MENU CLOSE

Category / Hope and Social Blog / Tour / Uncategorized

    Loading posts...
  • Halifax Minster, are you ready?

    !WARNING! Obligatory, unromantic link to buy tickets – Well, the summer is thus far shaping up to be a veritable smorgasbord of festival delights. We’ve played out in the pouring rain in Brill and just about managed to convince the ukulele lovers of Huddersfield that we can play the damn thing. There’s plenty more to…

  • The 12 Gigs Of Christmas (Hux’s Birthday)

    I’ve no time for dilly dallying these days so first up, here’s the cold hard facts. For those of you with an attention span marginally longer than a springer spaniel puppy, scroll down for some poetic scene setting. What is this nonsense? 12 gigs Where you doing it then? Leeds City Centre When is it? 19th…

  • The Tour of Infinite Possibility: Weekend 1

    Well it’s taken some serious coffee and a lot of moaning but I think we’re just about human again after the mammoth first weekend of The Tour of Infinite Possibility! And what an incredible, exhilarating and rewarding two days it was. How do we quantify its ephemeral magic? Through some hard stats, that’s how: 470…

  • Tour of Infinite Possibility

    Is the Tour of Infinite Possibility possible?

    So here we are, 10 days to go before the first weekend of TIP shows and we’re just about as busy as a band could be. It’s been weeks in development, months in expectation and years in bell playing but we’re nearly ready to take to the Yorkshire roads with our traveling circus of noise.…

  • Bringing the Happy again

    Very quick post…I’m sitting in a pub by the train station in Brighton, enjoying a pint while I wait for the Flockers. We’re down in Brighton this week taking a wee break from The Tour of Infinite Possibility to do Bring the Happy again as part of Brighton Festival. Having just wandered through the concourse…

  • Crypt Covers 10: Dancing Years – Saturday 4th January

    UPDATE 7-1-14 Video below! Crypt covers 10 was the beautiful “I’ll Do It All Again” by Leeds own Corrine Bailey Rae suggested by @manwakesup on twitter. It’s SUCH a good song. Quite heartbreaking… The recording was one live take of the whole band and then we just overdubbed all the vocals and a teeny bit…

  • Don’t Dream It’s Over… Oh, It’s Over

    (N.B. Some of this information may now be out of date – this post is taken from our Mailing List mail which you can join here – It was sent out last week… so, erm, sorry!) At last we can sit back and enjoy ourselves. The ‘dream’ is over. The mighty lion has roared its…

  • BBC Introducing with Alan Raw

    “They Are Brilliant” Just a quick one to say that the lovely team at BBC Introducing (Alan Raw, Katie Noone, John Anguish et al) played James for us this week (which is nice). Not only that but also, he says that lovely thing at the top of this post, and goes on to talk about…

  • Remix – Do What You Must

    Sorry for the Delay… … we will now resume tramsmission. Back in December we promised we’d release all the parts to the Hope and Social song of your choice from “Architect…”The out and out winner with 10% more than any other track was “Do What You Must”, and though we called the winner in March,…

  • Bees and Summer

    Well hello everyone on this fine June morning. The world is full of colour and bees (well not that many bees) and we’re on our way to yet more sun filled Hope and Social dates. Yes gather up your smock and jump on the funbus…where better to be once England have been knocked out of…

  • April, Track 10, Eurospin

    Eurospin by Hope and Social This was truely one of the most heartwarming things we’ve done…  Yet another of the the magical, wonderful, impossible, crazy things that are only possible because of the wonderful friends and fans around us. For those who don’t know we turned our crypt studio into a French restaurant for the…

  • April, Track 9, Marching on Through

    Marching on Through by Hope and Social This track started out as a really really simple jam in the studio – sort of a warm up really as we were preparing to do something else. We have a pump organ in the Crypt which Ed bought for a bottle of wine about a year ago.…

  • April, Track 8, A Darkness Now is Coming

    A Darkness Now is Coming by Hope and Social So we’ve had this song kicking around for ages – but it was in a sort of sub-Aqualung piano pop style until we headed into these sessions. All that really remains from previous versions is the first melody line – “Hear me out / Sound for…

  • Sunflower Seeds

    I hope you have been delighted to find a gorgeous packet of sunflower seeds in your copy of our new album April.

    So, the tallest Hope and Social sunflower by the end of September wins an original hand drawn and signed picture of a sunflower by Simon, and a life time supply of Four Day Hombre CDs.

  • April, Track 7, Ripples Rock My Boat

    Ripples Rock My Boat by Hope and Social This is a song with a long history and it comes from a demo I (Si here!) did back at the start of 2008. I had a period of about a year where I did a load of recording just using GarageBand and the inbuilt mic on…

  • April, Track 6, James

    James by Hope and Social Right. Well I think all we need to do to explain the origins of this track is to say that the working title was FunmasterJazz. Yes. Indeed. This track came entirely from a jam whilst we were in the writing phase and, until a week before the final mix only…

  • April, Track 5, Follow You Into

    Follow You Into by Hope and Social This song happened just about as naturally as any song can. We’d been writing all day and feeling pretty beaten, I sat down on the sofa in the studio and just started playing the arpeggio guitar part and singing some random lines over the top. Ed joined in…

  • April, Track 4, Let’s Go out Tonight

    Let’s Go Out Tonight by Hope and Social Lovely lovely big brass band… One of my favourites from the album and in some ways the easiest to record (in others not). Came from one of the original demos and we originally recorded it as a very simple song. Si described as a song about the…

  • April, Track 3, Caught in the Wake

    Caught in the Wake by Hope and Social Now this is a curious beast, and despite seeming like an easy win at first it probably gave us more trouble than any other song. It was the first track we started (apart from the drums on Ripples Rock My Boat) and, as Ed kept pointing out…

  • April, Track 2, “Pitching Far Too High”

    Right…let us continue… track 2, Pitching Far Too High Pitching Far Too High by Hope and Social We’ve been kicking this around for a little while and Ed, Rich and I had done a 12 minute demo which just looped round and round the “All that I know now” and the end choral section. It…

  • April, Track 1, “April”

    Morning all. Today we release our second full album, April and we thought we’d try and write a few words about each track over the next week or 10 days… I’ll start the ball rolling but I’m hoping the others might chip in along the way… So without further ado… April is our second full…

  • GO GO GO! April released today!

    OK calm down, calm down, stop pushing, stop pushing…one at a time, one at a time, there’s plenty for everyone. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls… NEW ALBUM APRIL OUT NOW! Yes, your eyes don’t lie, the truth stands buzzing before you like an overweight bee. Our new album April is now available as simple download…

  • Marching on Through – Jacket on Tour

    And we’re off… As well as pissing around with getting the brass for Marching On Through (our crowd sousced lyric and vid song) recorded with the lovely brassers of Hope and Social… [vimeo 10307965] … you may recall, we’re asking good people to star in our forthcoming video project for Marching on Through… If not, well the premise…

  • “Recipes, like music, are for sharing”

    So we were sat thinking about our slightly unusual but completely charming Come Dine With Us evening. It’s caused quite a stir don’t you know. (*warning, this is not the last food pun in this post) And our interactive song and video Marching on Through. And then we were inspired… Inspired by a tweet from…

  • Come Dine With Us – The Team

    We’re very much looking forward to our Come Dine With Us event this month. Only 17 tickets to go as of this morning so book now if you’re coming! Hope and Social figured that we could hold a night for our fans in the studio where we’re recording our album, and ask fans to be…

  • Star in a Hope and Social video

    Marching On Through – The story of a blue jacket We are sending one of our handsome blue jackets on tour.  Who wants it first? [vimeo 9851747] The Background So it goes, we are in the studio recording album 2, writing a song about being part of Hope and Social, and I don’t mean just the band, but everyone involved, which…

  • Come Mix With Us

    OK, this is in no way as interesting as the Come Dine With Us event that we’re doing at the end of the month but Hope and Social are going to start mixing tracks for the forthcoming album next week, and you’re invited. If you’re the kind of person who’s interesting in recording, producing and…

  • Come Dine With Us

    An evening of food, recording & shenanigans at our crypt… Come Dine With Us (invitation song) by Hope and Social “If music be the food of love, play on” Shakespeare “Play on, play on” Blackstreet featuring Dr Dre “Red red wine, it’s up to you” Neil Diamond Roll up! Roll up! As part of the…

  • Tom Robinson – Another Reason to Save BBC 6 Music

    Ah y’know how we love Fan Involvement, well courtesy of a request from the rather fantastic Chris Gregory, we’ve got another radio play. “Stuck Like Glue” was featured on BBC6 Music‘s Tom Robinson Introducing. With better results than pluggers we’ve paid thousands to, we’re thinking of sorting out a commission system for Chris.      …

  • Hello world!

    Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

  • Norwich City and The King of Spain

    Rather brilliantly, and in a great example of fan activism, Steve Plunkett of Outline Magazine has managed to garner Hope and Social a rather unusual bit of attention. Steve’s spotted that a particular Norwich FC player by the name of Simon Lappin, due perhaps to his olive complexion and dark features has acquired himself the…

  • New Album Sessions (25th & 26th January 2010)

    And we’re off. Tuesday we pressed the big red record button and started laying down stuff for the new album. Tentative steps at first working on a little track called Ripples Rock My Boat. Really good day’s work but in some ways a tricky one to start with because we’re trying to get a mixture…

  • New Album Sessions (19th January 2010)

    As Hux said on the last post – great day down the studio, loads of good ideas and tracks. Knackered by the end but started playing this tune just before we left – proof if proof were needed that all roads lead to Bluegrass… Enjoy. More on Friday… [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6HewpYo4XY&hl=en_US&fs=1&] Simon

  • New Album Sessions (19 Jan)

    Great day down at the studio today, first day of writing in where the stalwarts (Ed, Rich, and Si) have been joined by Gary Stewart and Simon Goff. Energy was really high and I’m really pleased to say that it felt very natural writing with Simon G and Gary for the first time. It’s different…

  • New Album Sessions (18 Jan)

    Very quick blog – too late for much detail. Set up day today – a necessary evil I suppose but good fun. Photo below shows Hux taking a drum around the room to find the best location for the drums. More dirt than you could shake a stick at removed by 3rd hoover in final…

  • Album 2, Day 2…

    This is a really quick post. Just wanted to upload this image and ask, “Is this what it’s like in the studio for U2?”. Day 2 mainly spent listening to INXS and Talking Heads to try and work out exactly why they’re so good. Vocal + Drums + Simplicity. 12 ideas, some formed, some just…

  • January Handful of Dates and New Stuff

    Happy New Year! We hope you’ve had a great time and a rest over the holidays and that you’re all stoked for a new decade full of Hope and Socialism. We also hope that you’re somewhere nice and warm right now with a cup of tea and not stuck in a snowdrift on your way…

  • BandCamp Feature

    We’re very happy to be able to say that not only has our Be The Architect special release been enthusiastically received and is selling well, but it’s also been featured on the BandCamp blog itself here (Bottom row of the pics, in the middle). Bandcamp is, for us, the best solution for getting our music…

  • The Ideal Christmas Pressie – “Be The Architect”

    Be The Architect – Ready for Christmas! In October 2009, about 100 or so people crammed into Hope and Social’s studio (the crypt of a Church somewhere in deepest darkest Yorkshire) and took part in what became this record. Recorded in front of a live television audience. Imperfect and lovely because of it. Made possible…

  • Christmas Giveaway – Remix-a-Hope-and-Social

    We originally intended to do this as a special for Barnsley College (where Ed and I spoke the other day) though due to demand (We’ve had literally some emails), we’ve decided to make this public. Always keen to share with our friends and fans, we want to give you the chance to help choose which…

  • Santa Claus is Coming to Liversedge

    So, to continue the Christmas feel-good shenanigans, we wanted to give you this: [soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/thehuxcapacitor/santa-claus-is-coming-to-town”] (The “Back-Story”) – On my birthday last year, Hope and Social played in the Church above our studio for the local schools’ Christmas Service. It was a very Christmassy affair, with singalong Christmas tunes, sleigh-bells and the usual kazoo solos.…

  • Show Tunes, Shed Seven and Mince Pies

    NEW EP FOR SALE NOW! Some of you may have heard about this already and even heard songs from it but our EP Songs from the Bar of Lost Souls is now available to download from our new Bandcamp site at bandcamp.hopeandsocial.com Once again it’s released on a pay what you want basis so just…

  • Photo interview…

    We’ve done a photo-interview on ANegativeNarrative.com – fantastic idea: 10 questions which you respond to with photographs. Really makes you think. See the results here! They also put a lovely bit of text on there which made me smile: “For years Hope & Social (previously known as Four Day Hombre) have been sniffing inquisitively around…

  • Re-Blog – Ben Denison’s Blog about Jason’s Last gig

    I’ve been meaning to re-blog this for a while – Ben Denison’s blog about Jason’s last gig at The Well at the end of October. It was a fantastic night and the end of a huge chapter in the band’s life and his words really sum it all up. Thanks Ben… Thank you for the…

  • Be the Architect… and so much more

    It’s taken me 2 weeks to finally get to write this blog – the only excuse being the ever-pressing lack of time. I’m looking back now on the night of the 17th October and our Be the Architect gig – a one off special event in the Crypt, the place where we wrote and recorded…