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Hey Cats and Crows fans!

Exciting news from our camp today, Andy Cooper and I are finally recording drums for our upcoming album “10am” 🎉

We’ve hired out the Ruthin Football Club’s function room/clubhouse and got Andy’s kit all set up. It’s sounding amazing.

Ironically, this is the second time we’ve recorded drums for this album… The first time, we did it at Andy’s home studio. Fast forward about 10 days and I finally had some time to start getting the tracks mixed and levelled and to my absolute horror I discovered that for all but one song, I’d managed to sum loads of channels together on the input side of things. Absolutely devastated!

For those of you who don’t know, what that basically means is I managed to combine two or more different microphone signals together on the way in to my recording software, so they could never be separated. It’s like trying to un-bake a cake… once those ingredients are combined, there is quite literally nothing you can do.

Huge shout-out to my friend Skeet who very kindly offered to try and salvage the tracks for me 🙏🙂

Anyway, we’re back, we’ve got the kit set up, we’ve doubled-down on the tracks and we’re treating this like an omen. They sounded amazing in Andy’s home studio, but today, they sound even better. I’ve double checked them all too, to make sure no more mistakes, and I am absolutely blown away with how good they sound.

The best drums we’ve recorded ever, hands down, full stop.

More soon! 🥁

Super excited to announce that we’re officially in new album territory!

Isaac has been writing for the last 18 months or so, and a collection of songs have started to come together to form the basis of our next album… It’s only been what, 5 years?!

We’re absolutely stoked to have Andy Cooper back on board on percussion duties too – it’s hard to imagine Cats and Crows without him these days.

Beyond that, we’ve got some really special stuff happening too. A choir of friends for example, made up of people from all over the world that Isaac has met over the last few years of (finally) attending Glen Hansard gigs – several of whom have said they’ll sing and record some lyrics that we can then use on some of our songs. We’ve also got our old friend Xander back on violin duties. Xander played violin on our first album Honest Crimes nearly 10 years ago now, so that’s really exciting. As well as all that, we’re in the process of negotiating with a very rare breed of musician – a Welsh Pipes player… all our fingers and toes are crossed. Watch this space!

The album is tentatively called “10am” and features artwork from Isaac’s girlfriend, Hannah. It’s inspired by, but not necessarily about, the loss of an animal that was extremely dear to Isaac, and all those feelings of mourning, grief and retrospection that the loss of any family member brings to the surface. It’s a tribute to a soul that’s now finding it’s way in the universe beyond our world.

Aiming for (but expecting to miss) a March 2026 release. This album is the most important & most honest piece of music we’ve ever made, so we’re waiting for the album to be done with us, rather than us done with it.

See you out there!

It’s that time of year again, and considering how absolutely terrible I am at promoting my own music…. this is lovely to see.

If you’ve listened this year, thanks from the bottom of my heart 

New music coming in 2024 (and I mean it this time!)

Every year this stuff just blows me away… not something I expected to see at all!

Thank you, from the bottomest of our hearts, to every single one of you who has listened, streamed, shared and otherwise engaged. It might only be tiny numbers for some but for us, knowing that we’ve had nearly 10k streams this year is just really, really, REALLY humbling.

Here’s to hoping that 2023 sees new music from camp C&C… we’ve got our eye on a piano based EP but we’ll see.

Have a great Christmas, from us, to you ❤️

Watch the video here.

So during an impromptu Saturday afternoon busk last week, I received a message from none other than Andrew Gale of the legendary Gales Wine Bar in Llangollen, asking if I’d like to play a gig there the following Saturday evening.

Now, busking is something I do a lot, but I play other people’s song almost exclusively, so I really haven’t even practiced my own material in close to a year at this point.

However, it was going to be filmed, and not one to turn down some sweet exposure, I hastily accepted. Then, I proceeded to do absolutely no practice whatsoever, for the entire week 🙈😅

Anyway, we rolled up to Gales and wandered in, a wonderful, dimly lit, oldy-woody smelling proper wine bar, and were greeted by Andrew. I got set up, sound checked, pretended I was a proper musician and then… I went and wandered the streets of Llangollen with my guitar, listening to my own songs on Spotify, working out how to play them again 👀 yikes!

We returned to the bar to watch the other musicians, who were excellent – “1987 til present” being a standout for me, and it then it came my turn.

I played some covers, but some originals too – All Along The Watchtower quite literally always goes down well, but it was this night at Gales that I somehow re-connected with an old song. You see, we recorded “A Certain Kind” back in 2018ish for our album Winter, and while it was definitely the hit song for that record, I myself personally hate the way that whole album sounds… it’s not the songs, but the production, which is down to my own lack of skill as an engineer that’s to blame, but because of it, I’ve sort-of fallen out of love with it.

But there, in Gales, I played it in a different key, in a different way than I used to, and suddenly I find myself rediscovering my own song with an entirely fresh ear! It went down a treat, Andrew chose it at the song that he would record, and I for one have a sneaking suspicion that “A Certain Kind” is about to take on a whole new life 🙂

Thanks Andrew and the Gales Wine Bar crew for having us! What a great evening.