the FURther adventures of…

Does this blog even work anymore.  Who knows?

Anyway creativity has been coming at us like a cat in a washing machine as of late.   It’s been an age since we’ve last updated and it’s been itful.  While it’s true we’ve only played one or two gigs on the songwriting front we’ve moved forward in huge strides.

Sharp Knives:  This is short and poppy andf we ever got signed would be a contender along with Russia for a single.  It used to have some pretentious lyrics about the Russian revolution, but they were clumsy and ruined the song.  I finally got over myself and made it about an argument me and Chris had.  We played it live at Battle of the Bands and it got a nice reaction.  Think it’s going to be our set openener for the forseable future.

Face the Morning: We wrote this in February and quite frankly it’s the best thing we’ve ever written.  It’s a real album real album centrepiece track.  It’s built around a wicked riff and has a proper chorus.  Me and Dom are really staring to gel on the harmonising front.  The songs about my quarter life crisis it critiques my lack of ambition or ability to even get out of bed some mornings.  I honestly only felt i could writeabout it after i sorted my life out.

The Orchard: It’s based on a Nick riff and it’s basically complete we just need to sort out the breakdown.  It’s very much in the same reign as Sequoia only it uses all the tricks we’ve learnt in the last two and a half years.  Lyrically it’s about the Garden of Eden.. That came as a flash of imspiration.  I’d really wanted it to be called the Orchard but had no idea on a theme.  Inspiration came when I came up with the line “try the fruit, but is it worth the price” …

Untitled:  No that’s not it’s name it’s genuinely untitled despite being almost finished.  Yes I need to get off my ass and work out what it’s about.  Might try and go fast in a REM “End of the World” style… Who knows how that’ll turn out.

Aliens: It started out fast and sludgy like a lot of stuff we did, but Nick suggested we went Ska with it.  It’s certainly interesting and I like it just because it’s something a bit different.  I used a 7th chord as well :-O!!!!  Time will tell if we keep it or not.  Lyrically it’s a bit silly, being about aliens.  I think it’s endearing.  Came up with the idea after Danny told me his old band was called 2000 Lights.

Severed Intent: No that’s not a mistake.  This was originally written in 2006 just after Dog in a Garden, but got shelved so it’s  another tentative one.  We tried it yesterday and it sounded good and why not?  How can having anothe slowly in our repetoire ever be a bad thing.

So that’s it.  A storm of creativity means we’ve almost written more songs in the last six months than we wrote in the last year.  We have a gig on sunday at the Actress and Bishop.  Lots of new stuff to play so hopefully it’ll be good.

Face the Morning

James Furs

 

Tell The World

Hey Furs and Furettes

In the long while it’s been since I last updated we’ve finished new songs such as “Understood”, which Chris mentioned in his post:  The song is me trying to picture a mentally handicapped person’s view of the outside world.  They feel trapped and desire freedom and can’t understand how other people can keep them trapped and locked up when they’ve done nothing wrong.

I of course understand the song is a gross simpliflication and a mash of ideas, but i was inspired to write it after reading several articles on Autistic Savants.  It is also partly inspired by my love of “A Beautiful Mind” which i find an amazing film.  I can really see why it won the Oscar.

We also have another new song, which has just been completed called “Secrets”.  It will hopefully be ready for it’s first play at our next gig, which is at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath on the 13th November.  The song’s lyrics are inspired by the book Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, which is a sequel to Ender’s Game as well as several situations in my life that would be better if people just told the truth.

Musically the songs are more riffed based and a lot less strummy.  I think it’s an interesting direction and a definite departure from our earlier stuff, especially the trilogy of songs: “Distance”, “Watchmaker” and “Flight”, which feel very similar in style to each other.  The songs are getting much more complex and everyone in the band is becoming much better muscicians.

Adiose

James Furs

 

August Update

Ok, so we’re all becoming a bit slack on updating this wonderful blog about us, the Douglas Furs, the wonder that is. So I’m going to try and update more regularly, even if it is just “we did a practice, it went ok, we’ve got a gig on X date”.

Well, since our last update in May, we’ve been chugging along quite happily as a band. A couple of gigs at the Spotted Dog in Digbeth (RIP – No more music there) and a couple in our regular haunt of the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath (they keep letting us play there for some reason!).

Most importantly, we have a gig on Friday the 22nd of August, which has kind of sneaked up on us – not sure about the other guys, but I know I had forgotten about it! What makes this so important is that we have a new song to play *cue waving and cheering from out fans*. Yes, that’s right, we have a new song. You’ll have to come see us play if you want to hear it, but lets just say I think its one of the best drum beats I’ve come up with in a while, and it generally is awesome!

In the pipeline, we have a couple of songs we jammed out in a practice, and will be working on in the coming weeks to polish up, and hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll play them at our next gig, TBC.

In the meantime, leave some comments, have a browse, look at our cool webpage www.douglasfurs.co.uk and we hope to see you at our next gig!

Chris – Dummer

 

Websites a-go-go

Well we now own http://douglasfurs.co.uk – simple as that. We had a band discussion on Thursday, I came home, bought the domain, and set up a quick landing page for the time being. 

At some point, we’ll get on and expand the site, maybe add song info, lyrics, some tracks to listen to, mp3s, a calendar of our gigs (which you can find on MySpace and Upcoming.org already). So there will be a few things to get started. And this blog will eventually move over to there, but for now, it’ll stay here.

So bookmark it for the future.

DF

 

Gig Updates

So whats happened since the last post? Well we played at the Hare and Hounds with So Called Enemy, and Sons of the Desert. It was a great night, we arrived on time, ran through a nice quick sound check and grabbed some food at at the local Weatherspoons. 

There are some photos of the gig up on the Flickr site, including shots of our first named tickets, and a poster from the night.

In upcoming news, the Jug of Ale gig has been cancelled. As you may have heard, the pub has closed down and will be demolished. Sad news as we were looking forward to playing there. 

We’ve also got another gig planned at SoundBar in Birmingham on July 16th. Details on the gig are on MySpace and Upcoming. So check it out if you’re nearby. 

We’ve also working on new stuff still so we may be trying out some new songs at these gigs.

See you on stage
DF 

 

New Gigs planned

Hello

Just a quick post here to let you all know that the Douglas Furs have got some gigs coming up. We haven’t played in a few months and have one or two new songs to play for the crowds.

Full details can be found via MySpace, Upcoming.org, Virb, and below.

• 11th April – Varsity, Wolverhampton. 7pm, £4 entry
• 1st May – Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath. 7pm, £4 entry
• 29th May – Bar Academy, Birmingham. 7pm, £4 entry
• 27th June – Jug of Ale, Moseley. 7pm, £4 entry.

Come along if you can, and bring some friends. We might be giving out some free CD’s too if you fancy it!

 

Douglas Furs first broadcast

I have news today from Gary Dring that the Douglas Furs had been included on the Clever Little Pod podcast he does.

Gary contacted me a month or two ago and asked if I could let him have a high quality recording of one of our songs for his podcast. Well he emailed me today to tell me that the podcast is now live. You can subscribe on iTunes, or your favourite podcatcher, or  get to it here.

Also be sure to subscribe to his podcast, which includes some local talent (including yours truely). You can also pick up his new comedy magazine for only £1! So go ahead, and check it all out.

So which song was it? You’ll have to listen to find out!

 

Suite Number 2

Hey Furs/Furettes

James here for the first time after Dom commented that he’d like more postings fro the rest of us. I thought I’d oblige.

At the moment we’re working on a second suite of songs. Personally I class the first suite we did as Russia, Sequoia, Bird Clock, Just Woke up, Siesta Sun and Dog in a Garden. These where all written between October 2006 and May 2007 and make up the sets we’ve been playing live. We spent a long time practicing them and I’m quite proud of them. We’re heading to a studio this Sunday with the intention of recording Dog In a Garden and Russia which are unarguably the two songs with the best reaction. This should close that period.

We’ve moved on to a second suite of songs. We’re trying new things and making them more complex. Basically many of the first songs where a learning experience and now we’re trying new stuff out. If you’ve seen us live recently you’ll already of heard Flight, but other songs include (working titles.) :

- The Watchmaker: An awesome funk bass led work which we’ve been struggling with for a while. Hopefully with lyric and drum changes we can get it to work.

- Distance: This came from a Dom bass line and was written pretty quickly once we where all together. Apart from Flight its the closest to completion and has some nice new twists for us.

- Old Newy: Obviously a working title, but the resurection of one of the first songs Me and Nick wrote together. Its interesting in that Nick plays rythm guitar throught giving it a heavier feeling that much of our stuff.

- The Waltz: No music yet, but general agreement was reached we’d like to try something in 3/4 time soon.

- Severed Intent: A song that was intended for our second Alternation night, which was cancelled. It originally had Chris singing about an annoyed conversation with Seven Trent water, but is in need of a huge overhall. No demo exists of this due to it falling out of favor after the summer break. Although technically a member of the first suite, it will maybe feature in completely new form.

Anyway the plan is to work on these and other new songs and get them into live shows as soon as they’re ready. Hopefully we’ll go in Dance studio and record them for you as well.

Thanks for listening

James Furs

 

Recording

Hey all. Its been a while since I’ve blogged, and since no one else does, how do you expect it to be more frequent? Anyway, we had a gig the other week with the Magnificatz who were great. They did a lot of Johnny Cash and that genre of music so really lively and upbeat. Great band to play with for definate. Also big thanks to The Hunchbacks and P-Uke who were there too. Nice mix of music that night. Anyway, the Spotted Dog offer you 2 hours recording time if you pull in 20 punters and we did so we got it! In fact, for a little bit extra, you can have 4 hours and a proper studio recording. So on Sunday 3rd, we’ll be in the studio (don’t know which one yet) recording our first proper hits! No decision yet on what it’ll be so I’ll keep you guys surprised. But it will be posted on Myspace and Virb when it is, and I’ll be sure to blog about it.Until then, keep listening to us. And if you were at the first gig at the Spotted Dog, and got a CD, thanks for coming, and hold onto that. The first 24 were individually numbered so that may be worth something some day! And don’t try and claim you have No’s 1-4 cos I know you don’t!

 

Spotted Dog videos

Much love to mewskichan for being amazing and recording, editing, converting and uploading video from our recent gig at the Spotted Dog. Check them out below, or see everything at her Youtube channel  And yes, I am there somewhere in the back.