Home.

It’s been a long slog to get here, and it’s involved some of the darkest and most miserable times I’ve known. Sofa surfing for a month is not a great feeling… I am immensely grateful, mind you, it’s just I hate being a burden and, at 36, you don’t expect to have to do this stuff. Fortunately I am blessed with a selection of the finest friends and family known to man, so I get through it, and get the money bollocks sorted and finally there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I don’t like adulting. It’s complex and boring and I’m crap at it. But I’ve surprised myself at the level of strength and resilience that I seem to have acquired since anything like this happened before. If anything positive can come of all this, it’s that I know I am able to cope with a lot more than I thought I was able to cope with. If life can throw this much shit at me and I can come up reasonably okay – and it’s very very much an ongoing process – then I can do a lot more than I thought.

I am surrounded by some wise people. Put it that way.

I used to be a bit of a crier. I’d cry at films… weddings… EastEnders. Sad stuff… happy stuff. Latterly that’s gone away, for whatever reason. It takes something pretty hardcore to get me going these days. Marley And Me on a flight to Argentina, sandwiched between two strangers, that was a good one. But all this has taught me how to cry again. Which probably isn’t a bad thing – keeping feelings cooped up is surely no good for anyone – but it’s not so good when it’s every day… and I’m driving… or in Asda. I’m learning how to control it and it’s not always easy but it’s another learning experience.

I moved back in yesterday and woke up this morning with very much a ‘this is the first day of the rest of your life’ feeling. That’s probably a good thing. I’ve inherited a cat, which I didn’t expect, but she is beautiful and brilliant and furnishing me with a lot of cat love. She definitely knows when I’m feeling sad.

And now it’s Christmas. I haven’t even thought about it. Fortunately I’m always well prepared and have bought everything I need to – albeit a slimmed-down selection, as my outgoings have just (more than) doubled. That’s fine though, it’s not what Christmas is about. Christmas always makes me melancholy, for whatever reason, and this year is definitely no exception. But in spite of the enormous kick in the bollocks that I’ve just been issued, and in spite of a bunch of money worries that just won’t go away, and in spite of the rejection, bitterness and loneliness that I am inevitably going to feel, I have plenty to be positive about – not least the knowledge that I have the best friends and family in the world.

Heading back East with Chris Rea in the morning to my sister’s for the usual Christmas thing. Five kids running around this year, which will be totally fantastic.

Happy Christmas.

Chris. X

‘What happens when you lose everything? You start again. You start all over again.’ – Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure

… And then everything changed. I aren’t a person that particularly likes to broadcast their private life to the world, but to cut a long story short, completely out of the blue, I find myself single and possibly without home. I’ll go as far as saying it wasn’t my choice and it wasn’t what I wanted, and it was also utterly and 100% unexpected. A fairly sizeable rug has been pulled from under my feet, and I don’t really know what I’m going to do.

Fortunately for me, I find myself back out on the road with some of the finer people I know, on a (very) quick Sisters tour which was based around the very excellent Sinner’s Day festival in Hasselt, Belgium. It makes sense to put everyone together for a week of gigs rather than a one-off, so we had decided to do the rounds of a few places the band hasn’t been for a long time.

I don’t want to go into it all too much, but this has been a completely shitty time for me, and not just because of this. As mentioned before, I lost one of my best friends less than two months ago (ironically, not that it’s ironic, but when the news was imparted of my impending singledom, the first thing I thought was that I could go and stay with my departed pal Chris for a bit).

Fortunately, I couldn’t ask to be in the company of better pals, really. Some of the people here with me have been incredibly sympathetic, as well as offering a very large and much-needed dose of pragmatism, is rapidly becoming my best friend.

I’ve got lots to be grateful for, and I need to focus on that. Friendship and camaraderie will bring me through the worst first bit of this, and then a hearty thud of Yorkshire stoicism will guide me through the coming months, and probably years. No part of me chose this, but here I am, and I’m not going anywhere, so I’ve got to suss it out.

On a more positive note, the gigs have been going really well. I always love going to Norwich – it gets a bad press, but that is a beautiful city and the venues are all really good.

Belgium is the Sisters’ second home, and the festival is amazing – we’re topping the bill, with OMD, Tricky and Public Image Ltd on before us and ALL putting in amazing shows, particularly Tricky, who I’ve loved since I was a kid. I worked for OMD last year all Summer, doing a festival run around Europe, so it is absolutely brilliant to see Andy and Paul, as well as the fantastic crew, who I had really hit it off with. Obviously they are taking the piss massively as they’re used to seeing me in a different kind of role and, as I always hope to rely on good friends to do, they do their utmost to knock me down a peg or six when they see me in my leather jacket with sunglasses on my head.

The gig is great and we retire to the hotel bar, where we have a hilarious and occasionally terrifying evening with Tricky and his band, who he appears to have only met that weekend. These amazing times occur occasionally and I pinch myself that I get to have these experiences with people I’ve paid to go and see maybe a dozen times over my lifetime of being a music fan.

Birmingham last night was a stormer despite some technical problems, and I’m really looking forward to tonight’s gig at Bristol Academy. The last one here was at the end of a looooong tour and I don’t have the fondest of memories of that, so it’ll be good to get up and right some wrongs. I’m playing every gig like it’s my last at the minute… I guess I’m channelling my fallen friend, who was an amazing musician as well as being a generally brilliant person. I hope it’s not too trite to say that I’m doing it for him.

I’m in the studio tomorrow for an afternoon while I’m passing as I want to do a load of bits to fill in the gaps between songs. To be honest I just want an excuse to see the brilliant Dave Draper again. Since ‘it’ all happened, I’ve actually re-written two of the songs for the solo album more or less start to end. One is pretty savage and I don’t think I’ll change the original… it would be the wrong kind of evisceration. The other actually lets the words flow a lot better and it all makes more sense now, so I’ll go re-do that when I get home.

It’s weird, I’ve said for years that sometimes the real meaning of a song might only reveal itself six months after you’ve written it. You’ve got to allow it to breathe so that it can take on its own meaning; it’s why I like ambiguity and wordplay in lyrics. Anyway less of that bollocks.

I’m off for a drink. Actually that’s not true, I’m trying to limit my drinking, as booze is just making me feel worse and think… worser. But a trip to Bristol Academy without a trip to The Hatchet wouldn’t be right, even if I’ll be on lime and soda.

Onwards and upwards, eh?

Chris X

 

Here we are at the end of another adventure, a truly brilliant rollercoaster ride of fun and games with a brilliant bunch of people I will never forget. I’ve loved this tour, it’s been highlight after highlight, albeit with a knackered foot which has threatened to ruin my fun, but never actually succeeded. I anticipated doing a bit more of this blog as we went along, but I’ve just been so busy, and my computer only seems to work half of the time any more (on wifi, at least). I’ve been trying to concentrate on extracting every last bit of fun out of the gigs at every touch and turn, and have managed to succeed, i think.

Highlights this past few weeks?

A brilliant night at the re-opening of the Elysee Montmatre in Paris, where I played with The Sisters in 2011ish (it was the night two of the smoke machines exploded and covered the stage in smoke fluid, the viscosity of which effectively transformed it into an ice rink). Parisians are predictably and understandably gung-ho in their enjoyment of gigs at the moment, every show feels like a celebration, which is exactly the correct approach. A thousand mental rock fans in a room where the band is REALLY hitting its stride creates a truly excellent atmosphere.

A wonderful evening at the Proxima in Warsaw, where it transpires UKJ are one of the biggest bands in the entire world. The venue comfortably holds 800 people and it appears they’ve sold 2000 tickets, it’s rammed and there’s sweat running down the walls. It also helps that the entire front row is absolutely stunningly attractive. Some brilliant Russian fans present the band with a small trophy for being the best band ever, which is nice.

An INSANE Thai meal in Lucerne, which is as eye-wateringly delicious as it is eye-wateringly expensive. Fortunately Team UKJ pick up the bill, for which we are eternally grateful.

And of course Hard Rock Hell, the festival the tour was centred around, which we were all looking forward to, in spite of us all feeling pretty jaded at the end of a six-week run (and maybe all having to add a notch or two to our belts). Of course, the reception made us all feel like it was Show 3, rather than Show 33. Unbeknownst to the rest of us (or me, at least), Whit has hired dancing girls to dress as Donald Trump and pour milk all over themselves, which is equal amounts off-putting and hilarious, and some of my mates down the front are over the moon to tell me how uncomfortable I looked at that point in the set. Brilliant stuff though and a great, well-run festival.

Tonight is the last gig, and I’m sad to be leaving the guys behind, but very happy to be heading home to the girlfriend and the cat. It’s been a long time away, and although I’m straight back out again with The Sisters on Friday, that’s only a short run and then we can get stuck right into Christmas and New Year. I’ve got lots of plans for the New Year, all of which centre around staying at home a bit more and concentrating on my solo stuff, which I am DEAD excited about….

I’ve been filming bits for a new video around the world over the past few months for a single I want to release in December, or maybe New Year’s Day, for a song called ‘Same Old Sun’. The premise of which is that no matter where you go, no matter who you are, you wake up under the same sun, and you have the ability (and/or inability) to do with that whatever you wish. I’ve done bits in LA (Venice Beach), Santiago, on the Copacabana in Rio, at the Sacre Coeur in Paris, and some of course in Leeds, I just need to mash it all up to look like a video. I’ve been wearing the same clothes for it everywhere, except in Paris where I broke my white sunglasses by sitting on them with my newly fat arse. I’m real excited by it, it’s one of my favourites from my solo album so fingers crossed everyone is into it. It’s well Summery, so Dec/Jan is possibly the worst time to put it out… or maybe that means it’s the best time to put it out. Anyway, looking forward to seeing how that goes down.

Righto, time for dinner. A short stint with the Sisters next, then onto the serious business of Christmas.

Onwards and upwards!
Chris.