Commercially Inviable Records

Hello everyone,

We’re gearing up for a bunch of releases on Commercially Inviable over the coming months and as a preview we’ve added a track from each to our Bandcamp page. You can listen to the songs there, or here on the player below. The sampler is also available as a free download.

A little general information about the releases, with more specific skinny for each release to tag along in due course.

“Dorset County Breakdown” by The Docherty Brothers will be the first in a new series of ultra-limited EPs that we’ll begin releasing into the wild this spring. We’ll follow this up with an EP from Young Runaways, “There Is A World Outside“, and another, as-yet-untitled EP, from Fields of Ypres. All 3 acts are new to the good ship Commercially Inviable, so please treat them gently.

We have a few more of these limited EPs up our sleeve, from friends old and new, so keep ‘em peeled. Physical copies of these EPs will be rare as hens’ teeth and available at gigs, or via mail order, only. Digital sales will, of course, be available online in all good music stores. 

To go next to these lovingly-crafted EPs in your record collections we’ll also be releasing the 2nd LP from Friends of the Stars, “Faiths Meat Kiosk“, which is finally complete, raring to go and sounding great. The album will be available on CD and download, and also in a very special limited edition. More details on that soon!  

Alongside these new releases we also have some digital re-issues in the pipeline. In 2008 we released James Summerfield’s 3rd LP, “Count To 10 & Start Again” and whilst we’ve been waiting for him to put the finishing touches to his 4th record, we’ve managed to get his first two LPs from cold storage and will be giving them a full, worldwide digital release for the first time. “Hailah, Hailah” (from 2004) and “Paint The Road” (from 2006) were CD-only upon their original releases but will finally see the ones-and-zeros light of day shortly, as will a LIVE EP, from 2005, that James recorded during shows he played in support of the Hailah, Hailah LP.

Additionally, and also on the re-issue tip, in time for their EP release on the label we’ll also be giving the full digital treatment to Young Runaways’ superb debut LP, a record that took them to all the way to Glastonbury, ”The Boy & The Beartrap“.

We hope you enjoy the songs.

Some months ago we sent a crack squad of Commercially Inviable artists to Somerset to play some songs in a garden shed. All of the bands had a great day and one of them, World of Fox, wrote about it on his blog and we re-published it here. (LINKY)

The reason for the journey was for the bands to record sessions for Songs From The Shed, a brilliantly quirky folk music website that does exactly what it says on the tin - Bands arrive, they are filmed playing in a shed and then the videos go online.

It seemed like a perfect fit for the bands on the label and so when got in touch with Jon, the owner of the shed, we were delighted when he invited us down.

Jon has been plodding along at his own pace for a while now and has quietly gone about recording almost 60 separate sessions. However, and for reasons apparently unknown to Jon himself, it seems that this week the rest of the world has started to cotton on to the great things happening in his shed.

Earlier this week Jon mentioned on his Twitter feed that The Daily Express had written about Songs From The Shed.

This was swiftly followed by an article in The Times, which no-one can link to because of Rupert’s paywall and so therefore may or may not exist, and then there was a mention and an interview on Tony Livesey’s BBC Radio 5Live show. You can listen to Jon on the wireless by clicking on this BBC iPlayer link. The interview kicks in at 54 minutes.

With all of the press attention heading Jon’s way it’s rather lucky that we’d previously agreed this week to make the first of our four Commercially Inviable sessions available online.  We chose the marvellous folk collective Gurdan Thomas to appear first in order for their session to coincide with the release of their album, “The Fat Lady Sings”. Here’s on off the 4 videos in the session:

You can view all 4 videos over on the Songs From The Shed site.

We hope you enjoy the session. We’ll keep you posted on when each of the other 3 from World of Fox, James Summerfield and Richard Burke appear online.  We also hope to send Friends of the Starsdown to Somerset at some point in the near future to complete the Commercially Inviable set.

From Friends of the Stars…

We had a great day playing at the Moseley Folk Festival last weekend. It was our 4th appearance at the festival but the first time as a full band and the friendly atmosphere and crowd inside the Bohemian Jukebox tent really made the day. We also played pretty well too, which is always a bonus.

We recorded the set, so if you missed it and want to hear how it sounded, or were there and would like to hear it again, here it is as a free download. The entire set is about 25 minutes long and the download is about 40Mb.

In truth, it isn’t the greatest quality live recording we’ve ever heard - it was taken from a mobile phone placed somewhere in the tent - so, if you’d just like a taster before you download it all, here is the 2nd track we played on the day, The People’s Express

Friends of the Stars @ Moseley Folk Festival 2010 (40Mb ZIP FILE)

TRACKLISTING

1: Leaves & Stars

2: The People’s Express

3: Wagons

4: Stagger Home Safe

5: Drunk on my Porch

6: I Don’t Love You Anymore

7: Brand New Morning

Our good friend Sophia also took some nice shots as we played…here they are as a Flickr set.

(For people reading this via RSS - here’s the link to Flickr)

Hope to see you at the 2011 festival!

Mixing….

Campbell and Craig from Friends of the Stars spent Friday locked away in a Shrewsbury studio with producer Beth McGowan mixing the band’s second LP. We’ll have more news soon but by all accounts the LP is sounding great.

Sad news reaches Commercially Inviable as we note the passing of Ben Keith.

Ben wasn’t the most famous musician to have ever walked the earth, and indeed it was hard to find news online as the story slowly broke along the grapevine earlier today, but his CV is just incredible. To put it simply, he played with them all.

Most notably Neil Young trusted him as his pedal steel sideman for almost 40 years. That’s Ben on Young’s classic “Harvest” LP…oh, and he also played on Patsy Cline’s “I Fall To Pieces”. It’s more than fair to say that this man had chops and will be missed.

Here he is onstage with Neil Young..

Campbell from Friends of the Stars has made a Spotify playlist of songs Ben Keith played on. For those of you without Spotify, here’s what you’re missing.

TRACKLISTING:

Anne Murray - “Danny’s Song”
Neil Young - “Walk On”
Emmylou Harris - Till I Gain Control Again
Crosby & Nash - “Fieldworker”
Neil Young - “Mellow My Mind”
Bob Neuwirth - “Cowboys & Indians”
Todd Rundgren - “Cold Morning Light”
Harris, Ronstadt & Parton - “The Blue Train”
Terry Reid - “Dean”
The Band - “The Promised Land”
Neil Young - “Harvest Moon”
Tim Hardin - “Bird On The Wire”
Warron Zevon - “Bed of Coals”
Neil Young - “It’s A Dream”
Patsy Cline - “I Fall To Pieces”

There may be some that Cam has missed, or you may have your own suggestions, but as Neil Young reportedly said on stage last night before dedicating a song to the man, “His spirit will live on”

Thanks for the music, Brother Ben

SPOTIFY LINK

Last weekend the vast majority of the Commercially Inviable stable of acts took a day-trip down to Somerset.  The reason for the trip was for each of them to record a session for the very lovely Songs from the Shed. World of Fox takes up the tale on his blog

“so, last saturday we all went down to north somerset where we ate sarnies, drank beer, snoozed in a hammock and played a few songs in a shed, captured on a camcorder by a lovely chap called jon. it’s quite a big shed, but even so it was quite a squeeze for gurdan thomas, given that there was five of them, and one was playing a tuba

the shed is an old billet hut and is stuffed full of fascinating detritus. one thing that caught my eye was an old magnetic theatre toy that i had when i was about four!

it was a thoroughly nice day out and some of us popped over to nearby clevedon for a glimpse of the seaside (well, the severn estuary, but close enough for a bunch of brummies). it has a nice pier:

i haven’t seen the finished videos, but i’ve a feeling they’ll be pretty good. jon will be posting them up on his website in the next few weeks, and obviously i’ll keep you posted when they’re up.”

Likewise, we can’t wait to see the results. A big thanks from us at the label to Jon from Songs from the Shed for accomodating 4 acts on the same day. Watch this space for links to the videos!

From Friends of the Stars

Andrew Dubber is currently recording a series of 5 minute interviews with interesting people he meets on his travels.  The 5th in the series is with Craig from Commercially Inviable - you can listen to it here

From Friends of the Stars…

The late, great Ronnie Lane would have been 64 today.

Happy Birthday, Ronnie.

We’ve been asked by the nice ladies of Stiches & Hos to help out at a 2-day ‘knit-in’ in April.

“Stitches and Hos are a motley crew of enthusiasts for all things knitted, crocheted and stitched who run a monthly knitting night based at Hare and Hounds pub, Kings Heath, Birmingham.”

They also hold knitting events in other places and on the weekend of 10th / 11th April will be hosting a sprawling two-day shinding at the newly minted Created in Birmingham store in the Bullring, where coincidentally you can also buy Commercially Inviable releases.

As well as offering knitting advice, encouragement, supplies and cake, Stitches and Hos have also enlisted the help of various Brum-based musical entities to provide the soundtrack, and we’ve been given the slot of 1pm-3pm on Saturday 10th April.  So, if you’ve ever wanted to learn the art of knitting in a huge shopping centre whilst two men play ELO records at the wrong speed, this is the event for you.

See you there!