babe, We All Die Alone that is very similar but slightly different to the count in before Searching The Heavens, the sound of him hitting the space bar of his keyboard to end the recording of Early Days.

The beating heart of everything is his language, which is to me completely spellbinding. The ambling conversation of it, the way it draws you in then confounds you, the endlessly surprising word choices and sudden scene changes, the incredible awareness of the percussion of his words.

Have you ever gone to see a singer songwriter only for them to mumble their words? That never happens with Freddie. Every single one is crisp.

Six jet planes in strict formation
Fly over this sad suburb of the heart

Frequently they are strikingly visual, his phrases conjure little vignettes and just dump you in them, flailing. Then while you’re trying to get your bearings, another arrives, and then another.

Just close the door quietly behind you when you leave
Somewhere children are sleeping
A crowd is gathering round
I’m naked except for this sceptre and this crown

Some lines feel familiar, though you’re not quite sure where you’ve heard them before. Some have discernible narratives, others are surreal and abstract, then suddenly comically literal.

I was living at the time with a Mrs Swift
It was a rent-free situation if you catch my drift

He is an erudite bar-room raconteur, a genius in the gutter, pulling you aside, whispering hours of bullshit tales that compound exponentially upon each other until you are have no idea where you are any more.

I was half-way up the mountain
When I came across a grave
With my name and my date of birth
And an empty space

He has absolutely no respect for the superficial truth of his words, only for the mood they place you in, the feelings they evoke, a kinder of deeper truth beyond their mere meaning.

Contrary to popular belief everything is gonna be alright
I’ve cleaned the dirty dishes
I made love with the farmer’s wife
I was the king’s official astronomer
In one of my previous lives
And I’m still searching the heavens for signs of life

While sometimes optimistic or nonchalant, his default condition is desperately romantic, heartbroken, lost or lonely.

I have become a speck in the distance
Another passenger on another city’s subway system

A recurring cast of characters populate his world, and over time you get to know them. The babe, the devil, the moon, the night, the city, the town, his periodic use of the aside ‘boys’ as if talking conspiratorially to huddled comrades about some failed relationship.

Well I took her by the mitten boys I held her little glove
I said yesterday’s forgiven us baby and tomorrow doesn’t care

Where should you start? Freddie himself acknowledged the futility of ranking these songs when he ultimately just listed them in alphabetical order, or perhaps he was just indifferent? So many important songs never even made it to the final release. Start Starting Again I can maybe understand, but how could he leave off Jesus Was A Hobo? Or Spare Me? The Devil Never Showed! Madness.

My suggestion, for what it’s worth, is that you buy the album on Bandcamp, hit shuffle, hold your nose and pray.

Sometime in 2009/10 Freddie moved to New York City, busking in a trio called The Dirty Urchins and holding a monthly residency at the Rockwood Music Hall called The Midnight Crisis. His NYC days resulted in 2011’s The City is King, which featured many of the incredible musicians who defined his time there. I love this record, but it also left me with the feeling that the more people you try to add to his songs, the more you try to make them sound fantastic, the more it somehow diminishes their primal essence.

He toured for quite a while opening for The Waterboys, and Mike Scott remains a fan, producing (or executive producing?) 2015’s exquisite The Darkening / The Brightening, a two-part song cycle with a concept so brilliantly conceited I only wish I’d thought of it myself. Part one descends down a semi-tone with each song, with themes of separation, loneliness and darkness. Part two goes up a semi-tone with each song, taking us back up to the light with a sense of hope and renewal. Both parts have precisely the same running time, to the second.

2022’s Midnight in America has definite echoes of his blongs era, Faith In Time, Reading The NY Times With An Open Heart and Lost in particular. I listen to this one a lot.

Time and time again throughout my life I have returned to his songs as anchors in shifting world. As a body of work they wash over me, bringing me a deep peace. I can’t think what I’d do without them.

Freddie and I still enjoy catching up from time to time, I’ve invited him to open a couple of my shows here and there. We have a kind of peer respect, affected subtly by the fact that his periodic enjoyment of my music is counter-balanced against my thousands of hours of reverential awe listening to his. He’s still writing. Songwriting for him is as essential as breathing. They just pour out of him, he couldn’t stop them if he wanted to.

Now. I do realise I’ve gone out on quite a limb here. The Freddie Stevenson Fan Club was always a modest one, with lonely, scattered members. No doubt there are local chapters I’m not aware of here and there (please say hi! 👋). I’ve certainly known others who adore him as I do, in fact a few of us used to meet up sometimes in London. It was an unbelievable feeling to be among people who got it. A little muscle that was otherwise clenched would seem to relax, and we’d bask in the glow of this part of ourselves out in the open, accepted, like some rare kink. We’d share impassioned rants, and find solace in the knowing nods and wordless shakes of the head in reply. Some were fans of my music too, but didn’t think of challenging me when I said he was on a different level. I loved them for that.

Why are there not more of us? Is this how people with fringe political views feel? Or flat earthers? Time and time again the world has taken a good look at Freddie and decided he is, in the time-honoured words of Roy Walker from Catchphrase, ‘good but not the one’. In the face of this, I must reckon with the possibility that… uggh I can barely bring myself to say it... with the possibility that the grubby pavement beneath my feet is in fact just that - a grubby pavement.

Perhaps for some reason one day I looked at a ripped mars bar wrapper and an empty bottle of Fanta and convinced myself it was treasure. Made a god out of a big rock, or the weather. It’s probably just me right? Ah well. At least I’ve given a pretty hefty plug to a small indie artist who needs the support. And you can always move on if it’s not your thing.

And then I come to my senses. Fringe political views are rubbish. The earth is round. And Freddie Stevenson is a genius and one of the greatest singer-songwriters the world has ever known. Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

Love Jake

A cover: Blind Architect

For paid subscribers, I’m sending a video of me covering Blind Architect. Look out for that in your inbox shortly x

Fortunes tend to ebb and flow as an indie musician. Some days you check your email, remember that thing you were going to list on Facebook Marketplace, figure it should only take a minute, try to get a picture of it but realise you need that other part of it which is around here somewhere but you’re not quite sure where and THIS IS THE WRONG TIME FOR THAT MORLEY better pivot to that apparently necessary admin task but now somehow it’s lunchtime, so you write most of an email newsletter, do the washing up, and go to bed.

And some days you get to perform 2 hours of your music with 10 other incredible musicians to a packed out room of people from all over the world who know every word to every song and you feel like an absolute hero. Wisdom is finding your peace with both of these. Life is a journey, enjoy each moment, etc etc.

But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed preferences. Without wishing to offend washing up fans everywhere, option 2 is, for me at least, a very clear winner. The Saturday night we shared at Bush Hall for example, was so so SO deeply wonderful, I felt I might be in a perfect lucid dream.

The song Many Fish To Fry celebrates all the paths available between birth and death, the ones we choose and the ones we let go of. Whilst I never really expect to die in a freak whirlpool, a lot of the song is not actually an exaggeration. I really did imagine moving to Iceland or opening a sandwich shop. Learning to fly a plane does admittedly involve a lot of safety checks and memorising manuals, but sure I could have been into that, one day, maybe. The world is more full of possibility than we can comprehend, and this is our chance to experience it.

So 15 years later to the day and we’re back on that same stage. 27 chord stabs at the end had become 42. Compared to all those alternatives, what I’ve actually done - continuing to write songs, getting married, having kids, moving to Bristol - seems a little mundane in comparison. Have I betrayed all that potential?

There are two points I want to make about this. Firstly, it’s ok that parenthood completely rewired my brain and upended my previous frameworks for life. This is natural and temporary. Sure there are some people who move to Peru at a time like that, and build a profitable charter canoe business, but it’s ok that I’m not one of them. It’s ok that I just wrote more songs, offered love and attention to my family, and helped keep my household the right side of raw chaos more often than not.

Secondly, I don’t want to use that good grace to close myself off to the wild ambition of that song. The world is actually still at our feet, and our grasping of that doesn’t have to be expressed as a dramatic stunt half-way around the world. Sure I do actually have a friend who moved to Peru (hi Antonio!). But I also have friends that are patiently refurbishing an abandoned local pub, friends taking their first steps into songwriting, friends that are moving to a house boat, friends organising a music festival, friends quietly refocusing their lives. I waiting until I was ready to join them.

For me it was expressed in having the guts to book a venue much bigger than I’ve filled in years, trusting I could promote and organise it by myself, selling loads of tickets, bringing together all the people that mattered to me on stage, and playing my absolute heart out. Somehow I had gotten back where I love to be - standing on top of that piano stool in the audience thinking bloody hell we actually did it. And that will resonate for some time to come as a reminder to me of the kinds of things that can still come our way, and are possible today.

With Harry now based in Norway, we weren’t actually able to play a note together until the week of the show. That may have been a cause for mild panic except this lot haven’t exactly lost their chops since we last played together. John spends about 3 or 4 days a year at home in between touring with just about everyone. Kev is an outrageously successful composer and sound designer. Harry co-manages and tours with actual popstar Dagny. We were joined by Many Fish To Fry co-producer and god-tier guitarist Calum MacColl who, with the greatest respect to everyone else, is kind of on a higher plane of skill to the rest of us though he’d hate me saying that. Multi-instrumentalist and music’s most lovely man Iain Ross was a truly invaluable addition, as was accordion-player-to-the-stars-at-least-to-the-extent-that-folk-music-actually-has-stars Archie Moss.

Over three days at Grand Chapel Studios we rehearsed with incredible intensity, as if possessed by a higher purpose. I think as special as it was to reconnect and eat soup together, and it really was, the desire we all felt to do right by the songs and the show was extraordinary. Playing together again felt effortless, at least until the end of each day when we realised we were exhausted deep into our bones. It felt like we’d never left but also like we’d gained 15 more years of skill playing music. I was reminded how much I love these guys. It was healing, like reaching back into the past to give yourself a hug.

Granted, we are not exactly the most diverse-looking bunch. That is as it is. But as my wife commented afterwards, we are at least good examples of the genre. Strong, kind, passionate, creative, dedicated, good at listening, curious, sensitive… not one you wouldn’t have a laugh being stuck in a lift with, which is not always the case in these kind of things. Give a band 15 years and quite often at least someone will turn into an obnoxious twat, or at least be slightly problematic. None of that. I picked well all those years ago.

We left with everything we needed to have an extremely fun time on stage, which it turns out, we did.

Joining us were what someone later described as The Avengers. Sarah Howells, Roxanne de Bastion and Alex Genn-Bash sung backing vocals, frequently with pre-prepared dance moves. Alex reminded all of us (and himself) that he is also a very talented harmonica player. Daisy Coole, now a successful film composer and industry champion, brilliantly reprised her role from 15 years ago on saxophone.

Here was our setlist.

Set 1 - Other Songs and Things
Modest Goals
Keep Me Around
No Drama
Some Things Are Like Other Things
The Everything Goes Back To Normal Button
So I Had This Dream
Falter
Lionchild
Ghostess
Allegorical House
The Last Time I Checked

Set 2 - Many Fish To Fry Live
The Light
Feet Don’t Fail Me Now
I Saw Something
Reeling
This City
Freddie Laid The Smackdown
Pondering On A Scenario In Which I Am The Hero
Sideline
Be With Me Once More
Many Fish To Fry
Inside My Mind

We actually kicked off the Many Fish To Fry set with a specially-composed track that blended together sounds from across the record, put together by Kev. Take a listen… but turn the volume down a little first.

We also recorded the gig, so maybe one day I’ll share that.

Credits
Sometimes being a musician feels like a secret hack to meet the absolute best of humanity. Thank you to all these people:

Harry Mead - drums
John Parker - double bass
Kevin Pollard - keys
Calum MacColl - guitars
Iain Ross - mandolin, percussion, BVs
Archie Moss - accordion
Daisy Coole - saxophone
Alex Genn-Bash - harmonica, BVs
Sarah Howells - BVs
Roxanne de Bastion - BVs
Iain Watkins - sound
Barry and Ella Treasure - merch, tickets, all sorts
Kerry Harvey-Piper - merch
Lisa Smith - merch? Not sure, but I’m over the moon she made it
Con - tickets
Sarah, Tanisha and all at Bush Hall
and.. my incredible wife Jade and our baby

Lastly, and most importantly, huge thanks to all of you who joined us. For travelling in many cases such a long way. For giving part of yourself to this music. For bringing an absolutely unreal amount of energy, focus, love, silence and singing to the room. It was a truly incredible atmosphere. To everyone who was there… wow. You absolutely smashed it.

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Send me your videos

My hope is to collate your concert clips with other footage we shot to turn into a concert film, or at least parts of one.

If you’ve got videos of the gig and would be happy to share them for this purpose, you can upload them here:

Upload Your Videos

The audience raised £450 for Young Minds

A raffle for the last remaining Everything Goes Back To Normal Button raised £450 for the charity Young Minds, who do amazing work with mental health in young people. Incredible effort everyone.

Young Minds UK

It’s Bandcamp Friday

We added some new items to the merch store especially for the show. You can also pick them up from my Bandcamp store.

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now Socks

Designed by me (can you tell?), they’re made of organic cotton and say ‘You’re Never Gonna Catch Me’ on the soles. They’re also super comfortable.

My Bandcamp Store

Ok that’s quite enough from me and you’ve officially got better things to do. Selling that thing on Facebook Markeplace for one.

Until next time, hopefully sooner than another 15 years,

love Jake

Setlist: We’re playing all of Many Fish To Fry, plus songs from my other albums. Should we play the MFTF ones in order like a ceremonial play of the record? Or mix them all up to span the whole night? I might do either, but your thoughts could help me decide.
Request a song: My band seem very interested in a ‘setlist’ so they can ‘practice’ before the show next month. Seems fair enough. Can you help? Request a song not on Many Fish To Fry in the comments and vote for others with the like button.
Travel: What are your travel plans? Any way we can help each other? Tony is thinking of organising a mini-coach to and from the gig, stopping at Bournmouth, Poole and Winchester. Would that be useful? As always with travel, please be safe and look after each other.
Pre-show meet ups: Arrange to meet up with others before the gig.
The show: Is there something you’d love to see us do? What would mean something to you?
Anything else: Random comments, questions, ideas, thoughts of all kinds very welcome.

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Sunday social

I’m so cool that my after-show parties don’t start until the day after the gig. Would you like to join? If so, please RSVP here so I can get the right space for us.

Date: Sunday 22nd February
Time: 12 - 4pm approx, TBA
Where: London venue TBA
Who: Anyone and everyone, possible age restrictions
Cost: Free

This isn’t a ticket or anything. You don’t have to reserve a space. It’s just useful to get an idea of numbers.

RSVP to the social

Not got a ticket yet?

This is the link for you: https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/

!!!!!!!

love jake

“Hello hello,” I said, pointing to the stereo. “Who’s this then?”

“Oh it’s {goon’s name},” she replied, his melodies gently cascading around us. “Isn’t it beautiful? It reminds me of when you just sit there noodling away on your guitar. It sounds like home.”

Well, needless to say, I felt sick with rage. I can’t be letting some schmuck step into my patch and clean up the sweet sweet homely background instrumental acoustic guitar genre that I’ve worked so hard to make my own here all these years.

There was only one thing for it, and it wasn’t the putting in of many weeks of intensive effort to create a rival range of high-quality, carefully-constructed, well-recorded acoustic compositions. The house is a mess. I have a 6-week old baby. I’m exhausted. I haven’t even bought any Christmas presents yet1.

No, what I did was set up a mic and record the absolute first things that came out of my guitar for a little less than half an hour. After all, who needs carefully-constructed compositions when you have hot, raw talent? Presumably some people, perhaps that could include me for a change? Did I practice first? No. Did I did tune my guitar? Yes, slightly. Did I at least edit out some of the most obvious mistakes afterwards? No, no I did not. It’s called integrity.

Listen now:

My christmas wish is that you stick this on and mostly ignore it while you do other things.

For the approximate duration of a classic episode of BBC comedy, feel your burdens lessen, feel the warmth and good cheer spread throughout your weary body, feel charmed by the bit where I get something a bit wrong and chuckle slightly.

And as you do that, consider that this is a time of year when we think of others who go without. We donate food and much needed supplies, we volunteer at a shelter, we build bridges with long-lost relatives.

We think of those who don’t have their own finger-style acoustic guitarist in the corner of their living room, and if we can, we offer what we have. We offer what we have so that those less fortunate than ourselves have something appropriate to kind-of-listen to whilst a 2 hour long video of a roaring fire plays on the tv and someone’s uncle talks endlessly about the mortgage market.

For the lucky few, it may be a Tesco Finest choice like the musician from further up whose actual name is Alan Gogoll and who is actually very talented and excellent and you should definitely check him out, or for others it may be a kind-hearted but middle-aisle-of-Aldi type soul like myself, flush with 27 and a half minutes and the spirit of giving in his heart.

It all counts. It all matters. Somehow, despite the odds, we chart a course through this cruel and turbulent world. Together. Thank you.

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Not got a gift for the new parents in your life? No drama I’ve got you covered.

Mainly because I thought it was funny, but also with the secret hope that some people would actually buy them, I am celebrating the birth of my second daughter with a limited run of new merch.

It’s a baby onesie / body suit and it says No Drama on it, which is a reference to my song of that name about my first child. It’s also clever and ironic, because quite often the amount of drama felt by babies is considerably more than ‘no’.

I’ll ship out any orders in the next day or two as quickly as possible. They’ll also be at Many Fish To Fry Live, modelled by the new daughter in question.

You can find them, along with various other bits, at my Bandcamp store, which is here: https://jakemorley.bandcamp.com/merch.

BANDCAMP STORE

Have a wonderful rest of the year everyone.
Many Fish To Fry Live is here if you still haven’t got tickets.

Love Jake

Our second daughter was born last month. I won’t bore you with details like her name or a picture, but suffice to say everyone is doing extremely well. In the short time we’ve known her she’s woven a special kind of magic over us, opening up new dimensions and binding us together in new and incredible ways.

Part…

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Speak your mind
Use your head
Walk tall
Find a roof
And make a bed
Take good care of the ones that you love
Don’t be scared, be strong
Carry the weight of the world
It’s time to learn what it means to be a man now

So. 10 years later. Did I make it yet?

To answer that, we need to go back to Bill, my dad’s dad.

Bill

As you can see, Bill was a bit old school. He flew RAF planes in the war. His wife quietly made him three cooked meals a day and deferred to his opinion on everything except the trifle, as was her duty in those times. I liked Bill a lot, he was warm and funny, A Thoroughly Decent Chap. As a parent, he would have emphasised traditional values like respect for others and personal responsibility, so some very good stuff there. But he’s not overly demonstrable in his affection. I guess it just wasn’t the way then? You had to infer the love a bit, trust it’s there somewhere under all the chat about the shortcomings of the England rugby team.

Colin

Fast forward a bit, it’s my dad’s turn and he’s absolutely raring to reinvent fatherhood, ditch the stale, oppressive, old-fashioned parts. He was deeply passionate about his kids and loved spending time with us. He was engaged and open and listened to us with respect and curiosity. He gave us freedoms he never had. Also he could be tough, direct and authoritative, definitely not the parent you go to when you want unqualified praise. You didn’t always enjoy his take, but it was often one you needed to hear. Like Bill he’s not telling his kids he loved them at every opportunity, but you knew anyway, mostly. He didn’t exactly dismantle the systemic gender inequities of child-rearing, but he gave it a good go. A decent generational effort.

Family was only one piece of his puzzle though. Much of his passion was for work, personal projects and, above all, self-actualisation. He saw it as his mission to reach his full potential as a person, wherever that took him, which included a few unconventional places. He was impressive, admirable, a bit enigmatic. I definitely looked up to him.

Inspiring stuff. Also what I’m saying is, he was a busy guy. Preoccupied. Off doing things. He clearly had important goals other than being my dad, which mostly suited me just fine, especially as a teenager. Or maybe I just told myself it was fine because I didn’t really have a choice. That was just the way he was.

Me

Fast forward again and now it’s my turn. I applaud my dad’s efforts but I want to go even further, be even more involved. I want to fix that last missing piece. I want the rewards that come with an even closer relationship with my kid. And I think it’s stupid and unfair that we still place most of the burden of raising good, well-balanced humans on mothers.

So slowly, painfully, I shed the comforts of Manchildhood and got my Grown-Up on. My kid is a huge priority. Our bond is built on thousands and thousands of hours of connected time together. I’m reacting moment-to-moment with an 8-dimensional understanding of the Kiddo Emotion Multiverse. I’m at the school gates every day and (mostly) know when it’s Purple T-Shirt Tuesday or whatever. I’m listening, I’m available, I’m patient. I’ve thought hard about the equitable distribution of the mental load. Once, when asked what her parents did for a living, my daughter said “My mummy is a nanny and my dad does the washing up.” Sure I sometimes drop the ball, but I’m giving it a good go. A decent generational effort.

OK but Bill and Colin’s primary role was to provide for their families. How am I doing there? Well a combination of part-time income outside of music, live shows, my amazing paid subscribers, merch sales, and not buying much, means the hog hobbles over the threshold. There’s nothing to spare and we haven’t had a holiday in years, but the bills get paid and we’re happy.

So, clever old me. Aren’t I brilliant.

Except just like Bill and Colin I’m missing something, but it ain’t the accepting, nurturing, emotionally-available stuff they sometimes fumbled. I’m a singer-songwriter for christ’s sake, I’ve got that covered. No, while I was busy nailing all that, and making up stupid games with my kid until she cries with laughter, I fumbled something different. I forgot to carry an air of authority.

There are those who say men have gone soft, lost their way, full of frilly, female, vegan nonsense. Is this directed at me? We started with Bill ‘Wait Until Your Father Hears Of This’ Morley. We ended up with Jake ‘Father Needs 7 Words To Say No’ Morley. What do we make of that?

The temptation is to instantly dismiss these people, mainly because of how often they are noisily full of toxic bullshit. Hector was a warrior and Paris was a lover and people have been rehashing this moral panic for centuries. But let’s give them a minute here. It’s not a problem that I can lack a little masculine awe, but I would like to be more assertive. Who’s going to teach me that?

Am I to sift through the stinky turds of some manosphere grifter’s ‘university course’ to uncover this wisdom? Must I sit through hours of Jordon Peterson’s impenetrable nonsense to sort-of-uncover it? Must I listen to Joe Rogan and just block out the parts where everyone is talking complete bollocks?

Over the years I’ve sometimes questioned why The Manual frames the whole thing around gender at the end. Are those qualities especially manly? Or just solid life advice? I think I just said ‘man’ because that’s what I happen to be.

Leadership, strength, vision, courage, the limits of empathy as a practical solution to problems, the speaking of hard truths, the leaning into necessary conflicts, the sense of having something to offer the world other than raising children, the comfort with not always being your kid’s best friend - this sounds like good stuff. I could definitely do with more of it. Second helpings please.

Funny thing is, the person I think of most when I consider them is not some Tech Bro, it’s my wife. She is an unbelievably impressive person, and she absolutely rocks at all that stuff. It’s called Being A Parent and I’m mainly learning it from her, and from my mum and my brothers and my friends, and Bandit Heeler, and Lorelai Gilmore, and Robert De Niro in The Intern1.

And also from the memory of Bill and Colin. They weren’t perfect, but they sure spoke their minds and used their heads. They walked tall. They found a roof and made a bed. They took good care of the ones that they loved. They weren’t scared, they were strong. And they carried the weight of the world. All so I didn’t have to, at least until I was ready. My dad’s been gone 20 years. He never met my wife, let alone my kids. That feels sad and I miss him.

So. Have I learned what it means to be a man yet then? Yes! Absolutely. I could be missing something, but I think you’re allowed to decide what that means for yourself. Maybe it looks like The Rock, or Elliot Page, or even Elon Musk if that’s your thing.

Me? I want to augment my natural Bert with a little Mary Poppins. She was a badass with incredible command of the situation. I want George Banks’ unwavering belief in his right to be heard. I want Winifred’s brightness and grace, and her activism. I want to laugh like Uncle Albert. And most of all I want to feed the birds.

Many Fish To Fry Live

Join us on Saturday 21st February 2026 at Bush Hall, London, UK, as part of a one-off celebration of the Many Fish To Fry album.

Event page is here: https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/ You know what to do, but this button has a hint.

Buy Tickets

Love jake

Endless meltdowns, messy eating, the stubborn refusal to do even the most basic tasks, the sobbing over trivial things, looking back at those early years of parenting I expected more from myself.

But when the hand of destiny lands on your shoulder, what can you do but instinctively whip around with an angry demeanour, realise who it is, apologise profusely, and offer to buy them a drink. Or, as it turned out, buy every single round, plus crisps and a kebab and an Uber home. I shouldn’t judge. Destiny was going through a hard time back then.

I hear their adorable little mouths they need feeding
And their fragrant heads need somewhere to rest

Yeah and the rest mate. We went to places I thought only Other People went to. But the rewards were waiting, eventually, on the other side. A deeper level of joy, more authentic relationships, the kind of strength only born of struggle, a new dimension of love, all available for the low, low price of the complete restructuring of every fibre of my being.

Which is very beautiful, but also my fibres in their previous arrangement were quite nice as they were thank you. I liked them. They were comfortable. They wrote more songs. I clung onto them as long as I could, but they became ill-fitting. I had changed shape.

One day I woke up to find a guy with my face and my name, asking for my life. I figured he deserved it more than me, so I gave it to him.

Things got a lot better after that. Actually our first kid has turned out so well, our gifts for parenting so obviously abundant, we have decided it is our moral responsibility to produce a second. For the betterment of humanity🍻. It is the least absolute most we can do, barely, if given sufficient quantities of caffeine.

Kid #2 is due sometime this autumn, and we are absolutely delighted.

I see it as a wild, unfounded vote of optimism for the future. A new player of the game with their own fresh hopes and ideas, ready to remake the world. A new voice, as deserving of the mic as any other. An original take on all the classics like “Waaaaa“, ”I don’t like this food I haven’t tried,” and “For god’s sake dad can you stop fussing. I’m 25 years old and can look after myself. Though actually yes a lift on Sunday would be quite useful.”

Somehow I’m convinced it will be different this time. I have a sense of who I am for a start. A musician, a writer of long emails, and a dad, though not always in that order.

I’m still a messy eater, looking back that was probably unrelated to parenthood.

Many Fish To Fry Live

You might see baby Morley at the merch table if you join us on Saturday 21st February 2026 at Bush Hall, London, UK, as part of a one-off celebration of the Many Fish To Fry album.

Turning this event into a meet-and-greet for an as-yet-unborn child feels problematic, but apparently I’m comfortable with that if it comes with the possibility of shifting more tickets.

Event page is here: https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/ You know what to do.

Buy Tickets

Part two soon.

Love jake

With huge thanks to Kevin Maguire of The New Fatherhood for many inspiring newsletters on this subject 🙏

Watching this beautifully shot footage back from my recent show in the Netherlands1, an unsettling thought crept up on me. “Ooh Jakey-boy,” it said, “you’re getting old.”

Now let’s be in no doubt. I am, like all of us, a shimmering object of incandescent beauty, absolutely perfect in my imperfection, made of stardust, etc etc. This version of Lionchild is excellent. If a neurotic whinge about aging was what you’re looking for today, you will be entirely substantially for the most part disappointed here. Be content instead with this nuanced and ultimately heartwarming take on the passage of time.

I’d be lying if I didn’t find at least something to say on this though, because it is currently resonating beyond the confines of this video, with its charming fairy lights and unusually impressive stage props, and deeper into the recesses of my life.

I feel slower, more comfortable. Too comfortable perhaps. I have a house now, a family, a part-time job, friends that I mostly-just-about keep in touch with. I am loved. Failure at music seems to come at a lower cost. I still work my arse off in a highly competitive industry, but sometimes when I could be writing the greatest song I have ever written I instead practice my advanced F2L algorithms. I bake my own bread. I assemble climbing frames. I go on camping trips. I am not yet volunteering at the school summer fair but if it happened absolutely no one would be surprised.

Music - you - got me so much of that. OK so I’ve not quite maintained a fully-fledged music career, maybe a substantially-fledged one, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fully-fledged careers, with their arts-organisation-funded folk collaboration projects that end with a hardback book and a performance at the royal festival hall, are very hard to find and harder to keep. Many excellent and talented people achieve only very modest fledging, or no real fledging of any kind.

The world took a look at me and declared me worthy of a partial-fledge. This is a huge honour. I am the bee’s femur! The cat’s toothbrush! The dog’s perineum! A dream realised. I’ve been rewarded many times over with amazing people and priceless memories from all over the world.

But years of minor-league fledging has, I think, led to a familiarity with mediocrity. An accepting of the adequate. I aimed for fully-fledged, but then I fully-hedged. A part-time model. While my standards for songwriting and live shows remain very high, I have internalised the industry’s assessment of my level of success.

Where’s the burning fire I felt earlier in my career to prove everyone wrong? Wasn’t I a lot better when I was younger?

Freddie Laid The Smackdown - live on Mariella’s Book Show, 2012

Perfectly timed, a large package of miscellaneous paperwork lands on my doorstep, sent to me by dear friend and long-time-but-not-currently manager Kerry Harvey-Piper (recently name-checked in the Guardian by the way - just because I know how desperately she loves the attention).

Nestled amongst the handwritten release plans and contracts with questionable investment vehicles, is a DVD of a TV programme I once performed on - Mariella’s Book Show.

Within it, the legend that is Mariella Frostrup declares Freddie Laid The Smackdown ‘A novel in song’ which is a literature way of saying ‘A novel in a song’. Phillip Pullman told me I was great. It was quite a memorable day, I wrote about it here:

How fresh-faced I was. A man in his prime.

Watching this significant footage back from the peak of my career, an unsettling thought crept up on me. “Ooh Jakey-boy,” it said, “what’s going on with your voice?”

Now, it is a fantastic performance, particularly under the circumstances. I’m so very brilliant etc etc. If a tiresomely negative appraisal of my younger self was what you were looking for today, well, you’ve probably got bigger problems.

But to me I sound like someone who is trying to sound a bit like someone else. Someone successful or popular, someone with an impressive or soulful voice. Can you hear it too? Maybe not.

Many artists start out by mimicking other artists, even without realising it, as if sounding a bit like how other successful people sound might mean you’ll also get the success that they successed. Every great artist has avoided this, or worked through it, to a voice that is truly, and undeniably, theirs. I’m just not quite sure I’d reached that point yet.

But I have now. I love my voice now better than ever. It’s not perfect, but it’s mature and strong and rounded and honest and it’s all my own. I’ve got interesting things I want to say and a unique perspective, and I very much want to keep offering that.

Vivid naivety or faded experience? I guess we never really get to choose. But if I could, I’d still pick me now. So there. Eat that, Frostrup.

Many Fish To Fry - Live

And if ever I needed a reminder of the impact my music has made, this is it.

Ticket sales have been incredible so far, and I’ve loved hearing all the stories of people travelling from all over the world - Australia, Canada, the USA, France, the UK - to be at Bush Hall in February 2026.

This will be an event to celebrate you and all you’ve brought to those songs over the years. We are sparing no expense to make it the most fitting possible tribute to that record.

While it’s still 9 months away, there’s a reasonable chance tickets will sell out. So if you do want to guarantee your space in the room, this is the link to click:

https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/

love jake

Hi everyone

For those interested in joining the Many Fish To Fry live concert, tickets are available now from this link: https://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026/

The date of the show is Saturday 21st February 2026, at Bush Hall, London, UK.

We'll play the whole album with a big cast of musicians and singers. It'll be absolutely amazing fun. It would be a magnificent thing if you could be there, so grab your tickets anytime from now.

It would be a wonderful thing if you could make it.

Love Jake and the band

Buy Tickets

I'm getting the band back together for one night only to play the album Many Fish To Fry in full, at Bush Hall in London, UK on Saturday 21st February 2026.

It will be 15 years to the day since our album launch show there, and it feels like the right time to celebrate that.

This is a one-off show. There are many reasons for this, but one is that it's my dream to bring everybody who has ever had a connection with this record together, for one moment and in one place.

So wherever you are - London, Manchester, Glasgow, Suffolk, Dorset, the USA, Canada, Ireland, or beyond - I'm hoping you can find £21.50 and your way to Bush Hall on Saturday 21st February 2026. I know it's a big ask for some of you, but when we're there it'll all feel worth it. What do you say?

Tickets go on sale Wednesday 30th April 2025 at 11am. I’ll send another email then to confirm. In the meantime, there’s a page to look at on my website.

If we can get over 200, I will stop thinking this is a mad idea and we'll be guaranteed an amazing night. Who knows maybe there are more of us now than in 2011?

Please do share this around, we’ll need every bit of support for this!

We really hope you can join us.

Jake, John, Harry, Kev and Calum

http://jakemorley.com/many-fish-to-fry-live-2026

Endless neighbours have brought round endless rustic crates of home-grown vegetable produce in what I’m being asked to believe is a completely normal everyday wholesome rural way. Quite evidently it is instead a carefully-orchestrated ruse involving the whole village. There is a 100-year old wooden kitchen bar of the kind you'd be quite proud to spend a lifetime behind, tea towel1 over your shoulder, attending to whatever topic, mood or situation is in front of you that day, and the scattering of lunch crumbs it left behind afterwards. We have walked and talked and put the world nowhere close to rights. All around is peaceful and calm.

As much as I love all this stuff, I am here for one reason and that is to wreak absolute bloody havoc on stage. I want you to feel elated one minute, and desolate and alone the next. I want to make you laugh, think weird new thoughts, lead you into the deep dark forest and out the other side. I want you to go home glad for the raw connection to life and meaning and each other which is available to us at every moment. I am miserable if I don't achieve that.

All this might sound incredibly pompous, maybe it is a bit. But it's mostly not about me, or doesn't feel like it is at the time. I'm just trying to do justice to the concept of people getting together in a room and sharing something. Someone spent £50 on a babysitter. It might be someone else’s last ever gig. Our ancestors worked hard so we could be here. I don’t want their ghosts muttering away at the back by the bar about how they toiled the fields for this lazy chump. I want them to say “this fella seems to be giving his all to whatever modern nonsense he’s playing.” Miserable gits.

Anyway, under that beautiful lime tree on Friday I felt a little off the pace, sluggish of brain and spirit. The songs had their moments, but too few for my liking. So, predictably a minor funk ensued, and not the good kind with Bootsy Collins on bass. It passed soon enough with help from excellent company and floofy dogs.

On Saturday I played to a full room at a nearby music venue, The Green Man Inn, and things seemed to fall into place again. I was back in the game. My new songs sound like my best. More new friends, more good memories. So I'm leaving with some satisfaction. My thanks to Nat and Charlie who hosted that one, and Patrick and Cathy, and all those who joined for these gigs. I hope to come back one day.

Finally, a date for your diary.

More on that very soon

Love Jake

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Right.

After a truly rubbish night’s sleep, this song has finally slotted into place, sort of, and I’ve spent a good hour or two grinning and dancing about with delight.

However, that’s only left me with about 28 minutes to write an email sharing it with you. Will this time pressure bring out the best in me? Or will I crumble under the pressure? Let…

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Interior of a studio. An acoustic guitar gathers dust in the corner.
VO: I had an appointment… with many electric guitars

Act 1: So much at stake

If you need a recap, and really who could blame you after the amount of time this has taken, we are today talking about the collection of live recordings based around my album Some Things Are Like Other Things.

Each song on that album was to have a corresponding live video version, because live music so often adds an important new dimension to studio albums. All but one have already been shared with you. I’ll helpfully list them below. You won’t click them, or maybe you’ll click one. And that’s ok. The important thing is you could, because they’re right there and they’re actually really good. But you’re busy, honestly I get it. But still, here they are:

So I Had This Dream
Hands (feat. John Parker and Patsy Reid)
Other Ideas (feat. John Parker and Patsy Reid)
Asking For A Friend
Keep Me Around (feat. John Parker)
Captured (feat. John Parker and Patsy Reid)
Childish Thoughts
Trace It Back
The Everything Goes Back To Normal Button
Some Things are Like Other Things (feat. Roxanne de Bastion and Zoe Konez)
Knots
No Drama (feat. John Parker)

Some of them were handled with great professionalism by experienced engineers, others were thrown together on the fly by me, a man of passion and integrity but limited audio engineering skills.

We are finishing the series, of course, with an example of the latter. It’s the first track on the album, and the last to drink up and go home. The barman, in search of some way to escalate things, has gone from placing chairs upside down on the empty tables around us to placing chairs upside down on the table we’re sitting at. He says something, but we’re not listening.

Close up on So I Had This Dream.
VO: It was never the right time, until suddenly… it was.

Act 2: A frankly excessive number of harmonies

Feeling flush with renewed enthusiasm and focus this year, I realised what must be done. With the weight of history on my shoulders, and also it was my guitar strap, my journey began with a guitar / vocal take. It was quite decent2.

So to the fun part, layering up many many tracks of me singing, and playing many many guitars, and hitting with a stick whatever I happened to trip over next. My shaker was a small pot of black sesame seeds, hinting at possible skill with a tofu ramen. My kick drum was a mic wrapped inside a towel. Truly we are a bunch of kooky misfits with the odds stacked against us. But we have heart, and each other. That shot at the title may well be beyond us. Except maybe, just maybe…

Each part was recorded as a continuous live take. My rule of No Sneaky Editing for this series seemed at times needlessly restrictive and annoying. But then I realised, what am I if not a system of needlessly restrictive and annoying rules? A bit late in the day to start questioning that.

At this point towards the end of Act 2 we can imagine something happening that threatened the whole endeavour, our dreams surely shattered. Except in reality they weren’t, nothing bad happened, it had all gone very well.

VO: This is all going very well

Act 3: Destiny fulfilled

A week of recording and mixing was followed by a week of learning to use the video software Davinci Resolve, which was, again to the disappointment of screenwriting rulebooks everywhere, actually quite easy. Soon the moment of glory was upon us. I took the shot and… against the odds which by this point were almost entirely in our favour, it was done.

I had climbed the mountain, won our freedom, dreamed the impossible dream.

And so can you. Watch the video below, or on YouTube here.

Listen to the audio below, or download the mp3 here.

Epilogue: The whole album is now available for free on Bandcamp

Listening back to these was actually a proper delight.

In my experience the lo-fi demo / scruffy out-take often captures the heart more than a polished studio version. I certainly don't think these recordings represent the songs any less than the studio versions do. In some cases I even prefer them.

What to charge for it? Tempting as it would be to walk you through an abyss of upsell ladders, I didn’t become famously loss-making with that kind of business nous. Most of these haven’t seen a mix engineer, plus I’ve already posted them all for free.

So it’s very much an indie / pay-what-you-want / have them for free / no refunds sort of situation. That does mean you have to get on with downloading it though, fair’s fair.

Download for free on Bandcamp

All videos are also in a YouTube playlist here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Z0AIn26cVAsafDmGO87vQctd9wLty6Y

Credits

Huge thanks to those who took part in this series:

John Parker on double bass
Patsy Reid on fiddle
Northern Cowboy Films
Lauren Housley
The Harrison / Harrison Folk in London
Decentraland / Festival District
Roxanne de Bastion
Zoe Konez

Live dates

Saturday 22nd February - BREStheatre, Brielle, NL. Tickets here.

Not lots right now. More to announce soon hopefully.

Paid Subscribers

So much of what I do is only possible thanks to my paid subscribers. This week I made a little video blog for them with some updates, a gig idea I’m thinking about, and an acoustic version of Room In The Middle.

That’s it for now. Drop a comment below if you fancy it, and I’ll see you next time.

love jake

Leave a comment

This post is mainly about the video below, which takes the form of an endearingly1 rambly update on the kinds of things I’ve been up to the last few weeks. At the end I play a song - Room In The Middle.

Finally establishing my own studio space has been very good for me. Everything is all rigged up, so all I have to do is whack a camera down, hi…

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At that age I often preferred to discover an artist first through a live album, for a range of pretentious teenage reasons I’ve mostly forgotten.

When the first notes are played and the crowd roar as one, it’s hard not to get a little swept up. Who are all these people loving these songs I don’t know yet? There’s a sense of great potential, of being on the verge of crossing some life-changing threshold. I mean if all this lot seem to love this guy so much then maybe I will too? Maybe I’ll be down at the front with them next time? All very natural I think, and also the basis for several famous dictatorships we could name.

Clacking my way through the plastic cases that day I noticed a section on Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan was definitely Someone I Was Supposed To Know By Now. I picked out his MTV Unplugged album, and over the coming days grew to love the combination of abstract narrative imagery, pedal steel and unbelievably laboured cymbal roll ritardandos at the end of each song.

Being full of unrequited1 teenage yearnings at the time, I fell particularly tragically for track 2, Shooting Star. Its story of a love beyond reach was what you might now call Relatable Content, and I added a few of its most meaningful lyrics to the folded up sheet of Meaningful Lyrics that I secretly carried around in my wallet. I even chose 1919 as my first bank PIN, as S is the 19th letter of the alphabet, a fact only recently declassified. The song is a bit of a footnote in his catalogue as it turns out, although I didn’t know that at the time.

Maybe it deserves more credit? I think it’s incredible. Although I did entirely forget about it until one of those dozy moments outside the realm of time and space between Christmas and New Years just gone. Strumming on my beloved £25 Facebook Marketplace Special 3/4 guitar, the chords rushed back to me, along with several adolescent memories I won’t share here.

So when my little studio room finally got painted last week and I was in need of a song to test out, this one bubbled up. I selected my finest2 melodica, and my most exaggerated ritardando, and got to work.

You can listen to the result here:

Shooting Star (cover)

As usual, there’s lots of live first take energy. I find it’s important not to let perfectionism stifle the creative impulses on a demo. Save that for the album recording sessions3.

I filmed the guitar / vocal take and added the final mix on top. You can check that out here:

Writing songs does take effort, as all meaningful things do. In life big prizes are not generally given away for free, and a song done well is a very high prize indeed. So a pretty mural on the wall isn’t going to do my hard work for me. I’m sure I’ll have some tough days here. But I am feeling ready for the work of uncovering good songs.

Of course whatever music I find here I will share with you! I hope you’ll give it a listen.

And don’t forget to roar. You never know who might be listening.

Love

Jake

Riffling through this week’s fanmail I notice one here from a Mr J Morley who asks when the hell he can expect to hear another demo from me.

Well sir, while I don’t appreciate your tone I do share your impatience. This new one does at least have a generously long title, so truly I lavish you in at least some respects.

Unexpected Reunion With A Long-…

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We are invited to add a mark of our own and sit there for a few minutes wondering what an appropriate amount of space to take up would be that made clear we understood we weren’t as big as The Brothers Landreth, but were surely the equal of some random band whose name we couldn’t quite read. Once again the Sharpie proved why it is in the bag, case and pocket of every right-minded touring artist in the world. Biros just don’t have the weight for situations like this, and the people who used pencils may as well not have bothered. Come on people, these are the basics.

We’d been erroneously billed as Jake Dunlop and Blair Morley, which seemed strangely fitting what with the increasing convergence of our artist personas over the course of these dates. The long solo sets we’d prepared for the first gig had morphed into long sets performed together. We were revelling in the chance to play on someone else’s songs for once, and in the thrill of our own songs being taken in new and unpredictable directions.

Thanks to Grant, the in-house sound engineer that night, we have actually have a recording of what went down. Take a bow Grant wherever you are.

To be honest it didn’t feel like a standout show at the time. But listening back I think it captures all of the natural, fun, musical connection I felt performing with Blair. Here are a couple of songs from the set, chosen at random to make me look vaguely good.

Chained By Design - Blair Dunlop

Asking For A Friend - by me

The full 50 minute live recording

Is available to my paid subscribers. You can join their ranks here:

*NEWSLETTER EXCLUSIVE*

A few random tour highlights

• Our (magnificent artist) friend Mia Kelly recounting how a fan had recently described her as ‘like a Canadian Joni Mitchell’

• Being endlessly told how stunning the drive from BC to Canmore is, then doing it in total darkness

• Somehow clinging onto my minutecryptic.com streak, usually by remembering at 11:56pm

• Billie Zizi returning my wallet after I left it in Medicine Hat the day before she played there. I hung out with her and her band in Edmonton. They are all excellent. Her new album has been No.1 for two weeks now on Alberta radio. You can listen to it here.

• Drinking beer and sharing stories about the challenges of depicting giant robotic steam-powered otters with the very fine people who twice staged my old musical at the Edmonton Fringe Festival.

• Forgetting a line in a song and having it called back at me by a guy in the audience who drove 7 hours to see me play. Sorry mate.

• Realising part way through So I Had This Dream that 1) The next verse of the song was about the perils of burning oil and 2) that I was singing it in Alberta, AKA The Oil Province. Not such a terrible thing I think, especially to a room of folkies, but would have been nice to realise before the song started. It’s a little like turning up in Texas and singing a song against freedom and the keeping of livestock. Except with Canadians, so actually not much like that at all.

In an unusual turn of events I’ve actually written more about the tour on social media than I have here. I could overly rehash the same content here, believe me I would, but perhaps I’d better instead invite you to check out posts like this if you haven’t already.

Or this video blog from the other fella

A word on Blair

I left the tour with a new appreciation for him. His voice is A list, his guitar playing was delightful, his songs rarely left my head. He was engaged, professional and thoughtful. He was infectiously passionate about random Canadian singer-songwriters I’d not heard of. And he was absolutely excellent company which is very useful when you’re spending basically 24/7 with someone.

So if you like what you hear, do check him out at https://blairdunlop.com.

Take in a show, listen to a record, surprise him at a petrol station. We’re talking about doing more together in future, but nothing confirmed yet.

20% off these top quality new Tea Towels

A new addition to the merch table in Canada were these Some Things Are Like Other Things Tea Towels, featuring the album cover artwork of Lynn Hatzius.

Made from 100% organic unbleached cotton, with a hanging loop and care label.

They are listed at £15, but you folks can get 20% off by using this exclusive newsletter discount code: tea20

Buy now from Bandcamp

Gift a subscription this Christmas

Scrambling around TK Maxx1 in an anxious frenzy one evening soon, you might reach a point of having rejected every single other possible gift idea in the world. At the limit of your wits, and with no other options left, you might take the desperate step of gifting them a paid subscription to this newsletter.

It would give them access to things like demos of my new songs as I write them and the full set from Saskatoon.

Full disclaimer, the benefits have been known to ebb as well as flow. It can be feast. It can be famine. It can be a delicious but slightly disappointing portion at a friend’s dinner party where they inexplicably made enough for only a little bit each like that was normal and you feel too embarrassed to ask them for toast or something, so you absolutely smash half a loaf when you get home later.

That said, and with about as many disclaimers as possible, here is the link to do that. Obviously it’s a big help to me too, so Happy Christmas me.

Give a gift subscription

That’s more than enough from me, but not so much so that I’ll go back and delete anything.

Take care, be good, love jake

My dear neglected friends,

As may have been clear on my various social media posts, Blair Dunlop and I had rather a good time touring in Canada this month.

We started with the focus on long solo sets, and left with the focus very much on long joint sets. Sharing the stage together felt instantly natural, fun, musical, special. Perhaps supporting someone e…

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We sat down with Jake Morley to discuss his upcoming return to Canada.

Hi Jake. Who’s Blair Dunlop?
Oh… hi. Yeh he’s just some guy, British, hairy, plays guitar, sings, you know.

Is he good?
I mean he’s ok. Won some awards I think.

Awards? Wow really?
Yeh a BBC Folk Award, it was probably ages ago now. His bio is here if you’re that interested.

Sounds like he’s kind of a big deal. Says here he gets played on the radio a lot?
Maybe. People don’t really listen to the radio anymore.

Lots of Spotify plays too. Who’s headlining the shows?
It’s a co-headline tour, so I guess we take turns? I don’t really mind.

I think it would work really well with you playing first. He seems very commanding, more suited to the set-closing role.
Sure I like playing first. You get to chill out once your set is over, enjoy the other artist’s set without getting distracted by warm up routines or choosing what songs to play. I’m easy, it’s not a competition.

It kind of is a bit though
I know what you’re getting at, but nah. Not for me, or him I think.

You don’t really have a warm-up routine
I do sometimes run up and down my range a bit. Maybe I’m not as disciplined as I could be? I like to focus more on my mood, how I’m feeling, to make sure I’m bringing my most comfortable, expansive, confident self to the stage.

If I’m able to chat between songs and sound vaguely normal that really relaxes me a lot. If I can do that I usually have a good gig. Occasionally I get a bit stuck in my head beforehand, maybe I’m overthinking something? Gotta watch out for that. So I guess I do have a warm-up routine, but it’s more for my mind than my voice.

I bet you could learn a thing or two from someone as talented as Blair?
Touring with other artists does offer a great chance to dive deeper into their work. You often hear things the third or fourth time that you missed the first time. Like extra depth to a lyric. It’s pretty cool. And their songs always get stuck in your head all day. We’ll learn from each other.

I wonder what we could take from that more generally when we often only give new songs 10 seconds to make an impression.

Will you perform some songs together? Or would it make you feel uncomfortable to be upstaged like that?
Collaboration is a huge part of these kind of tours. There’s a tendency with a singer-songwriters to get a little isolated sometimes, so any chance you get to break down those barriers, step outside of yourself and explore something new is worth taking.

Blair is an absolute monster of a guitarist, with such a sweet voice, and amazing songs. So we’ll definitely work up bits together, do some harmonies. Plus Canadians go mad for that kind of thing. They probably wouldn’t let us leave without playing together.

What are your favourite songs of his? There are so many to choose from.
I’ve got a real soft spot for Sweet On You. It’s got such a narrative. It also reminds me of all the Folk Alliance trips we’ve done together in Kansas City and Montreal. Good times.

Canada tours mean quite a lot of time stuck in a car with someone. What will you talk about? What if you don’t get on?
Canada is pretty big it’s true! Not like the UK where there’s another city or town every 15 minutes. But the scenery is incredible, and we both love a road trip. Stick some tunes on, shoot the breeze. You should check out a great song called ‘Let’s Get Out Of The City’ on Blair’s new album.

I know I’ve been listening to it a lot
Ah ok. Blair is also an old friend. He lives just down the road, we play 5-a-side football together. He’s an absolute gem of a guy, so no worries at all there. Am actually looking forward to it a lot. Can’t wait.

You done solo tours of Canada before right?
Several times now. Honestly it’s incredible out there. Everywhere you go you meet the most unbelievably warm and generous people who love their music. It’s a really special place to me.

I guess Blair might look up to you a little? It’s his first time touring there. Maybe there’ll be fans saying ‘Oh wow Jake I saw you at Vancouver Folk Fest’
Well.. maybe… I mean not really. Canada will love him. Plus he’s toured Australia, Europe, Palestine, all sorts of places I think.

But think of all you’ve achieved, it must be a little intimidating for him. He’s nothing compared to you.
I think I’m getting a little disorientated by this conversation.

Do you think it is revealing some issues about how you compare yourself with other artists?
I wouldn’t take it too seriously. I’m just sort of typing in the flow, having fun. It has got a bit weird though hasn’t it?

Yes. How did we even get here?
Initially I just liked the look of lines of bold text followed by lines of plain text. It feels calming somehow. I wanted to announce the tour, tell people a little about Blair and share a few of his links but didn’t want to do it in a boring way. So I sort of disguised them within this made-up Q&A.

Are you telling me that I’m nothing more than a construct?
Yep.

I feel used.
Not only that, I intentionally made you weirdly malevolent and made me a shifting and unreliable subject. I’m not really sure why. Just seemed more interesting I guess.

When are the dates? How do we buy tickets?
Weds 6th Nov, Penticton, BC, Canada. Dream Cafe. Tickets.
Fri 8th Nov, Canmore, AB, Canada. artsPlace. Tickets.
Sat 9th Nov, Medicine Hat, AB, Canada. Stir Studio. Tickets.
Sun 10th Nov, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. The Bassment. Tickets.
Thur 14th Nov, Grand Prairie, AB, Canada. Live Theatre. Tickets.

Anything in the UK?
Blair and I are playing a small warm-up show in Bristol:
Weds 30th Oct, Bristol, UK. To The Moon. Tickets.

Tickets are available on those links or from jakemorley.com/live.
There’s also a map of all my live dates here: https://share.jakemorley.com/livemap

Any other dates planned?
Yes, but nothing to announce yet.

What happens now?
Well it’s been great to chat but I have to get back to a few things now.

Wait don’t go. I don’t know what happens to me when you stop typing.
Sorry bye x