34 days on the road...

Parties... I mean work every night...

How do we manage to keep going?

Two words: Drink Responsibly.

My east coast brother Arthur, drummer for pretty much the coolest band in the world (Artanker Convoy, signed to Social Registry in Brooklyn... check ‘em out: www.myspace.com/artankerconvoy) called last night and will be joining us in Manchester on Friday for a week or so on the bus.

(Check him out in our first series - The State we're in).

Add to that the incredible Emmanuel Jal who's playing with us at Fridays Manchester Unlit, and then we are headed into the great wide open, across the whole of Scotland right to the top of the north coast.......to the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen (not even going to tell you where! You might find it!) Well it means all is good in the hood, we are cooking on gas and going down the road feeling great... x

Check out the fourth episode from Liverpool!

Way at the top of a long twisting valley above Merthyr Tydfil, over the little stone bridge, past the magic waterfall and through the tall trees shrouded in mist, down a broken path lies our refuge for the last few days: the home of Adam and Adele, my dear friends and the godparents of the vibe.

Tired and slightly frayed after six nights in a row of Unlit activity across the south of England and Wales, they took us in for the last three nights and showed us their incredible hospitality and generosity.

I met Adam about six years ago, recorded an album with him at the amazing studio he has here, up a valley in the middle of nowhere, and became close friends with him and his wife Adele. Both incredibly creative and motivated people, independent of the mainstream, Adam is now working on a beautiful film that he shot in the summer of 2006 in America, where he traveled the breadth of that enormous continent interviewing hundreds of people about their country and their lives. Garfield, Dave and I were lucky enough to be shown some of the rushes from it last night and we were all blown away by the beauty of the footage.

Adele used to run Rhythm King Records (putting out the likes of Bomb the Bass, Betty Boo and Echobelly) and now amongst various artistic projects and a bookshop she is opening in nearby Hay-on-Wye, she writes books. Her most recent is an encyclopaedia of secret signs and symbols, and the one before a beautiful book about the symbolism and importance of birds in the different cultures of the world, called The Secret Language Of Birds.

Now we are ready to roll once again. Renewed and rested with Midlake, Neil Young “On The Beach” and The Longcut on the stereo, caffeine in the blood, the second edit done and a house beckoning us in Liverpool where there’s a band who got in touch with us through the website offering us a place to stay and to play tonight...