16/05/13 The Guitar Bar, Nottingham

Jake MorleyTour Blog1 Comment

There are three main reasons I chose Nottingham for my university:

– It was suitably far away from home to experience the thrill of moving out, but not so far when it came to that cliché about the washing.
– Me and my friend jack visited the campus on an open day. It was gloriously sunny so all the girls looked gorgeous. We sat on the grass next to the lake and the student union served us beer, even though it was an open day so we were quite obviously under 18. Jack found a fiver on the floor.
– It was meant to be good for law, which is what I’d applied for.

For the next three years we all played at being adults, doing things we thought adults did like stay out late in clubs drinking VKs and dancing to awful music. It was a playground of boys … Read the rest

13/05/13 Oporto, Leeds

Jake MorleyTour BlogLeave a Comment

Writing a new song is a bit like getting to know someone new. You start with only little superficial details and gradually get to cut the crap and find out what they’re like deep down. What are their true motivations? Where have they come from? Are we going to get on?

For example I’ve got a new song called Falter. For months the music evoked something in me, a sort of sadness, but I ignored that and wrote the lyrics about other things like the joy of repetition or people who don’t stop to think before they act.

Eventually as I got to know the song more, I realised all this was like putting a suit on a surfer dude, or a hippy tie-dye t-shirt on a goth – it just didn’t fit the personality right. I stopped fighting it and let it be who it wanted to be, which … Read the rest

11/05/13 Bucks Student Union, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

Jake MorleyTour BlogLeave a Comment

For you or me it might be unusual to stand on top of a woman lying on a bed of nails whilst you play the saxophone. Well, not if you’re part of Slamboree, the raucous DJ/live band/circus party band. At one point backstage a juggler was teaching me to throw a hat correctly to land on my head whilst a rip-to-remove velcro dress was being tested out 2 feet away. I needed all my concentration skills for that one.

That’s right, to quote a line on the new Paper Aeroplanes album (out this week – double underline), I might run away with the circus. Really I might. Ever wondered why running away with the circus is such a cliche? (God what is it with quoting paper aeroplanes songs today…) It’s because they know how to have a good time.

We’re at Bucks New Uni’s end of the year … Read the rest

09/05/13 The Angel, Woodbridge, Suffolk

Jake MorleyTour Blog1 Comment

I ain’t gonna lie, there have been times over the winter where I’ve thought “Is this really worth it? These new songs are rubbish.” Ah hello self-doubt! It’s like the friend who just puts you down and you wonder why you’re still friends with, but sometimes pushes you on to work harder and be better.

This past winter, when wrestling with a particularly difficult song, I would sometimes imagine packed-out, storming, successful nights like this one in Woodbridge just to taunt myself about how far away from all that I was. “Ooh these new songs are your best” people would be saying at my imagination gig while I looked down at yet another page of rejected lyrics.

Oh, if only old me could have seen new me at this gig! It was such a banger! And the new songs were at the heart of it. What a relief.

Looking back, … Read the rest