Heads up, we’re recently had a live version of our song Mandrake featured on an independent radio station, Dandelion Radio. It’s part of a 3hr show by Mark Cunliffe, that repeats every day of September. Just had a listen to the whole thing – f**king brilliant. The track was recorded at the Firestation gig earlier in the year. Big thanks to Mark (and Cheryl!) for the feature.

Recommended listening: http://www.dandelionradio.com/
(look for Mark C’s show in the schedule)

Late summer. The light has changed. Everyone’s been adventuring and there’s a generally mellow blanket draped over Bristol – of a recovery nature actually, two days after Boomtown festival. What a mad blow out! 10 Ton Tongue were offered a gig but couldn’t make it happen, which is actually fine because I took the blow out as I found it without having to keep my head together to play. Happy days.

The next festival we’ll be playing is Off Grid this weekend and Watusi (held by the Triban posse) in early September. It’s been a fortunate turn-out of events really because we have been writing and this is always a fairly long process for us. Rick’s written an afrobeat bassline in 5′s which Jake’s translated pretty flawlessly and Bex and I have scratched our heads at all the major notes in it but found our voices within it eventually. We’re writing a ridiculously heavy punk n bass tune which I completely love, and a long mostly-intrumental tune with some fierce spoken word to finish. There is also shanti waltz brewing, as written by Jake. I’ve also written a couple of songs for guitar that may find their way into the set but not while I’m still in a plaster cast from falling out of a tree and breaking my wrist…

In other news Bex and I will be recording a duet EP soon which will be available as the gentle consort to the nearly completed album. The artwork for the album is looking so sweet – we’re just waiting to complete some legalities that have to happen at mastering stage to protect the music in the future, and then it will be there for you to download or buy as a hard copy.

Big love to all the hoopy froods. Emma x x

Well that was fun, wasn’t it?! We had a great couple of gigs – stormed through the Friday night gig and chilled through the Sunday afternoon. Personally, I love the juxtaposition between the late night stompy-stampy gigs and the Sunday afternoon chilled right out gigs. It was about as dynamic as the steady cold soaking and gradual coating in MUD throughout Friday only to be totally toasted to a sunburnt crisp on the Sunday.

Excellent vibes throughout, tho, and great for us to watch and study some of the professionals. I particularly enjoyed Lykke Li and Jake is clearly smitten. She was a very inspiring gothic firecracker – shame she moped about English audiences at the end. If I hadn’t been so taken aback I would definitely have suggested she get over it…

We had to turn down a backstage gig because Bex and I were leaving on the Sunday night. Someone spluttered ‘you turned down a backstage gig?!’ but I tell you what – my physical wellbeing and ability to do my job throughout the week actually came first that night… not kicking myself yet but maybe there’s time for that.

ALBUM’S STILL NOT BLOODY READY!!! It’s on the tip of the 10 Ton and will be offered up with shaking hands and little wet mouths as soon as we can. Bex and I are playing an acoustic duet gig in Tisbury this weekend and then rolling up our shirtsleeves for some hard graft at a permaculture farm in Dorset for a few days, so hopefully by the time we come out the other side reality will have put on a new, album-shaped coat… feel free to let us know if you want a copy.

The next two months are for writing. There are some monstrous tunes and a couple of nice ones in the making. I like the monstrous ones best… so watch this space. We’ll be playing if the right gigs come along but we’re really up for knuckling down and funnelling this recent inspiration. We write slowly, it takes time to put the tunes together and really fathom them ourselves, but I have absolute faith that the time will be well spent. If you want to see us somewhere near you and could help publicise such an event, or if you’re in a position to host us, get in touch.

Aside from that the mission is to keep the summer for summery antics wherever possible. I wish we didn’t have to work, I’m just grateful for work that I love, personally. It’s a wyrd time. Good to be together and pushing the energy out into new music, themes and projects… hope you’re all having the craic too. See ya somewhere soon…. Emx

“Sublimely apocalypic. The most searingly real musical experience I’ve had for a long time.”

“A thunderous rush of woodland debauchery!”

“Folk with lusty rebel-bite…”

So I thought it appropriate to update the waffle on here somewhat since it’s been an eventful few weeks to say the least. The Firestation May 7th gig was immaculately fabulous – we brought the woods inside and Paul Blakemore and Karen Dews provided spectactularly simple and effective projections. I felt the woodland breezes lifting everyone’s tresses there inside that big dingy madhouse. Liam Baukham filmed the event for free (footage soon come I hope!) and Binewski Murder and John Fairhurst ripped the place apart. It was knee-knocking following John onstage but I think we pulled it off. A big bear hug from him roaring that we’d raised the bar (ya bastards!) confirmed a sense of a job well done.

We all continued on to Glastonbury the following night for the same again and two nights of excessive drinking led to me falling asleep in inappropriate places. The less said the better…

On the back of these gigs our slot at St Werburgh’s community fair was changed to a headline slot, as was our slot on the Tadpole Stage, Glastonbury (Green Fields) and we’ve been given a stonking 11pm slot on Spit n Sawdust at Sunrise. We were also offered BoomTown fair but we’ve unfortunately missed the boat with that one booking-wise so all fingers are crossed for Shambala…

Bex and I played a duet gig in a restaurant last night which was REALLY WEIRD!! Nice but I’ve never had to sing QUIETLY before……. it was harder than I anticipated! And this Thursday we set sail for Kent and Small World festival which I personally am gagging for: a few chilled out nights with inspiring company on the other side of the country. It’s a sad note that I’ll then be going on to say my final farewells to a gorgeous and gone warrior friend who passed away last week. So please – if there’s only one thing to be gained from sad news like that is to remember those people who shut themselves away, who don’t necessarily come looking for the help they need, the friend you haven’t seen for so long… send them a message, give them a call. Raise your toast for absent friends and seek out the living with all your heart. Life is so precious and short. All love. x x x x

“When we recognise our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996), from ‘The Demon-Haunted World’, 1996.

Howard Thurman once wrote “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. For what the world needs right now is people who have come alive.”

So someone told me anyway. The spring appears in the southwest and creeps like a guilty pleasure across the land at a pace that would keep up with any good natured dawdler, but be left behind by your average lucky hitcher.

Here we are, a few days into this babyfresh website and tweaking ferociously as we go. All applause is for Jacob (and notice how I used his nice real name, not any of the better names we have for him…) for putting it together.

Soon come will be fresh recordings, photos and events as they roll off the Tongue.

Primarily though is the preparation for summer: the hope to be ensconced in canvas with chai curling our nostrils and good friends heaped up beside us. See our links page for glimspes of the greatness of those friends – they are mighty indeed.

All love and all things fluffy all ways up.

(presently listening: Groundation ‘Each One Teach One’)