A message from Sid Griffin

Hello music lovers,

After selling out our last few Coal Porters concerts here in the UK I have been asked a lot by my British chums when the next gigs are on these shores but also our next performance is Sat June 29 in Ingleheim, Germany at the fantastic EuroFolk Festival.  http://www.eurofolkfestival.de

However the Coal Porters do play July 4th (!) at St. Julians Club in Sevenoaks, Kent as part of the Sevenoaks Summer Festival. We are onstage 8:45pm and you bet there are other fine acts on the bill. And on Sunday July 7th the Coal Porters play Golder’s Hill Park in always fashionable north London on the Cafe Terrace out in the glorious (some would say near-mythical) English summer sunshine, from 3 to 5pm. This is free to the public but do bring your own sunscreen. Or umbrella.

Those seeking to hear the track I cut solo last January for the Swedish compilation The Golden Demon will be relived to note it is now available online at http://www.hemifran.com/golden_demon.html Just click on the blue song titles and, voilá, sweet music!

I am sorry uploading the Prima Records Ltd back catalog of hits is taking so long but I have had flu something awful so no work at all has been done this past week. With luck I will get all the musician’s information sorted and all the tunes encoded by the end of July. There are some twenty CDs to upload and that is going to take some time…’tis just myself doing this as all of Santa’s helpers have split for their summer holidays.

The Coal Porters play the fab Shetland Islands Festival July 19-20 but two days before we go there I, your humble scribe Sid Griffin, am again on BBC 6 Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie show at 1430GMT. For those of you without a calendar this is Wednesday July 17 and the subject discussed is the Paisley Underground music scene I was in back in Los Angeles some thirty years ago. Yep, a radio rap about my old band the Long Ryders is on the cards and how I met and hung out with the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, Green On Red, the Three O’Clock et al. Don’t laugh…it was my life! Please do mark your aforementioned calendars and tune in because you can hear BBC 6 Music anywhere in the world via your computer. The show is streamed live via computer and if you miss it the BBC leave all radio shows up in cyberspace for a week after their initial broadcast.

September 20 to 30th sees more English gigs for the Coal Porters and the first ten days of November mean the Coal Porters are in Scotland again so if you have any venues or gigs for us in either locality please tell them to book the very founders of alt-country! In a perfect world we will have no Off Days on those tours.

Still deciding on our new Benelux booking agency so watch this space.

I am selling my 1965 Gibson stereo ES-345 guitar on eBay so please, please, please let me get what I want for it as I am near skint with hungry mouths to feed. Check it out at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMAZING-SOUNDING-Vintage-1965-Gibson-ES-345-Stereo-Electric-Guitar-/200933421347?lgeo=1&clk_rvr_id=492843894739&vectorid=229508  and, like the Mafia and the moron, make me an offer I cannot understand.

I hope this finds each of you well and swell with a glorious summer already happening,
Sid Griffin
Coal Porters World HQ