Boogied, Boozed, Bantered: Brew(ed) at the Bog.

Festival season is upon us! This weekend I played my first in the form of Brew at the Bog and I had an absolute ball (despite the hangover I woke up with after venturing into Inverness town centre the night before). I was convinced I’d be playing to about three people since I was on relatively early but thankfully I was wrong. In fact, the audience in the Bothy proved to be as lovely as they were discerning so I decided to take a wee photo of them. Here they are!

Want to be as happy as these guys? You know what to do.

I did have to apologise to a couple of picture-taking audience members however. You see, when I see the light of a flash on someone’s camera, I often can’t help looking directly at them. Which means that instead of getting a photo that looks like this:

…you get one that looks like this:

Yeah. Yeah. To be fair, this photo was taken by a kind chap at the front of the crowd who probably didn’t expect me to say yes when he asked if I wanted him to take a photo of me with my own camera. Now I know I’m capable of making this face and the world will never be quite the same for me again.

I enjoyed the hell out of my set and judging by the response, so did the audience. There’s even a lovely review. Afterwards I met lots of lovely people, got some good chat, some good beers, and even sold my limited edition Brew at the Bog t-shirt (I only made one). After that I spent most of the day checking out some great bands and continued to sample a variety of BrewDog delights. One of the highlights for me (music-wise) was definitely This Silent Forest, who I recommend checking out at your earliest convenience. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll already know that when they played the Barn Stage, they killed it. My beer highlight was probably 5am Saint. It looked dirty and it tasted great. Try it, you’ll see what I mean. Oh yeah, I also met a horse. He was cool.

I didn’t manage to catch everyone’s full set, but some highlights that I’d recommend checking out are Kitty the Lion, Olympic Swimmers, Randolph’s Leap, and Donald MacDonald and the Islands. In fact, I think I’ll round this blog post off with one of my favourite photos, featuring one of those very people.

I really had a great time at Brew at the Bog, I can’t recommend it enough. They’ve already set the date for next year and I’m sure the festival is just going to go from strength to strength so put it your diary (or…ehh…iCalendar?). As for me, I’ll have an updated gig list soon, but for the moment, don’t forget that you can catch me back in Inverness for goNORTH and I’ll be heading to Doune the Rabbit Hole in August. See you there!

If you were at Brew at the Bog, please do share your thoughts in the comments below. Who did you see? What were your highlights? Which was your favourite beer? Did you meet any local wildlife? Maybe a horse? And of course, if you took any photos of me during my set (especially if I’m staring right into your lens like a weirdo), drop me a line at shamblesmiller(at)gmail(dot)com, through Twitter, or through Facebook.

Now, as promised, a(nother) photo.

That’s Donald from Donald MacDonald and the Islands watching Squirrel from This Silent Forest eat a lemon slice.

Til next time!

love Shambles

x

Festivals and beers and one-night-onlys

Todays ever-tardy blog post is brought to you by craft beer, festivals, and one-offs. 

Hello folks, once again I’ve left a lamentably long gap between blog posts. I’d apologise but I know many of you subscribe via e-mail and have probably enjoyed not having me clog your inboxes with my rambles every other day. Leaving big gaps does make for a more jam-packed-with-news-and-brilliant-things sort of post, so with that in mind, lets look at what I’ve got coming up.

Festivals!

I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be playing at a couple of festivals this year! First up is Brew at the Bog which takes place at Bogbain Farm in Inverness on Saturday the 4th of May. I’ll be sharing a stage with some awesome bands, including Olympic Swimmers, Kitty the Lion, This Silent Forest, Michael Cassidy and many more. Check out the full lineup here. In case you haven’t heard of it before, this festival is brought to you by craft beer revolutionaries BrewDog! So if you want to support great beer and local talent, get yersel to Inverness for this festival. You can book tickets from this lovely link.

Just announced is the line-up for Doune the Rabbit Hole which I’m incredibly happy to be playing at this year. I’ll be playing on the Saturday (that’s the 24th of August) alongside the likes of Panda Su, Washington Irving, Beerjacket, The Pastels and headliners, Clinic. There are loads of great acts across the whole weekend and I’m really excited to be part of this festival so I hope to see lots of you there! Check out the festival website for more details and to book tickets.

A one-off open mic night!

You might remember that I used to host a peculiar little open mic in the basement of city centre bar Vespbar (formerly O’Henry’s). It had music, poetry, at one point a bearded hula girl, and a couple of times an artist friend of mine drew what was in your minds. Well, I’m reprising my role for one night only at Broadcast on Sauchiehall Street and I want it to be awesome. Lots of great musicians and artists came to play at Vespbar and I want to get all of them (and more) to Broadcast for this one night. It’s this Sunday, the 21st of April and I really hope you’ll come and join us. There’ll be beer for performers and a night of great free entertainment for all. Whether you’re a musician, singer, poet, comedian, bear-wrestler, lion-tamer, or artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince, I want to see you at Broadcast this Sunday. All are welcome.

As always, I’ve got other things in the pipeline which I’ll update you on quick sharp, but I think that’ll do for now. Hope to see you soon.

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

If 15-year old me could see me now

Hello folks, hope you’re well. It might seem like I’ve been lazy with my blogging of late but I’ve actually just been busy making some dreams come true for a fifteen year old. I’m talking about teenage Shambles of course! A few weeks ago I played my second show at King Tut’s, supporting Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun. It was a great gig with a brilliant audience and I enjoyed it like naebody’s business. I got my ageing flyer back despite the large crowd, with one naughty gig-goer even taking it downstairs to the bar. I met some lovely people and I even sold my first ever piece of Shambles Miller clothing merchandise!

All I had to do to keep my identity a secret was grow a beard and lose a significant amount of muscle mass.

There was an added bonus to my King Tut’s adventure however. A week or so after the gig I was alerted to the fact that the show had been reviewed in none other than the rock ‘n’ roll bible of my teenage years: Kerrang magazine! The punk-song-murdering, orange Ibanez-bashing mosher inside me was beside himself. I’m still really excited to see my name in print and absolutely delighted to read that my set went down so well. If you’d like to read the review for yourself, I’ve posted it below.

That I popped up in Kerrang only a few short weeks after my good friend and partner-in-crime Neil Slorance was the icing on a delicious cake of sugary brilliantness. I’d like to thank everyone who came to the show and that lovely chap Sam Law for reviewing my performance so kindly, and I hope, accurately. Thanks to you lot and Kerrang magazine for making a teenage dream come true.

If there’s one person I’d like to NOT thank, it’s Katy Perry, for completely ruining the phrase “teenage dream” in the collective consciousness for the forseeable future.

Til next time!

love Shambles

x

Five reasons why people think you’re gullible (or how I became the WWE Champion)

Hah! Got you. Hello everyone, I hope you’ve had a lovely Christmas, a happy New Year, and if you’ve had a January birthday (like me), I hope you made the best of it. I’ve had a lovely festive period and my wheels are moving pretty slowly as we trundle into 2013. I think my brainium has been weighed down by weeks of over-indulgence but the boozy mist is lifting and the stodgy fog is clearing so here’s a wee roundup of what’s been happening over the last few weeks and what’s coming up in 2013.

First of all, I’m very flattered to be included in a couple of recent podcasts. I managed to make it to #23 in Edinburgh Man‘s end-of-year poll, which you can listen to here and I’ve been featured in Scottish Fiction‘s best of 2012 roundup which you can listen to right here, no foolin’. At the end of 2012 I was also included in this blog’s list of top tracks of the year. Bongo!

The people have been crying out for this WWE Championship/jumper combo.

In some non music-related news, in 2012 I became the WWE Champion. It was a great moment, as I’ve been training hard for years now by sitting on my couch and drunkenly watching the wrasslin’, often whilst eating a kebab. All that hard work has finally paid off. Think you’ve got what it takes to beat me and get this gold? Come at me, bro. Come at me.

So what’s in store for 2013? Well first of all, in February I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing Scottish Fiction Presents: Aye Tunes Vs. Peenko on the 23rd of February alongside Lovers Turn to Monsters and Beerjacket. It’s at the Roxy 171 and you can buy tickets right here or check out the event page for more info.

I’ll have more gig announcements soon, but my last piece of good news is that I’m playing Brew at the Bog this summer! I’m really excited to be playing BrewDog’s festival in May, alongside folk like Kitty the Lion, Michael Cassidy, Randolph’s Leap, and Olympic Swimmers amongst many other awesome acts. Check out the website for the full lineup so far and for more details.

If you’d like to get in touch or keep up with whatever nonsense I’m up to at any given moment, you can find me at Twitter, Facebook, and even Tumblr. How else will you find out that I tarted up a bit for the end of 2012 or flatter me with ego-tickling questions like this? And of course you can listen to or buy my music at Bandcamp. You could also go old school (and I recommend that you do) by popping down to Vespbar on Sundays where I host their open mic night.

Well that’s just about woken me up. Time to fist-bump 2013, get into a ’64 Impala and shout “hey 2012, eat my dust!”

Or something.

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

“I guess we’re saying that you can beat your wife…”

If you’ve been online lately, you might have heard that professional oxygen thief Chris Brown has quit Twitter, following an exchange with comedian Jenny Johnson in which, amongst other things, Brown lets Johnson know that he plans to shit in her eye. He then went on to tweet the following.

Classy.

So why am I talking about it? Well, I recently wrote a song which includes the man who has singelhandedly ensured that people with the surname Brown will avoid calling their children Chris for the forseeable future. It also references some other aspects of celebrity culture. I hope you enjoy it!

Update: Since recording this demo I’ve changed the line “six weeks by the roadside” to “a few weeks”, having read the breakdown of Brown’s community service. Doesn’t make THAT much difference since, y’know, he should be in jail. For beating the shit out of a woman, in case you forgot.

Til next time folks!

Love Shambles

x