Back to the fold

Hello to anyone passing by!
This website has been very quiet, for a very long time. That is about to change!

I’ve been busy away, working on a follow up to embers, chatting to some friends on a podcast, making videos for a few people and getting good at cooking pizza. I’ll probably bring all these things, in some way, to the website over the coming months. This website is going to be less about the singer songwriter, and more about all the nonsense I get up to.

Look forward to annoying you all, and seeing what you think.

If you need to get in touch or ask me anything just get in touch!
joetilston@gmail.com

Released Today!!

’embers’ out today

On Fellside Records

It’s been a long time coming, but embers is finally here for all to purchase, in its pressed and beautiful glory.

Here is a few things people had to say about it:
“He sounds less angry, like he’d been allowed to play outside more. I like it.” – Elizabeth, aged 8yrs
‘Impressively feisty folk-flavoured debut’ – fRoots Magazine.
‘A fine guitarist’ – Acoustic Magazine
‘Creative, unassuming and from the heart’ – 4/5 – 247 Mag
‘This is a unique and beautiful record’ – 11/13 – Room Thirteen
‘Truly breath-taking’ – 4/5 – Punktastic.com

Please go grab a physical or digital copy from me directly at joetilston.bandcamp.com or bob over to the label www.fellside.com

Alternatively you can grab it from iTunes

Pre-Orders up!

I’ve been pretty quiet on here, but lots has been happening!

My album is due for release through Fellside records at the end of February. It’s so good to be getting the support of such a prestigious label! So excited about seeing how things develop there.

So please visit joetilston.bandcamp.com and make a purchase of ’embers’ and it will be with you very soon!

Joe

’embers’ so far

’embers’ is still available to listen to and pre-order from my bandcamp page, joetilston.bandcamp.com

However over the next few days the way it is available is likely to change. I am meeting with a record label to discuss the possibility of them releasing ’embers’ if all is agreed I will have to make it unavailable digitally for a while, so the only people that will have it are those who have already purchased it digitally and/or pre-ordered the physical version. The early adopters will be treated to a yet undecided special gift, so get involved before it’s too late!

So this is basically your last chance to get hold of a copy of ’embers’ to listen to for a while. The exact details for what will happen need to be sorted out, and will be very soon.

here is a couple of reviews
“Truly breath-taking” 4/5 – Punktastic.com
“This is a unique and beautiful record.” 11/13 – roomthirteen.com
“He sounds less angry, like he’d been allowed to play outside more. I like it.” – 8 year old Elizabeth

Please share my album with people! it’s no use to anyone not being listened to.

Joe

’embers’ has landed!

Get a copy of ’embers’ here!

After months of sitting on my album, contemplating what to do and how to do it, I decided it just needed to be out there.

I was half hoping a suitable label would come along and make my job a little easier, but after a great deal of deliberation and unfruitful communication I decided that it just needed to get out into peoples ears and faces. It certainly wasn’t doing me any good sat on my computer waiting for someone else to tell me what to do with it.

I wont go on about it too much, but with the changes in recent years with the music industry, making a huge impact on the lives of people who have chosen careers within it, new ways to make things work on a financial and creative level are needed. What I have decided to do definitely suits my situation.

Without putting too much weight on you lot, this albums success needs you! I have no advertising budget or money to pay a press agent, I don’t want any hand outs, but I do want support from people who like what I do. Tell your friends about the album, share it on facebook and twitter, play it to a friend, encourage them to look at the packages I have made. Here are the packages…

‘embers‘ can be purchased for £6 for just a digital download, and will go towards helping cover the costs of making the album so far. People who are really wanting to help and also want the ‘real thing’ can purchase a copy for £10 which includes the digital download and pays towards the first pressing of the album. Once enough money has been made to pay for the pressing you will receive a signed copy with a personal thank you from me.

I have also set up a £200 option where you receive both of the above and a personal performance from me at your home, for you and anyone you’d like to invite. Maybe you and some friends fancy clubbing together to pay for a house show or something like that? Anyone considering this will make a huge difference to proceedings and push the speed of the whole process along a great deal! I’ll even thank you in the album art work!

I have had one review so far, from the lovely people at punktastic.com they gave it 4/5!
http://punktastic.com/reviews/joe-tilston-embers/

Please support independent music!
Joe

Get a copy of ’embers’ here!

Different Feet – Video!

Please check out the Video the pixography-web.com made for me!

Different Feet was never intended as a single or anything, but a short song was needed to make the Video and they liked the Idea of this one. So I let them run with it. I’m sure you’ll agree they did a fantastic job! please share it

Click here -> Different Feet

Not just the mailing list this time!

How Do? Thought I’d have a bit of a ramble before posting this weeks Musical Musings Mailing List.

If by some freak of nature you have missed my spamming, the ‘MMML’ is a mailing list you can join and every week for the next month or so you will receive a free song from my archives of recordings and demo’s. You have already missed a few but you can get hold of the fourth instalment by clicking on the link later in this post!

The light at the end of the tunnel, that is the release of ’embers’ is definitely in sight now. although a date has not been set it is likely it will come in the next month or so. I have been discussing with a few gifted chums the possibilities of making some videos over the coming weeks, and I should have a pretty good idea of what is going to happen there in the next few days. whatever happens it’s all very exciting! So watch this space

Now for the MMML! If you are not signed up JUST BLOODY SIGN UP!

Click here and sign up to the mailing list to receive a free song every week!

here is what went out this week, you still have a few days to claim the song:

‘Soul Regret’ was written when my grandfather passed away. We were very close as I was growing up, so the year when he got ill was a really hard time. He’d had very high expectations for me, and really wanted me to go to university and follow in his engineering paths. At one point I thought I would too, but as the years went by I realised my calling wasn’t the RAF or being a civil engineer, It was the arts. This wasn’t really his ‘bag’. I further tried to appease the expectations by taking my studies to university but when things started getting really busy with the band and numerous other things at the time started happening, I decided that I was going to give up University. A fact I decided while he was on his deathbed. A fact that I knew would have disappointed him so much that I never told him.

This whole episode really did play havoc on the old ‘guilt box’ and still does. While in the real depths of the guilt I penned this. To say it helped is a massive understatement, while doing it I remembered tales that my grandad used to tell me about himself as a young man in the RAF, that my dad once called him out on being slight bends of the truth, which I remember being upsetting for him. The realisation that he wanted to appear as perfect to me as I did to him made me realise that we were more alike than the story on the surface would present. Music really is exceptionally therapeutic, isn’t it?

I hoped for the song to appear on the album ’embers’. However, when recording it it just didn’t click, and it wasn’t finished. I hope to record a new version soon as a B-side. The song is very much still a part of my set and I enjoy playing it still, unlike all of the other songs I have sent you so far!

This Version was part of the EP’s – Set In Motion/In Motion recorded by Luke Yates

Please encourage other people you know who may like to see this project unfold to sign up to the mailing list

Thanks again

Joe
X

Click here and sign up to the mailing list to receive a free song every week!  

MMML part 3!

Here is the third instalment of my Musical Musings Mailing List, this week I have provided two tracks after I accidentally sent the wrong one out to half of the list last week. So the rest of the list now have both tracks and a write up on the track.

Give this a read then sign up to hear the songs

Click here to sign up and hear the songs!!

Thanks to all you lovely people who have signed up over the last week! The list is really starting to grow, which means so much to me. It’s getting very close to 100 people, when it tips over that point i’m going to record a cover for everyone and you will be the first to hear it!

Right when I sent the second mail out last week, I somehow managed to put the wrong link in the email. I’m a moron. So the early adopters of the list will already have the extra song ‘Ask Another’ in this email. Although i would have liked to send it out by itself, I think it would have been a boring week when I did, so I’ll talk about that song after I introduce this weeks song ‘Glass Of Wine’.

Every so often I like writing a simple strummy song and this just fell out one evening. The song was for my mum. She, for a number of reasons had taken her solo career off the priority list over the last decade and myself and my sister Martha both regularly discussed our frustration with this. Martha challenged her to races with the release of albums three times. Which she managed to win three times. Although I never officially challenged mum to musical combat, I did write this song to give her a kick up the arse, which I think was more than enough.  A simple straight forward song about things that we do that I love. Any way you’ll be happy to know that mum has beaten me in the unofficial race, and Martha with her fourth challenge. She even recorded Liza and Henry before I did! That is a serious beating she’s gone and given me.

Go give her a listen, and buy her new album www.maggieboyle.co.uk

The song still hasn’t been played live. I’m unsure why, just don’t think that was why i wrote it.

Right… ‘Ask Another’. I write a lot of songs about friendship, it means a great deal to me. As it does to most people. I find it a more comfortable subject to write about than romance, as romance has a bigger chance of feeling awkward revisiting. The song is very straight forward, I’m questioning the friendships and relationships of the moment that can pass by over months weeks and years. It was written when I was 22 living with some of my best friends, it was such a fun but destructive time, all four of is in the house dropped out of Uni spent every penny on booze and had two years of great times. Great times that had some of the lowest points but never stopped being about us four being there for each other, will always look back on that time with rose tinted glasses and look forward to the next time we all let rip again.

Although this song was a live favorite for me and people watching at the time of its place in my set, I never felt it was finished and didn’t know where to go with it, so it was phased out. I imagine I’ll rectify that some time in the future.

‘Glass Of Wine’ was recorded in 2010 with Luke Yates along with a ton of other songs that I just wanted to bang down and listen back to. It was never intended for release, but I’m happy for you all to hear it.
‘Ask Another’ was recorded in June 2009 with Luke Yates for my first EP- ‘Set In Motion’

Till Next week!

Click here to sign up and hear the songs!!

Second Song

I’m only two weeks into the Musical Musings Mailing List, there is so much more music coming your way, I also intend to record some secret treats for the people who are showing there support so get involved. SIGN UP!

CLICK HERE AND SIGN UP TO GET THE SECOND SONG

Well, sharing that first song felt quite good. Part of the reason it never developed into a part of the live set was that I didn’t have the desire or confidence to open up that personally to an audience, but doing it this way is actually quite enjoyable. I don’t have to look at people’s faces while I sing about rude things.

Anyway, the week has flown by and I am now writing about the second song I have sent you. I’ve decided to send you ‘Stay In Time’.

I actually first started playing solo when I just turned 16, but I quickly got wrapped up in punk bands and the fun of playing bass with a group of friends, so it completely vanished from my musical landscape until I was in my early 20’s. Although I can remember the music written when I was 16, resurrection those songs is an unlikely task, but you never know. Just writing about that time has made me pick the guitar up and try to remember them, so you may end up with one of them in your inbox soon enough!

‘Stay in Time’ was the second song I wrote after my extensive break from playing my acoustic guitar. The first song I expect will remain lost for the time being, as it fails to come back to the fingers and I don’t possess any recordings of it. This song however was bit of a mish-mash of inspiration. Each group of lines refer to different experiences, people and annoyances. The chorus tries to pull all those references together under one Idea. It’s a way of writing I have found myself doing occasionally, but not enjoyed afterwards. When a song has disconnected references throughout it, I don’t feel as much of an attachment to it once it’s done. That is pretty much the reason why this was lost from my set over time.

This was recorded with Luke Yates around June 2009, along with the other songs I was gigging at the time, for an EP I sold at gigs called ‘Set In Motion’. Luke started regularly joining me on Violin around this time. This was one of the key confidence boosting events for me. He is such a talented man, and having him add his skills to a few songs live, really gave me a boost. I wouldn’t be nearly as confident or keen on the solo stuff if it weren’t for his enthusiasm and involvement. I’m sure you’ll agree that his part in this song really makes it, and elevates the overall impact of the song.

Hope you like it.

CLICK HERE AND SIGN UP TO GET THE SECOND SONG

Please encourage other people you know, who may like to see this project unfold, to sign up to the mailing list

Joe

The First Song

I’m going to post on here, the messages that go out with my musical gifts to the ‘Musical Musings Mailing List’. This is to encourage people who stumble across these ramblings to sign up to the list and get the songs!

here is the first mail out:

Subscribe by clicking here to get the song!

The aim of this is to give you all an insight into what has gone on through the creative process towards my debut album ’embers’. There is going to be songs, that at the time, I decided where not right for me for a number of reasons, I’ll explain them as they come.

So… song one. right… where to start? This song was recorded early 2010, as part of a demoing session. I had a bunch of songs that I hadn’t played live yet so I got Luke Yates to record em for me. I just did them all one take so its full of little muckups and things that at the time stopped me from sharing them with anyone. Until now! Anyone who writes music or indulges their creative side will be able to relate to the fact that it’s very easy to find inspiration for songs from personal relationships and situations. I wrote a bunch of songs around this time that pulled on heartache and mistakes and after sitting back from them and thinking about what direction I wanted to take things I realised I didn’t want to indulge that side. Carrying songs with me that were inspired by feelings for people that changed didn’t seem like a comfortable thing to take with me over the years, as the emotions attached can and did change a great deal. This song in perticular came from the feelings, or lack of feelings, that accompany that time between relationships when you make a few wrong decisions after a few too many drinks, you know what I mean. Anyway, I wasn’t proud of choices I had made and the way It made me feel, so on a perticular downer I penned this audible representation. propper chirpy stuff.

Any way thats the first one for you. Same time next week!

Please encourage other people you know who may like to see this project unfold to sign up to the mailing list

Subscribe by clicking here to get the song!