Justin Currie

I can’t get a handle on Christchurch. There are old-time trams on freshly laid tracks. It looks like a…

The plane descends over what looks a heavy Tasman Sea into a thick bank of cloud covering the land…

I have a stormy sleep and wait in the morning for an interview that never happens. I tap at…

Heading out to St Kilda from the airport we hit our first traffic jam of the trip. We skirt…

I have an epic sleep – 2AM through to midday with only one stop for defuelling. I potter about…

I have a patchy nap after the long morning of circadian chaos. At 1PM I make plans. I’ll head for…

The jet zips up from the scorched runway into the limpid blue. We climb out over the St Vincent…

After the second show I walk down to the river around midnight. A city of two million people and…

We reunite at arrivals with our long lost colleague, Skip and are quickly at the hotel. It’s balmy out,…

After a luxury repast I get horizontal for the rest of the flight. Having put my watch on WA…

We re-lounge at Heathrow, surrounded by the snooty, the successful, and the sordid all wheeling their valuables around the…

Long haul. The start goes smoothly. Guitars, packed two to a golf bag, are weighed and spirited away on…

I sit in the back lounge listening to Sky and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On until…

We all sleep fractiously after a late leave and a lot of stopping. I slouch off the mothership into…

I don’t sleep much after 2AM so read until 6 when I finally slip under. I charge off the…

We’re late arriving after getting stuck at the Norway/Sweden border in the middle of the night due to a closed…

The bus brings us into town. This is not the Oslo I remember. It’s all gleaming towers in the…

Like yesterday the venue is nowhere near anywhere. I sniff the air outside the bus. Cool, overcast, intermittent cats…

This is all I saw of Stuttgart.

I peer out of the back lounge window. Dark clouds torn and tattered stir around the sky. Downstairs I…

There’s a milky green canal two feet from the door of the bus. I edge tentatively along its edge…

I’m sitting in my usual seat in Glasgow airport in a quiet corridor just beyond the scent and shades…

I roll out of my air-con coffin around 1 after a long sleep broken by the odd rattling noise…

The tour bus is waiting for us in a bay right outside Terminal 5. It’s a double-decker with a…

Andy, Jim and I sit gossiping in a taxi, keen to be back at work, preparing ourselves…

I’m to be limo driver this morning as the Glasgow taxi landscape has become increasingly unpredictable since the pandemic…

I was going to start this sentence with the word “so” but I caught myself just in time.…

Our propeller plane glides southwest down the Firth of Clyde to land with a gentle bump at George…

Just three of us sit in the little van taking us south from dreich Glasgow to (possibly) sunny Durham.…

I sleep till one thirty and head out to meet a friend at the Hall of Fame.…

I’m sitting outside a pizza place situated at an oblique X-shaped intersection and gazing over heavy traffic to a…

Burly workmen carry me from my station to a high wall where, in a horrifying initiation ceremony, they mount…

We have a food poisoning casualty in the shape of Iain, who only barely makes it back on for…

I stir at sunrise and sit in the front lounge as the bus pulls into the leafy campus of…

Before we leave for Alexandria at 3AM we drop into the Red Lion opposite the gig where a five…

I cannot muster the enthusiasm to emerge from my cotton sheet cocoon until late afternoon. I make out for…

The dreaded day off, day of the dead. I open the curtains of my room on the 16th floor…

In Milwaukee I spend a few hours catching up with Bobby T, an original eighty-sixer and friend. We have…

I drop down from my bunk around 6AM, rosy-fingered dawn spreading across the plains. Gary the bus driver pulls…

I have a rough night of it on the bus. Sleep will not swaddle me, it just claws me…

We’re off at 9AM to Utah and after a brief stint in my coffin I make bus coffee and…

BOY-see not BOY-zee says Wikipedia. Well, the streets are immaculately clean and everyone exudes that rural hospitality so typical…

Today we drive by day for the first time and I stretch out on the leather upholstery of the…

I drop down from my bunk around 10am. There’s a foul odour in the air. Gary, our trusty driver,…

Back we come overnight from Phoenix to a sodden Hollywood for an early morning check-in prior to the…

After the Canyon Club show we say hi to some old friends in the parking lot before the…

Good morning Hollywood. I crank up the window blind to a foggy scene right out of Chandler. There’s…

The device chirrups at my ear and I click into staring consciousness. It’s 3:30AM. I scrape some marmalade…

I draw back the heavy woollen curtains and sunlight streams in like honey. The harbour lies gleaming below my…

Blue, blue as an egg, the sky says spring and my watch says go. I don my two small…

We park up outside the front of the Guildhall and head to catering to discover our chef Sarah has…

On arrival I chuck my stuff in the room and get out for a wander. I take the canal…

A few powder puff clouds hang in a limpid sky and a raptor sails over the first of the…

In Inverness to Perth

After scran I take an amble through the twilight along the river Ness.…

We angle northwest through Aberdeenshire’s rich pasture, autumn a little more advanced up here, patches of foliage coloured…

We are debating when we might have played in the granite city last. I wager it was the Music…

I sleep poorly therefore sleep in. But I have my packing honed to a military efficiency and…

I wander off in early afternoon, sniffing out a few local recommendations. The first thing I do…

In the early evening I walk south along the waterfront, the Welsh hills pale in the distance…

The milky light leaks around the hotel room window blinds and I toy with getting out for a stroll.…

We head straight for the stage door, leaving hotel check-in for later. I scope out the venue and find…

We’re on a day trip to the outskirts of Wigan. Seven days of rehearsals done, we’re decamping south to…

And off we set a second day, the weather still madly midsummer. We discuss some changes to the…

Here’s a white van, glinting on my street, three rows of seats, side door open. We enter the…

PROMO DAY 2

To the bathroom, to the bag, to the cab to the radio. Virgin is…

Eebs arrives at the flat at 9am and we commence loading acoustic instruments into the vehicle, which closely…

“I really don’t know if there is hope beyond the black hole; if there…

I’m driving northeast to Nairn, where I am appearing as an unannounced guest at their beer festival. It’s a pub…

I’m playing a “songwriter-in-the-round” charity event in Edinburgh with Ricky Ross, Karine Polwart and old friend Gary Clark. It’s taking…

We may lose contact soon.

Everything’s gonna be alright.

So to London, choking snakepit of billionaires. Our abode is way uptown, a barren tower in a morass of roads…

I’m sitting on the seafront basking in the sun. My bench has a plaque that reads: “FAY HARRIS 1921 -…

Bristol, goodbye. Not a cloud to be seen, October at its most beautiful and here we sit, strapped to our…

We approach Bristol from
the south, passing black lakes of solar farms. Portishead lies out to the west, a few ships…

We grab some scran on the way out of Cardiff and are soon cruising across the Severn bridge stuffing our…

Farewell Holiday Inn, sterile lodge on the edge of town. Today’s route takes us directly south along A-roads edging the…

We arrive at our hotel outside Chester in good time. There are a few hours of daylight left so I…

We snake towards the motorway through Yorkstone villages, passing a vast estate. The aristocracy are everywhere, like rats or Nando’s.…

I make my own way back to the hotel after the Glee, amazed to find no restaurants open after 11…

The infernal chirruping of my phone alarm pokes me into resentful consciousness. It’s 11am but I could cruise the halls…

Suitcases packed in the back of the Grey Toupee, we build up to escape velocity. England is beckoning. We pick…

I come to in my own bed, not yet fully on the road. I set the kettle on its plastic…

As soon as we are on the road Mr. Nisbet christens our vehicle “The Grey Toupee” after a gentleman’s club…

Our hotel is a ’70s brown brick building refitted to resemble an art-deco ocean liner. So I went out roaming…

White cumuli hang lazily in a milky blue sky as we angle up to Merseyside. Everywhere about us there must…

I investigate my face in the bathroom mirror, pink and pillowy like an eleven-year-old girl’s bedroom. I should put a…

I wake up in the dark cocoon of my 70s hotel and draw back the vinyl shades to reveal a…

The lid of doom is clamped on the country and a porridge of grey prevails. Summer’s over, boys or maybe…

TO PERTH

Oh, shit – the sun is shining, shining down on all of bonny green Scotland. What does this portend?…

https://youtu.be/1h3vS9di0mE

With the encroaching cynicism of middle age, episodes of excitement become increasingly rare. Perhaps a trip to some unvisited country…

This masterpiece of meh can be retrieved from here in physical form: https://justincurrie.tmstor.es/

And here in bits: http://apple.co/2naovtO

And from the tax…

Tickets on sale 9:00am on Monday 15th May

See Parades for details.

I have had a “single”. It’s called Failing To See and it weighs a ton. Here’s a video featuring people…

Perth want me to punt this:

http://www.perthfestival.co.uk/event/justin-currie/

Consider it punted, Perth.

https://youtu.be/MtAAzMV47BY

https://youtu.be/m4mePqzm5tE

Good moaning. I take great pleasure today in announcing the pre-release (whatever the fuck that is) of This Is My…

Link to high-budget video. Directed by Steven Seagull.

https://youtu.be/ab-jjL6fWo0

Just added some dates in May/June to support the forthcoming release of This Is My Kingdom Now on Endless Shipwreck…

After four nights in the same hotel in Leeds it’s refreshing to be back…

At last we escape the clutches of the country club with its therapy pool and veneer of hushed sympathy. I…

Heave-ho, we head out of Bury, swinging round the sugar factory which belches white…

By the time we hit Bexhill the warm southern wind is whipping off the channel in swiping gusts. We hear…

We start at ten. The gear goes in the back, the boys go in the front and we get on…

We load into the van at eleven for the seven hour drive to LA,…

Another morning, another fucking beautiful day, still in Texas. But not for long. The route out of El Paso hugs…

Texas is a different world, an unimaginable place in, say, Manhattan. It sits culturally…

In the afternoon of the show I hook up with old friends the Kresses…

We leave the Twin Cities early and are…

We cross the Mississippi four times, once in, once out and twice in the…

Why do we wave to people on boats? I’m sitting under a high sun…

We escape the clutches of the city early in the morning, all the heavy…

We take a leisurely amble down the 95 to Philly and seem to drive…

Around lunchtime I take a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge dodging through the streams…

Onward up the eastern seaboard we go, the weather consistently glorious. Virginia, Maryland, Delaware,…

I awake to the tragedy of my own people rejecting radical change to cling…

We are out of Cleveland by 9am, pale blue skies above. There are three…

I am sorry to be leaving Nashville. After last night’s show a pleasant bevy…

We lift out through thin fog and reach over Islay’s inner seas, the island…

Still tickets left for this show here:

http://www.citywinery.com/newyork/justin-currie-4-22.html.

Hallo good people of USA. Here’s a quick update on the upcoming tour. It’s all up. For debate. Firstly I’m…

In the morning I peel back the flimsy curtain and glimpse the…

I am standing at the stern of an enormous ferry staring out…

Here are my tracks of the year, 2013:

Small Plane by Bill Callahan
Black Tambourine by Withered Hand
Avant Gardener by Courtney…

I come burning out of the JPR Management Christmas party in a…

Being the dick that I am, I pride myself on passing pointless…

WOMEN!!
WOMEN WANTED IN GLASGOW FOR VIDEO SHOOT!!!

Women, I need your help. Next…

I am again suspended in the air on a fourteenth floor looking…

Everyone’s face is crippled with displeasure. The slanting rain and the callous…

And we’re off to Harrogate with two hangovers in the van. Long…

The fair city of Edinburgh is warm in the morning and I…

Come morning I’m back out on the balcony again, sunning myself like…

We haul out of Cambridge through desultory drips of rain. I have…

The broken white lines stream towards me like tracer fire, England in early autumn slides past the van’s windows all…

As the transfer window closes I find myself sitting in the manager’s office, gold Montblanc in hand, staring down at…

Lolling in bed.

LOL

Out today like a goddamn plague, like a mass escape from the asylum.

Amazon: http://amzn.to/178Q3Tk
iTunes: http://smarturl.it/lowerreaches…

I’ll be selling my ass on Thursday at HMV, Buchanan Street in…

On with Tezza, 11am Radio 2, Sunday 18th singing live with Stu

.

After an arduous soundcheck trying to fit eleven lines into…

I wake up in a pleasant little hotel in a sleepy village…

My cabbie offers me a pellet of chewing gum, perhaps reacting to the reek…

For I shall be a-whoring, next Thursday the 22nd at HMV, Buchanan St, Glasgow. Singing and signing on the week…

Member of Hitler Youth watching Coronation Street during half-time of Celtic game.

—More Bilge

Download this for free now at http://justincurrie.com/little-stars-download
New album Lower Reaches released 19th August. Pre-order it and a signed lyric…