The Road to Ferrara

DAY1

Is this the beginning of a new dawn? Is that the hand of history on our shoulder? I’m afraid it’s the usual - third rate romance and low rent rendezvous. When we finally board the delayed 6am flight to Pisa and the pilot announces ‘we’re going to Naples’ - the passengers are confused but reassured when our new piano man Freddy (Freddy or not here I come) confidently declared “no we’re not mate”. Through the tannoy we hear ‘sorry folks, I’m very tired this morning, we are in fact going to Pisa.’ ‘Very tired’? Naturally, i review my life decisions but sadly there’s only ever one conclusion. A lonely redeeming quality - I had just digested a (not to be named) concoction and in 10 minutes I was about to be knocked out for the next 3 hours. 

The next thing I know, the planes landed and Gav says ’I just love planes, there’s so much to look at’ (he was on the aisle seat, there’s fuck all to look at aside from the sweaty bald head a few inches in front). It’s back to the real world for me.

I sing Ferrara, wherever I may find her as we walk the streets for some authentic, ‘mamme che cucinano’ Italian cuisine. I’m sure Paul Simon won’t mind my local rendition of his classic. Sadly, no local understood the reference. To my not surprise, in classic Hardwicke fashion the only food Ferrara had to offer was Taiwanese. 

Since last weeks episode of ‘strippers and champagne’ I’ve been sober, attempting early nights and reading ‘the mountain is you- transforming self sabotage into self mastery’. Yet in the last 12 hours I’ve found myself in a self medicated coma, eating dumplings with two parked negronis and a Marlboro gold whilst I bite my nails nervously watching England v Switzerland. The question is ‘am I full of shit or is the book?’. Anyway, onwards and upwards. Gig tomorrow and I’m excited. Come on England!!! 

DAY2

So here we are 10 minutes before show time - "Somebody get me Jacopo” (our liaison for the festival) Dave and I scream at the multiple stoned, pound-shop Jesus doppelgänger sound men. Obviously, my skewed Cumbrian accent and Dave’s emboldened Irish accent was lost in translation. "Jacopo! Jacopo!". We were presented with a singular ‘jack cable’. We just laughed!

The festival provided Freddie with an electric piano that had been transposed to a different key without warning. Having never played this piano, nor given a soundcheck or working monitors, we were unaware Freddie was in a whole other sonic universe ! Three songs in it was fixed and Freddie was back on planet earth in the key of C.

 Meanwhile, Hamilton is shouting "monitor monitor" to two sound men side stage experimenting with an apple bong. I was amazed when two songs to go, a chap named Alex walks behind my kit- "oh he’s gonna explain what’s happening and sort the stage sound out" I tell myself. Alex shakes his head, wags his finger and says "no bottles of becks on the stage mate". When I arrive at a 35 degree festival after a thousand mile trip and I’m presented with a warm bottle of piss that I wouldn’t wanna wash my wheels with, I expect to be able to drink it where I want and when I want. Apparently this ain’t the Italian way!

Anyway, Highway 61 didn’t land like it usually does. Neither did Night Train - or maybe my senses were just polluted with a hazy apple scent. Ballad of the Gypsy King worked really well. Clearly there’s an appetite for northern, bare knuckle gypsy spirit in the hills of Italy.After the show I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr Gary Clark Jr, he was the sweetest guy. Cool, calm, collected. Gentle mannered and soft spoken but a hell raiser when he picks up that guitar. Mike Miley of Rival Sons really blew my mind. Suave Birkenstocks backstage but real ‘knock down that door and burn down the house’ drumming behind that kit. They were electric!

Neptune township sounds extraterrestrial. It’s fitting, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes are as alien as it gets to me. Blue collar New Jersey boys singing like they’re Levi Stubbs and riffing the horns like Philadelphia. But when I take a step back it’s really not so far from what we’re trying to do over the pond in Hardwicke county. Way back in 2017 the Dukes invited Jonny (HC) onstage at the Kentish Town forum to perform ‘Havin' a Party’ by the great Sam Cooke. Here in Ferrara, Our manager Dave insisted on a replay and the band agreed - though I’m not sure Southside Johnny himself was aware. The crowd were all over it. Towards the end of the song Mr Southside turned his back to the audience, and with a grin, walked towards Dave, pointed and shouted with gusto “Dave, you fucking owe me big time”. We’ll see about that!

DAY3

Trigger warning: band member gets arrested...

I’m writing this from my favourite pub where fortunately I’ve got to know some of the regulars. I’m told they’re used to my eyes being glued to my phone. ‘Anti-social Tom’ they call me. I said ‘no, I’m trying to do this blog thing but I gotta concentrate and here you are yapping about social cues.’ I put my head back down into another doom-scrolling session. A few moments later I get a tap on the shoulder. ‘Are you writing about Carlisle United?’ Got your season ticket?’ ‘No and no’ I reply. ‘You can have the best team in the world, but you ain’t beating Gillingham. There you go son, something to write about’ a local proclaims. In defeat, I chatted for a strict 5 minutes. 2 minutes in, the next line of questioning was ‘what the fuck is Andy Murray doing playing tennis anyway’. This blog ain’t gonna write itself - conversation over. 

Despite what you might believe having read previous posts, life of late in The Hardwickes has been so relaxing. The new boys got some good spirit and camaraderie is through the roof. Usually after a show, it’s back in the Sprinter for a 5 hour drive over potholes with the speakers on full. Not this time though - chauffeur driven in a lovely leather seated, tinted something or other (my car knowledge is famously bad), we cruise a cool 60mph down to Pisa to the sound of our driver's Italian playlist - ‘La migliore musica italiana 🇮🇹’ (link below) - on a pleasant volume 5. We get to the hotel at 1am. At 2am, Freddy - somehow aware Jon and I weren’t knocked out - knocks on the door. ‘I can’t sleep, do you wanna go to the leaning tower? I have a photo of my grandad I’d like to recreate’ (photo attached below). ‘Sure, why not lad'. 

Much to our satisfaction, the Italian equivalent to late night kebabs, cigarette buts and being called either ‘Ron’ or ‘Ed’ was lip stick stained wine glasses, dripping gelato and an overwhelmingly high female to male ratio. We walk past the river where I’m convinced a James Bond scene was filmed only to be greeted by a gentleman in flip flops projectile vomiting a world record 5.5 metres, narrowly avoiding Freddy's new shoes. 

By this point it’s 3am at the ‘not so leaning tower of Pisa’. After briefly discussing whether it was even real, we ticked the tourist box, took a few essential photos for the grandparents, told the local security ‘it’s just great’ and off we went. We came, we saw, we left. It was an amazing time had by all. That was it. I got no sleep, I wake up, hop on the plane, raw-dog the two flight, neck a quick beer in Edinburgh and ride the train back to Carlisle.

This is where your imagination comes in. We land on home turf and Jonny receives a text from an undisclosed member of HC. This band member stayed at the festival because of his love for Gary Clark Jr. All it read was 'mate, I’ve been nicked’. So here’s the story. 

Gary Clark Jr is on in an hour, that’s enough time for band member X to check into a hotel 10 minutes down town. The problem starts when X's phone dies. But not to worry, there's a ‘gelato hut’ in the town square. ‘Can I charge my phone please mate, I can’t check in’. ‘Of course’ replies Mr Gelato. X takes a seat in the back of the van with his phone on charge. Everything is running smoothly until 5 minutes later when out of nowhere the Italian armed police start raiding the van. Clearly gelato wasn’t their only source of income. Naturally X jumps up, the officer grabs him and screams ‘who are you? what’s your name?’ Faster than a rat up a drainpipe, X replies ‘It's George Harrison mate’. Next thing he knows, he’s cuffed against the car with a spanking new bruise on his left cheek. Having not said a word to the guards and pretending to not understand a word they were saying, X was released the next morning. 'It’s just annoying cos I didn’t get to see Gary Clark Jr, but I did save on lodgings’. 

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6D6Dd7lPFX4qjpJ2NdVbWg?si=9xlbpnBISo2lwwVpRYd6bA&pi=e-108u1ey3RES0

Save Our BBC Introducing

BBC Introducing is on a knife’s edge and it needs saving.

Crucial to the development of the UK music scene is BBC Introducing. Operating initially at local level, this platform allows upcoming bands and artists - often on a shoestring budget - to upload their music to a local database and a dedicated team of enthusiasts provide interviews and in-house sessions, local gigs, festival stages and outside broadcasts when possible. Should an exciting discovery prick the presenters ears your music may be shared with sister shows on the national BBC stations for further airplay. Previous success stories include Florence and the Machine, Ed Sheeran & Little Simz.

In the past, my band Hardwicke Circus have been involved with presenters Tom Salmon and Emma Linton (BBC Radio Cumbria) who have secured us airtime on BBC Radio 1 & 2, a feature on the 6 Music Round Table, and performances on the BBC stages at Kendal Calling and Reading & Leeds Festivals. It is this level of support that allow an independent band like ourselves to hit the road, confident our hometown is behind us.

Recent BBC cuts however, have signalled the end of local radio stations as self-standing channels. Financial obstacles such as the licence fee freeze has regional stations juggling already small budgets, with many presenters facing the axe (some have already been given the ultimatum between joint producer-presenter roles or redundancy). In the absence of strong public support, it would not be immoderate to suggest that local stations will be forced to abandon the ‘peripheral’, non-drive-time shows such as BBC Introducing to make way for nationwide formatted programmes in a bid to save on the coffers. Already the BBC has announced further savage cuts to its World Service output, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs, regrettably halting radio output in 10 languages, including Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic.

Rolled out under the guise of restructuring the BBC to ‘fulfil greater programme sharing between the 39 BBC local radio stations in England’, this act of cultural self-flagellation is nothing more than another wave of artistic austerity, negatively impacting the arc of upcoming artists, often from low-income households who rely on this outlet for exposure. Today, if you wish to hear your music on the alternative or commercial radio stations (Radio X, Capital FM etc), nine times out of ten you will need to hire a ‘plugger’ - an independent body with connections to radio that pitches your music to producers with the aim of securing airplay. Costs for this service can be anywhere between £300 and £1000 (& upwards), and for many artists this is an unfathomable fee. Even if you can afford this opportunity your song is not guaranteed airplay. 

The uniqueness of the BBC Introducing uploader is that it is free to use. It has democratised music and put everybody on an even playing field for judgement on creativity alone. Abandoning this crucial service would be striking a limb on the ambition of the next generation.

One of the best feelings as a musician is being told ‘I heard your song on the radio’. It will always be a slightly mind-altering compliment that doesn’t ever escape you. I don't know if it's because of the old BBC compressors which your high-quality track is inevitably squashed through, but radio creates a tone that makes your music sound richer, like it’s the perfect vessel for creative output. It has a very specific sound that reminds me of long car journeys as a kid, going on some freezing camping trip listening to ‘The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes’ on some obscure Cornwall radio station with my parents. There is a super direct quality to soaking up music in this medium. All you get is the music, no long-winded description of the artist to cloud your mind, just pure music. Personally, I am always eager to know if the DJ will react to the song, or will they move on immediately? Will they fade prematurely? Will they speak over the final chorus or mis-pronounce the band’s name? All these moving factors make hearing your song on our nation's frequencies a totally unique, on-edge experience, no matter how many times it may happen. I worry that should BBC Introducing relocate online to a robotised formula, these very human elements will be replaced by generic programming, endless repeat plays, and make for a smooth segue into allowing major record companies to dominate playlists through financial (or other) means. If you want to witness this level of legal payola in drag look no further than the Spotify playlist ‘New Music Friday’.

The Introducing shows which go out live every Saturday night, demonstrate the rich diversity our musical landscape possesses and displays the significant role regional identity plays in shaping the country's art and music scenes. The diverse cultures and traditions of different regions throughout the UK have given rise to unique forms of expression: the North of England’s roots in the industrial revolution and strong working-class culture gave way for artists such as the Arctic Monkeys and Pulp to capture the stoic urban character of their Sheffield hometown in sharp tongue local dialect; Grime music is unquestionably London with tales of social disparity and longstanding injustice in their respective boroughs; L.S Lowry’s matchstick men and women in their surrounding smokestack red-bricked buildings and factories is uniquely Manchester; the debut Hardwicke Circus album is called ‘The Borderland’ featuring songs written about growing up in a town practically extinguished from the Ordinance Survey maps. Sterilising art to a broader palette and refusing local presenter-led BBC Introducing shows would be to ignore the beauty of our regional differences and refuse artistic individualism. Its result would be too many flies around the same turd.

The systematic stripping of musical opportunity extends beyond radio all the way to the stage. The previous Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, instructed that £24m a year is to be taken out of the Arts Council England budget. If it were not for the ACE, Hardwicke Circus would not have been able to complete their UK Prison tour in winter 2021, offering performances, Q&A’s and workshops with inmates housed in men's, women's and young offender's institutes. The squashing of grants has also put original live music on borrowed time. Grassroots venues such as The Leadmill in Sheffield and Night & Day Cafe in Manchester are at risk of closure, and as a result of this increasingly anxious industry, artists are beginning to forgo the possibility of live performance, waiving opportunities to earn their stripes on the road in exchange for a lukewarm dopamine injection on Tik Tok and Instagram. For bands and singers who rely on BBC Introducing’s showcases to test their sound in front of an audience, the end of Introducing will almost certainly be the end of them.

The big question to ask yourself: is local music worth saving? If we are to believe our governments five-point plan to reduce inflation and grow the economy, we can expect to see any remnants of respect for music funnelled into the blind teacher-less teaching of maths. But we have been here before and we can bite back again. The resurrection of BBC Radio 6 in 2010 is proof that BBC Introducing - with the right public support - can hold onto its regional teams and continue to push out incredible new music with clear editorial vision and control to an even bigger listenership, supporting local venues to nurture the most exciting upcoming talent on the stage. Ultimately though, our cultural support must range beyond desperate ploys and petitions to keep smaller stations and venues open - it is essential that we as punters support the weekly BBC shows to grow their audiences and make the London-centric bosses pay attention. We must buy tickets for gigs in advance and show up on the night. We must take a punt on the unknown. Otherwise, all facets of our musical framework will be stripped away slowly,  then all at once.