Lime Chalks are using their eight legs and going on something that vaguely resembles a tour! And not in the sense of every other ‘tour’ that I’ve ever been on which usually consists of two dates played within the same week in the same city, or two dates within the same month in different cities. Nope, this is a full on proper tour with three dates which are in the same week and in different places. Take that Muse.

They are

Tuesday 20th July at The Victoria in Birmingham
Hosted by The Autumn Store
With The Smittens and Jam on Bread

Facebook event

Thursday 22nd July at The Musician in Leicester
Hosted by Sweeping The Nation
With MJ Hibbett and The Validators and Standard Fare

Facebook event

Saturday 24th July at Indietracks Festival!!!
Hosted by Indietracks Festival
With loads of amazing bands who are playing Indietracks Festival

Facebook event

Hurray!

Absolutely delighted to be on this line up! Indietracks has been consistantly jaw dropping over the last three years whether for La Casa Azul wowing the world with his version of Love is In The Air to a crowded shed of Wedding Present fans, to toot tooting along with Pete Green, to The Deirdres becoming the supermegarockstars we always knew they were, to just about everything else that happens there. If you have a love of pop music then you need to be at Indietracks.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are headlining this year, along with what must be one of the best line ups yet!

More info and tickets on the Indietracks website.

Genuinely looking forward to Moseley Folk Festival this weekend. Lime Chalks are playing on the Bohemian Jukebox stage at 6.45 on Saturday if you’re going and want to see us. Looook - here’s words on the Moseley Folk Festival website to prove that it’s not just a figment of my imagination - like the time I tuned up with a uke and demanded to headline V Festival. Now *that* was embarrasing.

It looks like the best Moseley Folk Festival line up ever - Friday is borderline popfest, with Saint Etienne, The Pastels & Tenniscoats, El Perro Del Mar, Seeland and Rose Elinor Dougall.

The Bohemian Jukebox stage is full of some great bands who have played at BoJo over the last few years too - Hatchlings, Gemma Quarterman, David Leach, Pete Green, Theatre of the Absurd, Superman Revenge Squad, Friends of The Stars, Perrots Folly, Ben Calvert, Mitch & Murray, Cat Green Bike, Richard Burke, James Summerfield and Fox are the ones I’ve heard of and am looking forward, though clicking on some random links from the folk fest website is comming up with other great bands.

Ace!

The videos for the London gig at Totally Acoustic keep popping out of the woodwork. Here’s Hey Sleep!

Rob Howard has just popped up a Lime Chalks video on YouTube. It’s the start of the recent Totally Acoustic gig at on 30th April with Dunc’s Skiffle trickling into B.A.B.E.

Do you ever see videos of yourself and worry that you don’t look like how you thought you look like? Why was I not smiling? It’s a Uke, the happiest of all intruments. Smile me, smile.

I signed up to audioboo recently, not had much use for it as yet - but it looks like it could be good for recording acoustic rehearsals.

Here’s a three piece Lime Chalks doing Hey Sleep

As this site is a) new and b) being launched on the cusp of 2009, I thought a good first post might be to tell you a little bit about both Falling and Laughing and Lime Chalks and what we did in 2008.

Well the year started off with a mass exodus from the Falling and Laughing line up that had played with Pocketbooks, Wave Pictures and Bearsuit [/namedropping] - with Darryl heading off the the US of States for 6 months and Stu heading off to Belfast, seemingly forever and ever and ever.

This left Falling and Laughing as just me, which is quite embarrassing when you’re performing as a band name (especially called Falling and Laughing - luckily I never tripped up on stage so avoided the witty and insiteful “where’s Laughing” heckle).

I had one solo acoustic gig in February at Bohemian Jukebox with Superman Revenge Squad and The Voluntary Butler Scheme, both on their way up to megasuperstardom, in relative terms.

The world of Birmingham open mic nights were a good place to work on some new songs in absence of bands too, with The Secret Music Club being a welcoming favourite. Open mic nights aren’t as fun without friends and I played several times with Nick from Cast and Crew (”where’s Crew” etc) and a lovely chap I know called Mike Falzon.

At around this time, Rob Howard (who seemingly manages to write as many songs at the same rate that most people listen to them) expanded his Lime Chalks line up to encompass a drummer and a guitarist (me) although this later evolved to playing uke and melodica on top of the guitar (I mean as well as, rather than indulging in bizzare jazzy impressionist post-rock instrument stacking).

Lime Chalks went on to have lots of fun gigs with a slightly changing line up each time - and you can get a flavour of the bands we played with by frisking these links - Betty and the ID, Ballboy, The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut, Seth Faergolzia and Little My [/yet more namedropping]. We also played a monster night of pop put on by This is Tomorrow with Ace Bushy Striptease, The Bumblebees and Das Wanderlust.

The rest of Lime Chalks finished the year off at Colour playing with the fantastic Epic45 though sadly I couldn’t make that one myself but this is one of the things about being in a slighly changing line up.

They year finished off with Falling and Laughing at Bohemian Jukebox with Little My (again, and it was good to see them back in Brum), Don’t Move and David Leach.

So that was 2008 then. Apologies for the link heavy me heavy first post, but hopefully it’s given you an idea of what both bands have been up to and what we might be doing in the new year. Cheers!