Last night it finally happened. After 19 years Lithium Joe were back in a rehearsal room and kicking up a racket once more. Never thought it would happen, never thought it COULD happen, but I loved every second and can’t wait to do it all again.

Haven’t made music with Dave, Ian and Aidy since 2001 but such is the way with bands who spent so many years stuck in the same van driving up and down the country, the jokes are the same as ever and it took about 10 seconds to start where we left off.

Five songs came together last night and the rest will surely follow.

We are initially playing only one show, a We Shall Overcome all-dayer at The Station in Ashton-Under-Lyne on Saturday November 30th to put my 50th birthday to good use and hopefully pack the place to raise a stack for Pauline Town‘s ongoing work supporting the homeless of Greater Manchester. We are also booked into the studio to record that week so news of a brand new single will follow as soon as we have details.

Top fun. Loved it.

Good to be back.

A massive thank you to everyone who came along and packed out Greenwich Theatre on Sunday. It was a night I’ll never forget, and to sell-out my first ever London headline show means so much to me that I can hardly put it into words. Maybe the mile-wide smile on my face says it all for me.

So good to have the whole night to play with and be able to stretch my legs and gab and ‘do’ poems on top of the usual singing and ranting; and the credit must go to Peter and the team who managed to persuade me this could be done despite my initial reservations.

I honestly DID try to talk them out of it.

London is well off my beaten track and I wasn’t at all convinced there would be the interest in some ramshackle northern bloke with a maraca in his shoe, but apparently there is.

It was great to travel down with Paul and Lindsay Rutland who were ace company and kept me laughing (and awake!); still in awe of the RMT Drinking Team represented with much enthusiasm by Sean Mcgowan and John Stewart; fantastic to meet up with Tom Millman, who I haven’t seen in 25 years; amazing to finally meet Raymond Gorman of That Petrol Emotion and The Everlasting Yeah! and shake the hand of a legend; so good to catch up with Chip and Nadia of Poetry On The Picket Line who do so much to highlight causes in the capital at all hours of the day and night; and overall, just damn fine to meet so many fantastic people and to shake so many hands.

After a couple of hours on stage and eleven at the wheel I was fit for very little yesterday, but I’m fully recovered and ready for Crewe on Friday.

The fight goes on.

And if anyone fancies Round Two, I’m back down in London at Walthamstow Folk Club on Sunday March 17th.

Be good to see you x

 

Pics: Paul Rutland and Ian Jones

The crowdfunded double-CD souvenir special edition of ‘Never Be Defeated’ has landed and looks MAGNIFICENT.

It is being released on March 6th 2019 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Miner’s Strike, with ALL proceeds going to help the community whose stories the songs tell.

I crowdfunded this release so that I was completely financially independent of it, meaning I could donate every penny raised without bankrupting myself. Half will go to the DN7 Hardship Fund set up by the Hatfield Brigade to help those in the local community struggling to make ends meet, to repay, as Les Moore calls it, a debt of honour from 84/85 when people rallied to their side the THEIR hour of need. The other half will be donated to the Save The Hatfield Main Headgear Campaign which is aiming to turn the last surviving headgear of the famous Doncaster coalfield into a lasting monument to a dead industry, and to turn it into a vital community resource to inspire a whole new generation.

The first 100 orders of the ‘Never Be Defeated: Special Edition’ will receive a ‘Solidarity Is A Way Of Life’ sticker, with our amazing crowdfunders also receiving a Hatfield Main 84/85 souvenir pin badge and an invitation to join the choir when we record our next song together later this year.

Matching t-shirts will follow soon.

You can pre-order the double-CD for £10 on this link:

https://joesolothehatfieldbrigade.bandcamp.com/album/never-be-defeated-special-edition

All advance orders will ship to arrive on March 6th.

Brand new Album Sleeve t-shirts available now on my Bandcamp, but be quick!

We have ‘No Pasaran’, ‘Not On Our Watch’ and ‘The Future Needs Us Now’ shirts in sizes M, L, XL and XXL. All are black with large album sleeve logo.

They cost £12 plus a bit of postage, and they ship within 2 working days.

Trouble is keeping them in stock. ‘No Pasaran’ sold out within two hours on Thursday night and a second order has been placed. The others are still available, but selling fast.

Cracking response. Made-up with it. Big thank you to those ordering and sharing selfies. Much appreciated.

If you want one for yourself here are the links:

https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/merch/no-pasaran-album-sleeve-t-shirt

https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/merch/not-on-our-watch-album-sleeve-t-shirt

https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/merch/the-future-needs-us-now-album-sleeve-t-shirt

‘No Pasaran’ will show out of stock for a day or two, but keep checking, as the stock will arrive soon.

And here’s the amazing Pauline Town modelling at the ‘Headscarves & Hurricanes’ album launch yesterday.

DELIGHTED to say my gig at Greenwich Theatre in London on Sunday February 17th has now SOLD OUT!!

Incredible stuff.

I cannot thank everyone who has bought tickets enough for this. To travel all that way to a full house will be an absolutely amazing thing, and to sell out my first ever headline show in London has left me lost for words.

THANK YOU!!!

On Sunday February 17th I’ll be playing my first ever headline show in London.

The venue is Greenwich Theatre.

It will be songs, stories, poems and, of course, ranting over two 45 minute sets so plenty of time to stretch my legs and play some of the stuff that rarely gets a live outing.

I’m REALLY looking forward to this and would massively appreciate your support.

If you can come along, please do. If you can share this blog, please do. If you can tell your family and friends, please do.

We’ve definitely sold enough tickets for a front row.

Would dearly love it if it wasn’t also the back row.

Tickets are £13 on this link:

https://www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk/events/joe-solo

Thanks everyone!!

So we stand once more on the imaginary precipice of another year, and as we kiss goodbye to the old one I’d like to wish each and every one of you all the best for the 12 months ahead. They may well come to define a generation.

We face challenging times for sure, but we must not let that turn us against ourselves.

We do that and we lose either way.

There are those who brought us to this point in history; and it is not simply those who voted a certain way in the EU Referendum but those who made our society so unfair, so unequal, so skewed in the favour of those at the top and for so long, that change became an absolute necessity. These are the people we should be directing our anger at; and yet if we continue down the path of 48% blaming 52% and vice versa, these same people are the only ones who will gain from it. We must unite and embrace whatever tomorrow brings TOGETHER. Only together can we build a future for ALL.

We need big hearts, yes, but big hearts alone are not enough.

Big hearts just mop up the mess after austerity, after casino capitalism, after those who put profit before all in our society. Those big hearts are essential, but we also need to fight back, to stand up for ourselves, to demand change and to support others in their various struggles to the same end. Only with both raised fists and helping hands can we move forward and beyond the current crisis. No change is coming. No good one anyway. Not unless we fight for it.

So 2019 may well be the most crucial year in our lifetimes. What happens, how it happens, and who pulls the strings will come to define us.

Let’s not be found wanting.

Tonight we celebrate.

Tomorrow we write the future on a tempting empty page.

Sharpen your pencils, folks.

And don’t be lost for words.

Joe

 

 

Well, that just about sees off another year and it seems only fair to pause and take it all in bearing in mind how twelve more months passed in a blur of mischief and mayhem at 100 miles an hour……just the way I like it.

Well it all began with the release of ‘Not On Our Watch‘, my 16th album and a record I remain phenomenally proud of; but in January something rather unexpected happened.

I wrote another.

During a couple of weeks R&R I’d read Brian W. Lavery‘s incredible book ‘The Headscarf Revolutionaries’, telling the story of the Hull’s Triple Trawler Tragedy and the subsequent grassroots campaign by a group of amazing women to improve safety aboard ship. I wrote the first song on February 21st and recorded the last one on March 22nd, and the album ‘Headscarves & Hurricanes’ was born. Course, it needed a few embellishments from Rebekah Findlay‘s amazing violin and a fantastic night in Leeds with Commoners Choir, but in essence it was done and the year was off to a cracking start.

The gigs came thick and fast and I sang everywhere from picket lines to Children’s Wards; for everything from strike funds to food banks and back again; and the madness hit: Hull, Manchester, Stockton-on-Tees, Ashton-under-Lyne, Market Weighton, Hartlepool, Leeds, Scarborough, Wigan, Croxton Kerrial, Rotherham, Filey, Barnsley, Dublin, Durham, Bolton, Wakefield, Oldham, Warrington,  Glastonwick, Doncaster, Mansfield, Southport, Bradford, Goathland, Glasgow, Llangollen, Huddersfield, Whitwell, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Chesterfield, Darlington, Cleethorpes, Skegness, Liverpool, Warsop, Stainforth, Glossop, Ulverston, Middlesbrough, Harrogate, Stourbridge, Grimsby and Scunthorpe…..many of them more than once…..and en route I had the time of my life. Highlights everywhere and too many to mention so here’s a few pics to sum it all up.

The third May Day Festival Of Solidarity was probably our best yet. Tony Wright and I had put together what we felt was a classic line-up, and the roof came off Old Schoolhouse in Barnsley so many times that weekend it was genuinely hard to keep up. Superb performances from all, but there were moments that brought tears to my eyes and tingles up my spine that I will remember forever. Again, the pics tell the story, but it was IMMENSE.

Everywhere I went I met amazing people giving their all for live music and for the cause of humanity, and that is the best thing about being out there on the road, the politics isn’t an abstract concept because you see it in action, you see how much people give for others, you see socialism in action away from the books, away from the dry text and the arguments over the small-print- you see real people helping real people through real troubles and it inspires in a way that nothing else can.

Whether that was an unbelieveable night at Stainforth Pit Club opening for Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott….

Or on the ‘Armistice Tour’ alongside the truly amazing Rebekah Findlay…

Be that in Edinburgh…

Glasgow…..

Dublin…..

Or Stainforth…..

You see it, you feel it, and you know it because it’s there beating in your chest and in the hearts of thousands of others. I love that. I never tire of it. Whether the gig is to 6 people or 600, the message is the same. The future needs us, and we’re good for it.

So from the handful of FCC workers whose strike won sick pay for 3000 people up and down the land…..

To the Unison choir bringing Xmas cheer to poorly children on hospital wards…

There is hope out there if you know where to look.

The trick is to never stop looking.

In June I FINALLY got that selfie with Mr Corbyn when I sang at the BFAWU Conference in Southport. It was a something of a rushed meeting, but I know he is 100% behind the work we are doing with We Shall Overcome which hit its fourth year in #WSO2018, and with Universal Credit being rolled out into more and more areas, causing poverty like never before wherever it lands, our amazing family of artists, organisers and activists were needed more than ever before…..and boy did they respond.

We added 208 more events to our grand total which will top the 1000 mark by the middle of 2019, and our best estimates tell us the help we will have raised for those at the sharp end of austerity will be close to half a million quids worth of food, cash, clothing, bedding, furniture, electrical goods, sleeping bags and tents; and on top of all that, Pauline Town‘s incredible work over in Ashton-under-Lyne has secured hundreds of people a future off the streets and into places of their own where they can dream of a fresh start. The hope this brings is immeasurable. Pauline is an absolute mountain of a woman and was rightly presented with a community award for her incredible achievements earlier this month.

Speaking of awards. September was quite a month.

I became the first non-famous person to be presented with the Gerrard Winstanley Gold Spade Award for Contributions to Socialism. The only other winners have been Tony Benn, Maxine Peake, Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach; so when I was handed this amazing plaque by my good friend and comrade Attila the Stockbroker at Wigan Diggers Festival, it was a truly magical moment.

But perhaps the moment that best summed up my year, and the amazing people who have made it so special, came earlier that day when I took to the stage amid driving rain and looked out on to an empty square as the crowds huddled in the beer tents for shelter. Thinking it was going to be a tough gig playing to an empty space, I set myself up and heard the introduction so I looked up, and there before me was a square full of people braving the weather to watch the show……and we made the rain stop!!

Unforgettable.

So that was the year that was. I have been tremendously lucky to have been the places I have been and met the people I have met. I know that. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to everyone, and it’s important to recognise that, to love every moment, and to appreciate the good fortune that brings stuff my way.

A massive thank you to everyone who supported both me and WSO throughout the year, either by coming to the gigs, buying the music, sharing the posts, making the posters, running the shows, snapping the pics…..or in the case of the amazing Sean Mcgowan at the RMT, making me cry by handing me a birthday cake and award.

I vow to fight on in 2019 and do everything in my power to live up to my promises, to fight the good fight harder than ever, and to be there for as many people as the road permits me.

We start with two new records….

a brand new May Day Festival of Solidarity.….

And more love and enthusiasm than ever.

Not bad foundations on which to build.

2019 here I come x