
Gigging on the parade!

Sea shanties have become really popular recently – for some reason – so I have tried my hand at writing one on the popular Moby Dick whaling theme … with a difference. If you are the Covid Man – watch out! We are coming for you….
Brexit is done and dusted. It’s all over. Even the shouting is dying down a bit. So I’m going to walk away from it and not look back – no more crying over spilt milk, no more worrying about whether cake can be had and eaten at the same time. I must leave Leave and Remain. And Leave must leave, too – that’s the story. Leave.EU was the name, and website, of the main group campaigning for the UK to leave the EU. But you can only have a website with a .eu suffix if your organisation is registered in the EU (logical enough). So Leave.EU has moved – to Ireland. But, according to the Guardian, “Sean Power, the Irish businessman whose name appears on Leave.EU’s domain registration, insists he has never heard of the company. ‘My lawyers are looking into this on my behalf presently and will be in touch as deemed necessary in due course,’ said Power, the chief executive of Business Services Group, a Waterford-based company. ‘I have nothing to do with Leave.EU and never heard of it before yesterday.’
Having just recovered from the dreaded Covid, I heartily recommend not catching it … so here are the three steps to Covid – to avoid!
As 2020 draws to a close, I realise that I have some catching up to do – I haven’t posted anything since June 2019. I have been active – I’ve produced some new songs in this period…. here they are:
A song inspired by the Indian guru Swami Vivekananda, who was one of the first wave of Indian spiritual figures to visit the West. Bringing East and West together. His opening words to the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago in 1893 were: “Brothers and sisters of America”.
“Beautiful Land”, a beautiful song written by Canadian singer-songwriter, Nicole Almond, about her home province, Saskatchewan.
Strange to be saying goodbye to a city as if saying it to a lover – or at least a good friend. It’s clear that me and this city have developed a special bond. Yesterday was my last full day here and I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training course I have been doing over the last five months. So I played some songs to my Happy Tree yoga family – here’s a video of one of them: it’s called “Deepbreathely”, based on garbled teaching cues that we let slip during our teaching practice, plus some liberal artistic licence. Enjoy.
….and I played my last open mic in front of an appreciative audience. Here is “Les Inspecteurs”: a song about Les Inspecteurs of the Montreal metro. They look like a SWAT team, act like a SWAT team, but really they just want to be loved. … and check that you have a valid ticket, of course.
Upcoming gigs:
June 1st, 2019: Avantgarde Bar, Ottawa, from 6pm to 7.30pm.
My recent Voix de Ville performance at the Wiggle Room was whoopingly received … the critic said “🤩this guy. If you want to listen to an oddly calm British dude singing about bongs and hating on Justin Trudeau check out Chas Warlow for all your comedy needs”
Here’s a taster of that performance: the “National Weed Anthem” – a song crying out to be written about the legalisation of da weed
Upcoming gigs:
May 18th, 2019: La Vitrola, 4602 Boul St-Laurent, Montréal, QC H2T 1R3 – It’s the launch of the new The Ever After EP and I am emceeing the event. Also performing are: Waves & Windows and embrasse-moi l’hiver.
June 1st, 2019: Avantgarde Bar, Ottawa
My recent Voix de Ville performance at the Wiggle Room was whoopingly received … the critic said “🤩this guy. If you want to listen to an oddly calm British dude singing about bongs and hating on Justin Trudeau check out Chas Warlow for all your comedy needs”
Here’s a taster of that performance: the “National Weed Anthem” – a song crying out to be written about the legalisation of da weed
March 29th (“Independence Day”) has come and gone. With no end result yet in sight, here’s my contribution to understanding Brexit
“Take Back Control” – the story of the break-up of a long-term relationship in a song (you’ll need to turn the volume right up to hear it properly)
And this – a “brilliant original topical song” (Marc Nerenberg, Yellow Door Coffeehouse)
Greta Thunberg is fifteen years old and she’s worried about climate change – she’s so worried that she’s missed school to do sit-ins outside the Swedish parliament every Friday. Thousands of students in Australia staged a protest march recently about the same thing: time is running out and our politicians are not doing enough to stop runaway climate change.
We have to get behind Greta and these young people to give them a decent future!
After likening herself to Geoff Boycott (snap, Theresa! Geoff is also one of my heroes) earlier this week, who better than the PM to teach our future Test cricketers how to “stick it out in the middle”?
Here is my take on it all ….