Not Wishing To Quote Nickleback, But...

…it’s been a while!

Hello you lot! We don’t seem to have been around R&C Gardens much recently, so we thought we would drop in and say hello! How are you doing? We hope those plants are growing nicely, and don’t let your tea go cold!

We played our first gig since before the pandemic the other week, and it was really nice to be back! We have very much missed doing what we do, but we feel like we have managed to navigate the pandemic and keep our heads together, so it felt nice to be back and doing a gig. We performed at The Crossways in Newcastle-under-Lyme as part of BottleCraft’s 7th Birthday shenanigans and Lymelight Festival, on the same bill as Daniel J. Nixon (who has now started a project called Cloud Solomon, which you must check out!), and Umbrellabird, who are amazing. Here’s some photos from the night, taken by Lucas Yeomans, Craig Murray, Chris Straughan and Chris Wilson:

And with those little glimpses of our steps back into the world, we bid you adieu, pausing only to direct you to our dates page, which has been updated with some dates we have coming up in the summer, so that you can update your diaries accordingly!

See you soon, look after yourselves!

R&C xx

the dew point

Greetings all!

Well, it’s September, and that means only one thing: Emily’s debut collection, ‘the dew point’, is soon to be released via Verve Poetry Press, on 19th September. Yes, as we gave you the heads-up this time last year, so too has the time very nearly approached. You can pre-order it here, and it’s free P&P on all UK orders! Want to know more? Then read below:

“Taking inspiration from the transient states of water, and the parallels of human sentiment, the debut collection from Emily Rose Galvin explores the changing states of emotion, relationships, mental health and cultural pressures.  From the vapour-like intangibility of first love to the waves of depression, the dew point aims to examine that finite degree between happiness and desolation; emptiness and making ourselves whole.

At times both vulnerable and shocking, Emily’s writing strikes a nerve between the subtle and uncomfortable, while coaxing out the honest core of readers and forcing them to engage with the darker parts of modern life that we tend to gloss over.

This is a wonderful debut collection from former Staffordshire Poet Laureate and co-founder of regular Stoke-on-Trent spoken word night WordCraft, Emily Rose Galvin.”

Emily is tremendously excited to see this collection be released, and we hope you’re looking forward to reading it! Keep looking after yourselves, and we’ll see you before too long.

R&C xx

PS: Apologies for the gigs earlier this year not going ahead, we do hope very much to get them rescheduled as soon as we can, and as soon as we do, you’ll be the first to hear about it! Keep looking after yourselves.

Sugarmill Date Change

Hello all, just to let you know, due to unforeseen circumstances, we’ve had to nudge our Sugarmill gig back a little, to Friday 9th July. We’re extremely sorry if this inconveniences you in any way, but if you’ve bought tickets, they’re still valid, and if you haven’t..? Well then, what are you waiting for?

R&C xx

Next Stop: Sugarmill!

Hello all you wonderful folks!

Our first day catching up in person in AAAAGES.

It’s been a ridiculous amount of time since we have been able to see each other, never mind have reason to put plans into operation, but today we sat down with notebook and pen, and mapped out our own Roadmap… TO THE SUGARMILL.

That’s right - in case the details in our Dates page weren’t enough, we are headlining The Sugarmill in Hanley, on Friday June 18th! We are really excited about this unexpected gift, and even more so to tell you that we are being supported by the sublime tones of that there Merrym’n!

The show will be socially-distanced, seated, and drinks will be table service only. This is the sort of thing that we, as two people who do what we do, could only dream of as circumstances to be playing a venue like The Sugarmill. Obviously we’d rather that a pandemic didn’t factor into it, but a seated audience is something we wouldn’t have expected otherwise, so it’s an aspect into which we’re really leaning.

Seats can be bought in bundles per table, and where initially it was limited to two households per table, this has now been relaxed, so you can corral your mates to bagsy a table of four by going here to buy your tickets.

We really hope you can make it, and we’re working our very hardest to bring you a show to remember and enjoy. See you in person very soon!

R&C xx

The poster for our Sugarmill Headliner - artwork by Emily, poster designed by Mike Sampson.

This Is A Good Place To Kiss

Readers will remember us mentioning Cobbler, with whom we had done some collaborating - first on a remix of ‘The Theory Of Relationships According To Pythagoras’, and then also a different track for an album he was working on. His album came out on January 29th, and you can buy it here. We allowed him to make a completely different version of ‘Plaza’, a new version from the ground up (including a surprising ROCK SOLO from John right at the end). You can also find it on Spotify, iTunes, and anywhere else you’d care to listen to music, but we definitely think you should buy it on Bandcamp first. Perhaps next Friday, when he' gets all the dosh for it.

R&C xx

The Theory Of Pythagoras, According To Cobbler

Hello!

John’s “remix” of Emily’s #40 artwork

Well this is set to be an interesting week, what with our collaboration with Cobbler set to release this Friday. Months back, he enquired as to whether we’d be interested in collaborating on a track for an album he was working on. The premise of the album was to be each track being a collaboration with a different poet. The fun challenge he found here was that, in working with Emily, there was an additional musician involved - John (hi!).

As something of a warm-up, he very kindly agreed to do a remix of something we’d not long released, namely ‘The Theory Of Relationships According To Pythagoras’, from #40. Now that his album is finished (‘This Is A Good Place To Kiss’, available to pre-save here), we thought it would be nice to put his Pythagoras remix into the world, to give you an idea of the kind of flavour you can expect from the album. We’re really excited to hear the whole thing, and we hope you are too.

In the meantime, go ahead and enjoy this remix of ‘…Pythagoras’.

R&C xx

Rose&Cloud · The Theory Of Relationships According To Pythagoras (feat. Cobbler)

The Night Before

Hello, you very decent and patient folks.

We have been hinting at this on our socials for the last couple of days, and not to make a big fuss or anything, but we have made you a little something for right before Christmas. In fact, we’ve sort of made a few somethings, which we will detail here:

Charcoal Artwork for ‘The Night Before’, by Emily

FIRSTLY - we have done another remote recording, and made a seasonal offering, entitled ‘The Night Before’. It’s available for free on our Bandcamp store, and you can also listen to it on Soundcloud, or watch the video on YouTube! It will also be coming to Spotify and all your other streaming services tomorrow, so there will only be a 24-hour delay on that front!

SECONDLY - After a good long stint as a Bandcamp exclusive, #40 is now available for you to stream on all platforms (you can even use it in Instagram Stories and TikTok, so knock yourselves out)! We can’t thank you enough for the donations you made to the fundraising portion of this EP, and we were able to send £80 to Refuge, so THANK YOU. And now you can add it to your playlists! SPEAKING OF WHICH…

THIRDLY - Now that we’ve started to transfer things to streaming platforms, we have now begun our ‘Complete Rose&Cloud’ Spotify playlist, which means that we will keep adding to this the more we release! Be sure to add our playlist to your libraries and you can keep our entire discography close to hand. (Just don’t forget to watch our Bandcamp, too!) And once ‘The Night Before’ arrives on Spotify et al tomorrow, that’ll be swiftly added to the list!

All in all, that’s quite a bumper crop of things, considering we’ve hardly been able to leave the house since March! We hope you have a good Christmas, even if it’s not the one you envisaged. We certainly didn’t picture these circumstances, but there will always be a way to make the best of of this mixed-up time, so do please try not to wallow in disappointment, and reach for whatever blessings you can find. They’re there, we promise.

Look after yourselves, and Merry Festives.

R&C xx

It’s That Time Again…

Hello you (yes, you).

As Lockdown 2 starts, another #BandcampFriday rolls around, and Bandcamp very generously waive their share of the monies. As ever, you can find our Bandcamp page at http://roseandcloud.bandcamp.com! If you’ve not bought either of our EPs yet, there’s no better time!

We miss you very much, and we miss each other lots too. We hope it’s not too long until we’re farming new sounds into your earholes.

In the meantime, stay good & look after yourselves.

🌹R&C☁️

Video Didn't Even BRUISE The Radio Stars

Good morning/afternoon/evening! [delete as applicable]

You find us in relatively good spirits, all things considered, and we wanted to let you know that on Friday we launched our YouTube channel. It was September’s Bandcamp Friday, and we do enjoy doing a little something nice when the first Friday of the months rolls around. We’ve done Spotify Playlists, an Instagram Q&A, all sorts, and it kind of almost feels like there’s only YouTube left that we haven’t had a stomp on. So now, you can watch the first of a series of videos that will be based on the pieces on #40. These will appear every Friday for the next few weeks.

ALSO: As we mentioned the Spotify playlist just now, it occurs that we did not put the links to it in any previous posts, so we’ll do it now. This was a playlist we made of songs that we each had been listening to a lot at the time. You can be darned sure there’ll be a volume 2 at some point. We’ll remember to let you know here next time, too.

So that’s all the news for now! Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, as the more the merrier (plus once we get past a certain number we might actually be able to change the URL to something Not Gibberish, and that’s always nice).

Look after yourselves, and we’ll see you soon, hopefully!

R&C xx

Verve 2021!

Hello you late-summer eggs!

It’s been a funny old lockdown/not-lockdown time, hasn’t it? It feels like a lot’s happening while a lot sort of isn’t happening, doesn’t it? Here are some things we’ve been up to while wishing we were Rose&Clouding without flaunting Covid guidelines:

~ Emily has been keeping the WordCraft vibes alive with co-founder Chris Wilson. It’s been going ahead every month of the pandemic, but online, so submitting videos or doing a Facebook Live to their event pages has been the order of the month. The attendance and participation has been lovely, and has kept the love going in such a way that is typical WordCraft.

~ John has been steadily doing his ‘John MacLeod’s LP Helpline’ on BBC Radio Stoke - a segment on Lucas Yeomans’ show on Tuesdays where he recommends an album to the unsuspecting listeners. He’s also been throwing the occasional acoustic set into the ether, either via his Instagram page or on his Attack Of The Vapours Facebook page.

~ It’s entirely plausible that the pictures in this blog post give the game away about the big news, but last month Verve Poetry Press announced the roster for their 2021 releases, and it’s immensely exciting to tell you that Emily will be published by Verve in September next year! As Emily said on her Facebook page: “So, this is happening. I don't really have words for it. To be amongst a selection of poets like this is staggering, daunting and pretty bloody exciting - Verve Poetry Press, I cannot thank you enough.” The full roster is towards the bottom of this post - check it out!

We hope you’re keeping okay in these times that get no less confusing. It seems to be hitting a point that people are finding far, far harder than it was in the beginning. What can we say, except keep being mindful of others as well as yourself, try not to let the swirling insecurities win if you’re feeling unseated, and never be afraid to reach out and tell people if you’re struggling.

We sorely miss being able to step out and perform (or even rehearse, but hopefully that might change soon). We’re feeling the pangs, it has to be said, but it only means that when we’re back together with a microphone and guitars to hand, that it’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be emotional.

Look after yourselves.

R&C xx

Congratulations!

Absolutely massive congratulations to Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, who won the New Voice In Poetry Prize this week. Her work was amazing and it was a thoroughly well-earned and deserving win. You can read her statement following the announcement here.

It was an honour (not to mention a surprise!) to be in a shortlist with such an amazing group of artists, and if you haven’t heard the playlist, you can find it here. Go and have a listen the people we were alongside.

We hope you’re staying steady and looking after yourselves. We miss you lots.

R&C xx

We made the shortlist?!

We've finally run out of expletives. We still have these words: blown away, grateful, honoured, gobsmacked, giddy, thankful, teary, mindboggled, overwhelmed, emotional, wiggly, daunted, ecstatic.

Some of those may not be real words, and we don't have any sentences yet.

You can find all the information about our fellow amazing shortlisters, plus a link to the soundcloud playlist featuring all our work, if you go here.

R&C ❤️❤️

Old Hands, New Voices

So, we have some news.

Good news.

Exciting news

Crazy news really, as we've found out that, out of 390 entries, Rose&Cloud's pieces have been included in the longlist of just 18 poets for Culture Recordings' New Voice in Poetry Prize.

Which is a bit mad really 🤯

Obviously, we're chuffed to pieces. Is it too early for a drink and a lie down? 🥂

R&C ❤

Culture Recordings’ New Voice In Poetry Award 2020

#40 - OUT NOW

Hello, you lovely lot.

This is officially official news, officially letting you know that #40 is officially released on our Bandcamp page. Officially.

We are really proud of this collection of pieces, and we hope you enjoy it too. And as previously stated, we are donating a third of all sales to the charity Refuge.

Stay safe, and we hope to see you soon.

R&C xx

Set Sail For Hope...

Hello everyone,

It’s been an odd time of adjustment since we’ve all been in lockdown, we had a lot of events that we were really looking forward to, and we were desperately sad to see them all get cancelled or postponed.  We’re sure they’ll come back in good time and we are so ready & raring to go when they return.

In the meantime, it’s been a big week for us.  Not only have we finally - after a year - claimed the @roseandcloud handle on Twitter, we also have ACTUALLY EXCITING NEWS.  Not ones to be kept down by current events, after finding our feet and acclimatising to lockdown life, we have taken it upon ourselves to make a (remotely) home-recorded EP!  Yes, thanks to modern technology and an inordinate amount of Rose&Cloud-brand love & inspiration, we have assembled five pieces that we hope will bring you, our listeners-in-waiting, some comfort.

Cover art for our home-recorded second EP, ‘#40’, painted by Emily.

The EP is titled ‘#40’ and we will be releasing this on our Bandcamp page on 1st of May, the 40th day of lockdown - that’s this Friday!  There are two reasons for this, which are interrelated:

1: We want to donate a third of all profits to Refuge.  This is a charity very close to our hearts, and our thoughts are with anyone currently quarantined with an abusive partner or family member.  It would mean a lot to us if we were able to contribute in some way to such a worthy cause.

2: Bandcamp are waiving their cut of sales this Friday, which means more funds would come to us and therefore, we would be able to donate more to Refuge as a result.

We hope you’re all looking after yourselves and each other the best you can, these are truly odd times.  Take every day as it comes - some will be good, some will be bad, and it’s okay to acknowledge that.  Neither are victories, nor are they defeats.  We’ll get through this.

All our love,

Emily & John xx

R&C

First The Bad News, Then Something Nice

Hello all,

It’s super sad & scary times at the moment, and we hope you’re doing well and keeping yourselves safe. We are absolutely gutted that our Poetry Slam at Lichfield Festival is no longer going ahead (as is the festival itself). So much hard work had gone into planning it, and we’re sure it will be rescheduled when things settle and we look forward to making something just as lovely and exciting happen in its stead.

At the time of writing, we do not know what the state of play is with regards to Saturday’s gig in Derby at Dubrek Studio, but we will update as it unfolds.

We’re trying to stay upbeat what with all this upheaval and sadness at what is a very unsettling time, and in that light it’s also important to hold on to good things. Keep your loved ones in mind, and keep looking out for the things that make you smile or laugh, and try your best to spread that to others.

Now: Today marks a year since we took a punt on appearing together on Honey Box Live. 365 days ago, we stood in King Street Studios, having rehearsed 4 pieces together the previous evening. We watched excitedly as the show was put together, Emily spilled a beer on her words one minute before we went live, John momentarily forgot an entire set of chords during the broadcast, and before we knew where was what, the show had ended. (You can watch the whole episode here.) We were determined not to end after this, and spent the ensuing year becoming thick as thieves - haring around hither & yon, creating, performing, recording, and chatting.

One year ago we started something very special to us, we love doing this so much, and there is more to come this year. We’d just like to take a second to appreciate the starting point and thank everyone who put us together, AGAIN. We love you all very much. We hope you’re looking after yourselves, stay well, and we hope that all this chaos is relegated to the past tense as soon as possible.

Sending all our love,

R&C xx

The Long March Forwards

Just a coupla swells, looking forward to the weeks ahead.

Hello, best eggs! As February draws to a close, we thought it might be nice to have a peek ahead to some things we’re looking forward to in March.

•We’ve just done an interview with Casimir Engine for an upcoming podcast episode. As ever, we had a lovely chat and played a couple of pieces. We’ll let you all know when that gets released!

•On March 13th we have been invited to be special guests of WORD Stafford, run by Mel Wardle Woodend and Jon Watkiss.

•We will be joining a very grand lineup indeed on Saturday March 21st, when we go to Dubrek Studios in Derby, courtesy of Fusion#.

•Thursday March 26th is a day we’ve been looking forward to for a long time, as it’s our Poetry Slam for Lichfield Literature Festival! We’ll be at Beatbox Studios for this carefully-curated slice of competitive poetry fun, tickets are pay what you like, and we can’t wait!

The details for all the above are on the dates page, and there are bound to be other things turning up to surprise us, no doubt! Keep tuned in and we hope to see you around and about!

R&C xx

Back On The Beeb

Hello!

Well, the festive season has come & gone, and we’ve gotten January out of the way, so now it behooves us to get back to business! Last Wednesday we did an interview on Reject Radio, which you can watch and enjoy. We loved doing this, which was our First Thing Of 2020. One thing the video doesn’t show is how much hysterical suppressed laughter was caused by the words “giddy kippers” (HINT: a lot).

In other news, you will want to tune into BBC Radio Stoke this Friday, as we will be featuring on the first ever BBC Upload - a new initiative similar to Introducing but with a wider scope. You can expect to hear some cuts from our EP and an interview, so we’d love you to tune in and listen! It will be on this Friday (7th Feb), from 7pm.

That’s all for now, save for some new gig dates being added to the page, and more things waiting to be announced. We’re so excited about jumping back in feet-first, we hope to see you out and about as soon as possible!

R&C xx

Silent Night? Nah, mate.

As Christmas creeps that little bit closer, we have some teeny surprises for you! First off, we bring you this humble offering of ‘Prima Assoluta’. We have been stocking up on new material over the course of the year, in between recording our EP and doing all those gigs. Much writing & home recording has taken place, and this is one piece of it. We debuted this at Artisan Tap the other week and decided to put it online for your ears.

The other thing we would like to give you, is our first ever Spotify playlist! We have found ourselves in all sorts of places this year, and have encountered a bunch of wonderful people, so we’ve had a good go at finding them on Spotify and making a playlist of our friends & comrades for you to listen to. So go and have a listen!

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Photo taken by Chris Wilson

Back in June, at Merrym’n’s album launch for ‘Greetings From The Post-Industrial Apocalypse’, one Gary Wilcox asked if Rose&Cloud would be interested in doing a support set for Don’t Call Me Ishmael’s Christmas gig at Artisan Tap. There was a very loud YES and it went straight in our diaries.

In about October/November, the date of a bloody general election got slapped on the same day, so the gig became as much of a comfort blanket/coping mechanism as much as a festive chortle. That gig happened on Thursday just gone, as did the election. We don’t need to tell you how the latter went, this is all about the former...

Two bands’ worth of gear. One of those bands is a duo (as in, us). Photo by John.

John was the first to arrive, setting his guitars up by the stage, ready. Then came Jack Tasker, Tom Downes & SBT, unloading their gear to the front of the stage, and immediately making the place look like the music shop that had once upon a time lived next door. The general consensus was that Ishmael has this peculiar habit of losing members while somehow gaining gear.

Emily arrived next, shortly followed by Gary Wilcox, then lastly by Laura Ellement.

Setups and soundchecks got done, setlists got written & deposited on the stage, leaving time for a mill-about and last-minute guitar-tuning. There hadn’t been a Rose&Cloud gig since Nottingham, which felt sort of odd considering how much of Spring/Summer was consolidated R&C activity. We were nervous & excited in equal measure.

During our set, taken by Lee Ball.

Our set was fun, and we enjoyed it hugely. It’s always nice to have a bit more time to breathe during our sets, so having a little over half an hour to play with was great. We debuted some material that we’ve had on the backlog for a while, in the form of a piece entitled ‘Prima Assoluta’,* and we also gave another run of ‘8’ - a poem written on the morning of our September gig in Leek, musically arranged in the afternoon and performed in the evening (we are quick workers). The set took an irregular turn with some clothing removal and a brief burst of song, and then we floated through the rest of the set in a giddy haze.

That giddiness continued through the evening as Don’t Call Me Ishmael took their places on stage in varying forms of festivewear. The central theme was Gary discovering that the “lounge pant” was a most impractical item of stage clothing, as they pounded through a veritable buffet of Ishmael songs, punctuated by a sterling appearance by Merrym’n for a jaunt through his song ‘I Want Oatcakes For My Christmas Dinner’. It was a brilliantly chaotic interlude, as halfway through, Bob shouted ‘GUITAR SOLO!’ to Jack and giggled at the audience like some kind of mischievous trickster god infused with Eric Morecambe. At this point we were in hysterics.

As Ishmael pushed through the last song of their set and the lights came up (and the inevitable packing away began), we could only reflect on what a magical night we’d had, and how much we love doing this. After a moderately quiet Autumn/Winter, it’s nice to get back on the horse and fall in love with this project all over again. We headed to our homes with our feet hardly touching the floor, trying very hard not to look at the news until the next morning.

R&C xx

PS: As you may have noticed, there are photos of the night, taken by Lee Ball and Chris Wilson. You can check them out in the gallery page here.

* Stay tuned regarding new sounds! We’ve a mind to treat you with something special in the not-too-distant future…