Awakening - New single out October 2

It's been an interesting time to write as there is so much going on in the world and so much to think about, in particular how I have grown up, the things I've been taught and the way the world around me has been shaped.

I am, like all of us, the product of my upbringing, the places I’ve lived, the family and friends around me, the media I consume, the lessons learned at school, in books and even comics. But the history we learn rather than experience, as a very old adage goes, is ‘written by the winners’, and as such, any uncomfortable truths and facts are buried, lost and polished out of existence. 

The last decade has been like a gradual ‘awakening’ for me, a realignment of knowledge and a lot of the foundation blocks that make up my understanding of life and society, and my place in it. This upcoming album 'The Death Throes of a Jaded Empire' explores some of this awakening, from my roots growing up in a fading Victorian seaside town to the growing realisation that a lot of what I have taken for granted as being truth is far from it in my little bubble of life. All I can do now is strive to relearn and restructure, question more, open my mind to new ideas and truths, and build new perspectives.

This song was written and recorded during lockdown for the forthcoming album 'The Death Throes of a Jaded Empire'. The song features the amazingly talented Hana Maria on violin, you can check her music out at https://www.facebook.com/hanamariaviolin/

This single will be released first on Bandcamp on Friday 2nd October 2020 https://jackcade.bandcamp.com/ 

Then to streaming platforms on 9th October 2020  

 

#jackcade #hanamaria #hiddenhistory #empire #thetruthisoutthere #openyourmind #antifa #blm #lockdownmusic #awakening #awareness #learn #historyiswrittenbythewinners

Jack Cade music in Blood From Stone movie

In 2020 I will fulfill a life goal in music. namely to have a song featured in a film. I have many goals in music over the years and have been lucky enough to achieve most of them.

In this case, it's particularly pleasing. When I was a teenager growing up in 70's Britain I was lucky enough tat my parents bought a small black and white TV. Primarily they had got it for the caravan in which we went on many great holidays. But when it was at home myself and my sisters got to use it in our bedrooms from time to time. Being the older brother (and having my own room) I think I dominated use of the TV in the late evenings. My favourite TV time was Saturday nights, lights out was less strict than weekdays and I would stay up watching films. 

 Two genres dominated, Spaghetti Westerns which were usually late night viewing in those days as they were 'so violent' and a particular favourite on BBC2 the horror movie double bill. These features were often old black and white films from the era of Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre or Hammer House with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and the like. I loved those films that followed traditional horror story themes of Vampires, Werewolves and Frankenstein, Mad Scientists, devilish Counts with the odd mummy, ghost and ghoul thrown in. There was also the dawn of the Zombie movie, still in it's infancy in those days , and for those times they were on the edge of gory and violent.

The 80's saw a surge in Horror films and a new wave of of horror variations, more gore and violence, cross overs into scifi and psychological based horror and the creation of specific horror characters like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason, Pinhead, Leatherface and more... Horror movies have never shown any sign of waning in popularity and never a week goes by without a new offering.

Vampires have always been a favourite with audiences and have spawned many variations and adaptations over the decades, building on traditional lore and new concepts and ideas. Now, I've realised a long term ambition and I'm stoked to have two songs chosen for the soundtrack of a new genre-defying horror, detective thriller, love story, Vampire movie 'Blood from Stone'. It is set amid the bright lights of a small gambling town in the Nevada desert, where Darya (Gabriella Toth) has escaped to a new life away from Jure (Vanja Kapetanovic) after centuries as his vampire bride. Drunk on the blood of his nightlife victims he finds her and makes himself at home amongst the tourists and lost souls. As the bodies pile up, the law comes for them forcing a clash of immortals where the only choices are destruction or creation, vengeance or forgiveness. 

The Jack Cade tracks used on Blood from Stone are 'The River' from the 'Jack Cade and the Everyday Sinners' album 'Lord of the empty Manor' and 'Roll With Them Punches' from 'The Everyday Sinners' album 'Shakedown'. Check them out on the website.

Blood from Stone is written and directed by Geoff Ryan, and looks visually, beautifully shot with brilliant performances from and extremely talented and strong cast. Originally slated for release in the Summer of 2020, due to the pandemic release schedules have been thrown into disarray, but it'll be out some time in the near future so keep a close look out.

Blood from Stone movie links:

You can check out the movie trailers here http://www.bloodfromstonemovie.com/

Follow on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bloodfromstone/

Keep up-to-date on Twitter https://twitter.com/bfs_movie

Or check out Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bloodfromstone_movie/

#horrormovie #thriller #lovestory #bloodfromstone #bloodfromstonemovie #vampires #theriver #rollwiththempunches #jackcade #blood #geoffryan #gabriellatoth #vanjakapetanovic #nikakhitrova #ericcotti #indierightsmovies #actiononcamera #sporkproductions

The New YouTube Guidelines

In the last week YouTube have introduced a strict policy on content shared on the platform, particularly with regard to hate speech, fake news, conspiracy theories and inciting violence.

In some respects this is a positive move, radical propaganda should always be challenged, particularly where it is so obvious. The difficulty lies in the fringes of this policy. Leaving aside that banning these people and channels doesn't necessarily tackle the underlying issues, and mainly forces them underground to resurface again somewhere else, the decisions being made are being applied in a stringent blanket approach, I suspect because there is too much content on YouTube for them to really check in any detail.

Last year I had an email from YouTube saying they had a complaint about The Everyday Sinners video for You Were the Ammunition. I guess I'm not surprised as A few comments had been left, which I responded to with detailed arguments, only for the user to delete there comment.

The song itself is a protest song, one of a few on the last album, it's inspiration was my exasperation at the growing number of politicians and people of influence who are using hate speech, division and any number of 'isms' to stir up violence and hatred in segments of populations. Encouraging them to come out and be openly attack people for there cultural, social or ethnic backgrounds. The rule of division.

In no way does the song glorify violence or call for violence, yet at the time of the complaint the video was removed.

Oddly some 6 months later it reappeared on the Collision Music account with a notice on it warning any potential viewers that explicit content was contained in the video and with the comments were turned off. This seemed rather odd, given the song lyrics, but then maybe the listener at YouTube interpreted them a different way, if in fact anyone did listen to it at all and it wasn't flagged using some form of algorithm. Also, the video was a cut together montage of news footage taken from various News outlets, all readily available to view on You Tube.

I have this week received another email from YouTube stating that the video is to be taken down completely now. However if you want to view the video and make up your own mind then it's available on the homepage of the jackcade.com website. Let me know your thoughts.

New Jack Cade album on the way...

Where does the time go, certainly not on me updating my blog, that's for sure.

As ever, it's been a while so here's a quick update. To be honest I've been more focused on writing and recording over the last 18 months than I have on social media and probably even gigging. The result is I have a new album set to be released this summer. It's entitled 'Bear Bones' and is a mix of acoustic led songs and full on band songs. It's taken a while to get there and I've written way more songs than I usually do for an album, 24 in total, which I have whittled down to 10 for this release. There will be some videos out very soon along with some tracks prior to the full album hitting the stores. The current track listing I can announce here is:

He Lies on his side

Little bag of tricks

When you come running

Dust

Four letter word

She got something to say

Sunshine King

Who will be the first to fall

Stripped

Moving on

Jack

In the studio to record a new EP

Hey All,

I'm excited to say that I am back in the studio with my band The Everyday Sinners in July.

We had our first rehearsal in a while last weekend, mainly down to me being focused on the solo album 'A Murder of Crows' over the last six months. But I'm back to song writing for the band now and have some new upbeat numbers ready to get down.

We're going to simplify the name from now on for all new releases, the name will no longer be Jack Cade and the Everyday Sinners, it'll just be 'The Everyday Sinners'. Anything released solo will of course come out under my name.

The EP will feature 5 tracks provisionally, 'Lawn of the dead', 'Belly full a fire', 'Ain't no shadows on the sun', 'My true love went across the sea' and a reworking of 'Everyday Sinner' from the first album. And I'm pleased to say that this release will be coming out on vinyl, that really puts a smile on my usually growling face.

Recording is happening down in Brighton and will feature a number of guest instrumentalists. The release date is set for the end of October, look out for more updates and info over the coming weeks. Check in on Facebook for the most up-to-date info.

Cheers for now
Jack

A Murder of Crows - the insprations behind the songs

 

 

A Murder of Crows - the inspirations behind the songs.

Hey folks

It's been so long since I published a post up on the blog that I thought it was about time I got my finger out and got writing. In my defence, as any unsigned artist will tell you, making music and putting it out there for you all to find takes around 10% of our time songwriting and 90% doing the things you need to, but don't always want to do, like getting gigs, get reviews and airplay, support our releases, social media, update loads of different web presences, create artwork and videos, rehearse and, for the most of us, hold down some kind of job that pays the bills so we can eat.

For me I enjoy most of the process, the mammoth amount of emails I send out to receive the odd reply is sometimes hard, but then hey, everyone out there who reviews, features or plays music out there is pretty much in the same boat as me. You do it because you love doing it.

Back in April my new solo album 'A Murder of Crows came out. In the short time it's been around it's got a some great reviews on a number of blogs and Magazines as well as airplay on a number of shows, which has been great. The question I get asked the most on radio interviews and at gigs, often by other artists is where do you get the inspiration for your songs. This has been asked more with the new album as the lyrical content is pretty dark. So I thought I'd write down a few notes to go along with the release, it may give you an insight into how I write. Of course you may just think I have a morbid fascination with all the bad things in life and spend to much time looking back.

So here are the basic backgrounds song by song

Yella Green Grass

Yella Green Grass is about one of those moments when the past blurs into the present, a moment when we hear or see a person from a past event associated with a place, and for that fleeting moment feel that it is real, before it slowly fades. This moment is set in a small park area on the hillside overlooking the river Medway in Rochester Kent, called Church Fields.

Dead Man's Shoes

I've always had a strong love of, in particular Spaghetti, Westerns, with there often similar themes of good versus bad, where the lines between the two are very blurred and almost hard to define.  A world where it's OK to be bad, if you are bad for the right reasons. The storylines and structures are always very similar but the characters are exaggerated to almost comic book extremes. A film I love which is, to my mind, like a British Spaghetti Western, starring Paddy Considine, is Dead Man's Shoes.

Hurricane

A song which charts the destructive nature of dealing with someone else's loss and depression and how this can tear down everything around you.

The seven lives of Thomas Lee

This song was inspired by a graphic novel that I have been working on over the last year about a character of the same name who is possessed by the spirits of 6 executed criminals from different historical backgrounds... hopefully this will be finished in 2016.

Reading Crack Whore

In the summer of 2008 I was walking down the Oxford Road in Reading, where I lived until recently for 12 years. It was a hot summers morning and the sun was beating on the pavement as I walked into town. From down the street I could here an angry argument in full swing, not unusual for the Oxford Road to be honest. This one however had an edge and a sadness to the words that I had to write down immediately into one of my notebooks that I always carry. I kept them for many years, not sure how I should use them. I have now used the words from the argument in the Chorus of this song as they are quite profound, in the way they are used, and the sad state that humanity can still get to in our 'enlightened' society.

The Last Sunrise

As I've mentioned, I love a Spaghetti Western and this song is inspired by that love. It tells the tale of the last day of a gunfighter. Spaghetti Westerns in particular feature an anti hero, someone who is bad enough to do what's needed but does it for the right reasons.

Broke Down Town

I spent many years living in the Medway Towns in Kent. It was badly broken when I first moved there, not long after the Navel dockyard had closed putting thousands of people out of work in the 80's. I still go back regularly and every time I do the town seems to have decayed that little bit more each time.

Lay Me Down

A song quite simply about the death bed and what it would be like to say goodbye to the one you love and realise that all the rest of what you have done with your life is unimportant compared to that.

Yesterday's Gone

In the mid 80's when I was at art college I got home to my digs and turned on the old black and white TV  to watch the news, within a minute of turning it on a picture of the drummer from my band was on the screen and the news reader was recounting the tragic death from butane gas inhalation of teenager David Poole. I had seen David only the night before at rehearsal, yet 10 hours after I'd last seen him he was no more. I lost a number friends as a teenager and it teaches you the fragile and uncertain nature of the time we have.

These have been quite brief descriptions on the subjects of my songs but I hope you got some insight from it.

Till next time.
Cheers
Jack 

To Purchase 'A Murder of Crows' use one of the following links (physical CDs are only available from our website or at gigs).

BUY Links for Album

Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01B6YTH0C

ITunes

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/a-murder-of-crows/id1079086952

Spotify

https://play.spotify.com/album/6zPQpl9uac8giAGeZ5xgSK

Apple Music

https://itun.es/gb/O9yuab

Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Jack_Cade_A_Murder_of_Crows?id=Bnv6mmxur4w5wd2ybvebxucmjqu&hl=en

CD Baby

https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jackcade

Dead Weight Walkin out now :-)

Hey Folks,

Today see's the start of a twelve month release of our new Jack Cade and the Everyday Sinners album 'Lord of the empty Manor' on Collision Music. Each month throughout 2013 we will release another track by the band via various digital platforms some free and some paid for. Along the way we'll be asking you to vote on a few of the tracks to be included on the album and at the end of the year we'll have a limited vinyl with CD release which will include hand printed covers, art, t'shirt and various other goodies we pick up along the way.

The first track out today, with its relentlessly thumping beat, is 'Dead Weight Walkin' an allegory for our times, born of the ongoing grind of recession, rising prices and railing against the greed of the few riding on the backs of the many, it is a theme truly in keeping with the historical heritage of the original Jack Cade, leader of a popular rebellion in the 15th Century, which bears a striking similarity to the situation we find ourselves in today. The Monarchy, Lords, Earls and land owners may have changed for Government, investment brokers and corporate business, but its still the mass populace that bears the burden when the hard times come.

The song is told through the story of five brothers and their lopsided, turbulent relationship, delivered in a deep angry growl and backed by some searing vocals from Helen and all underpinned by a rolling tribal beat and rhythmic bass line.
You can get Dead Weight Walkin' here:

CD Baby
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jackcadeandtheeverydaysi2

iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/dead-weight-walkin-single/id591125008

Google Music Store
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=jack+cade+and+the+everyday+sinners&c=music


Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Weight-Walkin/dp/B00ATZSX9Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358703597&s=dmusic&sr=1-1

Look out for the next release, a special free download on 14 February...