Peace Unto Poetkind

A photo from THAT Thursday, repurposed by Susan Mulder for Poet Kind Podcast.

A very good evening to you!

We’re missing you terribly, and we hope that you’re missing us, too, but worry not - we have glad tidings. Firstly, we recently sat down and had a seriously daft/fun/lovely conversation with Susan Mulder for Poet Kind Podcast, and it went live the other day. Susan is a wonderful soul, and we had the best time talking with her. She also included two tracks from the EP in the episode, so thank you Susan! (Keep listening on to episode 9 too, as John gave Susan a piece of his music to use as Poet Kind’s new intro!)

How many sleeps until this?!

Secondly, we are barrelling towards our December festive date with the beautiful and sublime Don’t Call Me Ishmael, at Artisan Tap. We have been so excited for this, ever since Gary asked us back in June. Will this be our last show of what has been a staggeringly exciting 2019? Who can say? What we can say is that we are looking forward to to it, even if the Powers That Be have tried to kill the vibe by also make it Election Night. Well, sod them - between us and Ishmael we’ll make it a magical night, so make a plan to spend the evening with us. You won’t be disappointed!

Until we see you, take care!

R&C xx

Onwards, Ever Onwards!

Emily at the National Poetry Day event at Stafford Library on 3rd October 2019, also the Laureateship Handover. Photo taken by Mel Wardle Woodend, Emily’s successor in the role.

Hello everyone, John here!

As you all know (or should do if you’ve ever read this website), when Emily & I met she was the Staffordshire Poet Laureate. Sadly, as of yesterday, this is no longer the case! And before you all give the perfectly-timed audience “AWWWW” that I’m imagining in my head as I write this, she has now been appointed Poet In Residence at Lichfield Library - the first person to be appointed this title. I have seen the collage they made for her, and it’s stupendous.

Emily has been succeeded in the Staffordshire Laureateship by Mel Wardle Woodend, and we look forward to seeing her work in the post. Congratulations, Mel!

I would like to take a second to raise a glass to Emily’s Laureateship, wherein she has devoted ALL the time EVER to catalysing so many people (including myself) into writing, and without the combination of her talent & tenacity resulting in the Laureateship, Rose&Cloud might never have come into being.

She’s an inspiration, and a brilliant person to be around, and I look forward to us bringing more musical poetry excitement to your ears and hearts. I hope you do, too.

Congratulations, Emily. You deserve this so very much.

John x

PS. GIG NEWS: We will be performing at NOOK OPEN DOOR in Stockport this coming Thursday, and we would really like to see you there! Get yourselves to Heaton Moor for 8pm and we look forward to playing for you.

Coping Creatively

The Creative Coping Podcast.

Hello, The Internet!

We're still kinda pinching ourselves about this one, but apparently here it is! Last month we were lucky enough to be asked by the wonderful Johnny Anomaly to feature on The Creative Coping Podcast, so go have a listen to us wittering about the UK, 'creative synergy', and the process of creating the EP, along with various other nonsense. And give the podcast a subscribe and some love while you're there. ❤

You can listen on one of the platforms below:

Anchor FM

Spotify

Stitcher

iTunes Podcasts

Also, as mentioned in the podcast (and this is another thing that is causing a lot of pinching), we were approached by the British Library last month asking us if we would like to donate ‘It’s Only Thursday’ to them as part of the audio & cultural heritage of the U.K. We were definitely not expecting this development, so if you’re a member of the British Library, you can find us in there, no doubt!

Until next time…

R&C xx

Arguing With A Calendar

Perfoming at Chesterfield Labour Club, Saltergate. Photo by Nicki Ward.

Has it really been a week since we played Chesterfield and Hanley’s Bank Holiday Bash, thus rounding off our cheekily-titled ‘Wigs In The Glovebox’ tour? Admittedly, there’s no use arguing with a calendar, so we must accept that this is the case.

We had a marvellous time in Chesterfield, even though John very much took the long way around, having agreed to meet Emily in Lichfield for the drive up, and getting on a train bound directly for Milton Keynes instead, then hi-tailing it straight back with time to spare. The bill was amazing for the gig, with Ichabod Wolf’s spell-binding solo set, Kworyl tripping out soundscapes & rap and taking a succession of sound problems properly in his stride. Mouthparts blasted the roof clean off, and we were sorry to have to head home during their set. The last thing we saw before leaving was some dude standing outside the venue, clapping his heart out.

We’ve really enjoyed the gigs over the last couple of months, from Lichfield Fuse Festival, to NOOK, to Piccadilly in Hanley (for which Emily was also artist liaison and stage manager - last weekend was intense`). Each gig has been so much fun in so many ways, and we’re excited about what’s coming up in the next month or so. (More about that later.)

In the meantime, as a ‘Thank you for listening’ present, we’ve posted a demo on our SoundCloud. If you saw any of our performances over July/August, you’ll recognise it - it’s called ‘To Dad; For Mom’

Until we see you next, take care.

R&C xx.

Words written & performed by Emily Rose Galvin Music written & performed by John MacLeod

First It Giveth...

Hello you dear, dear people,

It’s not not often we have a good news/bad news scenario (in fact this might be the first time, so in many ways 2019 continues to be a year of firsts for us!), so let’s start with the Good News:

• ‘It’s Only Thursday’ is NOW AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY & ITUNES. In fact it’s available on most digital platforms, so find the one you usually use and you should find it. We appreciate that you may well cane it on Spotify and the like, so please do buy it from our Bandcamp first, then stream to your heart’s content.

• The mystery gig we’ve been listing on our site for 25th August is NOW UNVEILED. We are super excited to be performing on Piccadilly in Hanley for the Bank Holiday Bash. There are so many brilliant acts playing with more to be confirmed, but to be sharing the bill with the likes of Kez Liddle, CAMP STAG, and Average Joe is giving us a giddy moment.

Now for the Bad News.  We’re very sorry to have to say that owing to circumstances beyond our control, we’re unable to appear in WORD’s event for Party On The Pitch in Stafford this Saturday.  If you can make it, you should definitely go and see some brilliant poets performing, but if you’re going to see us, we won’t be there.  Many apologies again.

So with all that said and done, we’re looking forward to the weeks ahead, and we hope you’re going to be enjoying ‘It’s Only Thursday’s sudden appearance on all your streaming services!

See you soon, folks!

R&C xx

P.S.: We just found out that on 4th August we got some airplay on a US RADIO STATION. This is not something that happens on the reg, so we’ve got PROOF HERE THAT YOU CAN LISTEN TO. Do let us know if you hear us in unexpected quarters, won’t you?

It’s been… One Week

Has it only been one week since ‘It’s Only Thursday came out? Turns out, yes it has. We just wanted to direct your attention to this lovely review we received from Charley Barnes on Mad Hatter Reviews this week. Warmed our hearts, so it did.

If that whetted your appetite, don’t forget our Bandcamp is here, and you can either get the digital EP for £3, or go for the CD for £5, featuring Emily’s watercolour loveliness, a bit of David Sidley’s photography, AND you get the digital edition to tide you over while we post your disc.

Also huge thanks to Simon Edwards at 6 Towns Radio, who has been giving us some much-appreciated airtime on his Monday & Thursday night shows. You can find his SoundCloud account here, and his Mixcloud here. Go and give his shows a listen!

We’ve been taking advantage of the quiet spell before the rest of our August gigs kick in, by demoing new material and composing music for even newer poems.  It’s a fun process which we really enjoy, hopefully it won’t be too long until we’re performing the new stuff!

So what have you got to look forward to from us this month?

Saturday August 17th - Party On The Pitch, Stafford Cricket & Hockey Club

Saturday 24th August - Chesterfield Labour Club

Sunday 25th - this is still under wraps for now, but stand ready for when we can announce it!

We hope you’re well and enjoying ‘It’s Only Thursday’, and we’ll see you soon!

R&C xx

It’s Only Thursday - OUT NOW!

A shiny selection of freshly-packaged Rose&Cloud CDs.

Well, Thursday finally arrived, which may suck if you’ve still got to work today, but ‘It’s Only Thursday’ is released, and you can get it from http://roseandcloud.bandcamp.com!

There are digital and CD options, so make your choices. In the meantime, last night we took the party to Session #65 of Open Door at Nook in Stockport. We had a wonderful evening, more about that later.

Enjoy our first ever EP!

R&C xx

Announcement Time!

Artwork by Emily

We did a thing. A CD shaped thing. A digital download thing. A music and poetry purchasable thing. A super exciting studio time thing.

An EP. We did an EP, guys.

Super Official Bandcamp Release day is Thursday 1st August. Because it's called It's Only Thursday. Because, especially in this heat, Thursday is the new Friday, right? Right.

We'd say let's cheers on it, but Emily bagsied the bubbly.. 🍾

R&C

Curb Your EnFUSEiasm

I realise that pun in the title is precisely the sort of thing that often leads Emily to despair when I get access to a microphone at gigs, but that is why I put that there. For demonstrative purposes.

GIgs for the next couple of months.  Make a note, come on down!

We had QUITE a weekend just gone, as the first stop on our ‘Wigs In The Glovebox’ set of gigs was Lichfield Fuse Festival on Saturday afternoon. Beacon Park was beautifully decked out with tents, stages, games and portaloos.* It’s always nice at this time of year to see people camping out on blankets and desperately trying to enjoy summer weather with the standard kit - jackets, sunglasses, drinks and, most importantly, fingers crossed that the sun will come out.

I arrived early afternoon, fully-laden with three guitars, pedalboard, guitar stands and my overnight bag. The train journey was fine, forgetting both taxi cash AND that I could’ve just used Uber was NOT fine, and I walked to the park, not unlike a complete chump.

We basked in the threatening near-absence of rain for much of the day, until just before our poetry session began, at which point the grey clouds buggered off, to reveal glorious sunshine and blue skies.

Emily had curated a marvellous cluster of spoken word artists to perform: Gabriella Gay, Jane James, and Charley Barnes - all giving out warmth, wit, and heart by the bucketload. Tough acts to follow, all of them, but we enjoyed playing our set and as ever it was over far too quickly (stage time seems to operate differently to actual regular time, doesn’t it?). We also gave some new material an airing, which we have been excited about for weeks!

Taken by Hayley Bryant-Williams

The afternoon became evening, and we remained ensconced on Beacon Park, listening to the music from the Momentum Stage, occasionally getting drinks refilled, and at one point aiding in the removal of the festival’s token tipsy nuisance** who tried to nick our friend Hayley’s reusable cup (a cherished sight for me was him, walking through the park, oblivious to the 8 or 9 fluorescent-vested security officials following him).

Sunday morning. I awoke at the crack of dawn so that Emily could give me a lift back to Stoke, where she had a meeting and a Poet’s Corner session in Hanley Park. After getting stuck behind a horse box for much of the drive, she dropped me home and away she went.

About an hour later, I received a text message from Hanley Park: “There’s a PA system up if you fancy playing a set?” And so it came to pass that we found ourselves performing an impromptu Rose&Cloud gig on a reasonably sunny afternoon, accompanied by the lilting screams of giddy terror coming from the nearby carnival rides. It was lovely to do, and if you’re going to gig at the weekend, you may as well nail both days down, right?

Taken by Mel Wardle Woodend

In other news, our EP approaches completion! More news as it comes, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is slowly slotting into place, so release news is IMMINENT.

Beyond that, tonight we play at Bar Social for the NCS Fundraiser - an excellent cause aiding domestic abuse sufferers, and we’re proud to be on the bill.

See you soon, no doubt!

John, on behalf of R&C xx

*Okay the portaloos weren’t necessarily beautiful, per se, but they were decked out. Well, they were out.

**Every local festival gets at least one. I was once harangued by a hairy drunk fella at Lymelight Festival 2017, who spent the entirety of John Dhali’s set trying for a high five and asking me if he could try my coat on.

Fast Times at Rose&Cloud High...

Hello again,

Get me, referencing a film I haven’t even seen in the title of this post. You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for the last few weeks have moved at breakneck pace. Last week we ventured out to Rawr, on Hanley’s Piccadilly, for their monthly open mic night. There was a hint of trepidation, not least because one of the pieces we played had never been performed before, and we were playing immediately after some very talented performers. There’s always a hint of “How do you follow that?!” in those circumstances, but we had a wonderful time.

Performing at Rawr’s monthly open mic night.

So what’s this breakneck pace nonsense, then? Well, we’ve started filling out our calendar a bit, with lots of things now in the offing, all of which we are super excited about! For starters, we’re back in the studio on the 10th July, and then on the 13th, we’re not only performing at Lichfield Fuse Festival, but we’ve also curated a billing of spoken word magic, so from 5pm you’ll see Gabriella Gay, Jane James, and Charley Barnes (Worcestershire’s Poet Laureate, no less)! It promises to be a corker of an afternoon/evening. (5pm really is a bit of a No Man’s Land for what time of day it is, isn’t it?)

Beyond that, there’s a lot to look forward to, so why not have a read of our Dates page, then plan your year accordingly? Every now and again we have to read this just to believe we’ve got them booked! And in celebration of all of this busy-ness, we uploaded a new demo on Friday, of the piece we debuted at Rawr on Thursday. It’s called ‘A Dreaming Fear’. Go listen, we hope you like it!

So while we gird our loins in preparation for the gigs ahead, we were shown some brilliant photographs from our set at Stoke Pride the other week. They’re taken by Jenny Harper, and you can find them here. Do please enjoy!

Until we meet again,

R&C

Tremolo Studio - It Begins...

Hello, John here with a sneaky update to say that YES, we have started work on our first official release. Not a great deal to say yet, other than it will be an EP, and we’re suitably enthused at the prospect of releasing it.

The main reason I write is to tell you that while we were in the studio, a very nice & talented photographer by the name of David Sidley came to our session, and silently graced Tremolo Studios in order to take some photos (obviously he did, it would have made no sense if we’d invited a photographer to the studio so he could tap dance at us between takes). Anyway, quick as a flash (no pun intended), he sent us a ton of images THE NEXT DAY, and so we present them to you. Please go to our Studio Pics Gallery and drink them in! Before you do, here’s a studio selfie we took with Dan Rowley who runs Tremolo:

Stoke Pride & More Besides

Hello again!

On Saturday we played in the Fringe Tent’s ‘Funny Tails and Glitterati’ cabaret at Stoke Pride. There was an ominous start to proceedings after rehearsing, when we arrived at Hanley Park and found ourselves hauling guitars & pedalboard around the park in what could be generously described as light rain (this is a very generous description). However as soon as we dropped gear in the Fringe Tent, the rain stopped and the sun came out, so let that be a lesson that sometimes it’s okay to be ten minutes late.*

We gave ourselves a quick tour of the park to see everything that was on offer, in suddenly-beaming sunlight we might add, grabbed ourselves a drink from the bar, and headed back to the Fringe Tent, only to have a spot of light drama when we weren’t sure how the PA worked in order to be able to plug guitars through it (this mystery was eventually solved by a grand fellow who not only pointed out the jack input sockets, but also fetched an extension lead into which the pedalboard could be plugged).

There was a really interesting mix of acts in the cabaret, performing a range of entertaining and thought-provoking work. To be in the middle of it all was a real privilege, and we had a lot of fun as always, even during the high-octane setting up of equipment and operating a set of PA controls upside down.

“So what’s next?!” we hear you cry. Well. We are about to head into the studio (Tremolo Recording Studio, to be precise) and set to work on an EP. We are ridiculously excited about the prospect, and can’t wait to share more with you as it becomes apparent. In the meantime, keep ‘em peeled…

One last thing, back at the start of May, we made an appearance on Lucas Yeomans’ BBC Stoke show, ‘The Takeover’. It was the first thing we did together that was officially Rose&Cloud, just prior to us doing 3 gigs in two days (affectionately referred to in our photo gallery as the ‘May Bank Holiday Gigstravaganza’). A recording of this interview can now be found here for posterity. It also contains the first performance of ‘If You’re Listening To This Then, Yes, It Is About You’ - one of our favourite pieces to perform. Enjoy!

R&C

*It is never, never, okay to be ten minutes late, kids.

Welcome to the Rose&Cloud site!

You found us, then!

Welcome to our little corner of the internet, we hope you enjoy your stay. You can find links to all our various social platforms here, and we’ll do our level-best to update you with news of imminent gigs and recordings, too! you can’t say fairer than that, can you?

We hope to see you soon, and thank you for popping by.

R&C