This week I have been asked to play a gig at The Golden Lion, Llanfynghafal, North Wales in aid of UNICEF Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and Touch Africa.

The organiser, Phillip Edwards is going to be joining 120 likeminded individuals, riding a motorbike 1000 miles off-road across Africa over 8 days, and wants to raise as much money as possible for the cause.

His EnduroAfrica page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Phils-EnduroAfrica/157703367603557

There will also be a Falcon display team, a BBQ and a bouncy castle for the kids, so there is absolutely no reason not to make a show at this fantastic event and donate to a good cause.

I will be playing a set late afternoon/early evening, and another musician playing later on, and look forward to seeing some familiar and new faces!

Please spread the word for this fantastic cause, which is set to be a great day all round for all in attendence, please Tweet, Facebook and share this so Phillip can raise as much money as possible for his cause.

If you haven’t heard me before, you can find my Album on iTunes and AmazonMP3, as well as tracks on Spotify, YouTube and google!

Thanks!
Isaac Birchall

Evening!

I am absolutely thrilled today as I not only had a full page, cover story write up in the Denbighshire Free Press’ entertainment section, but I also had picture of the week for the whole paper! Check it out (Clickable images for full-size).

Things seem to be picking up, the ball appears to have started to roll.

I woke up yesterday morning to an email from a Journalist who asked me if I wanted to do an interview for a feature on me in the Daily Post, I was thinking tiny footnote, a small mention in a much bigger article maybe, I never thought I’d wake up today to see this! Absolutely buzzing

(Click to Enlarge)

My demo album

“Welcome, I am.”

Is now available on iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Spotify!

Click here for the iTunes link!

Take a listen, and share!

Thanks

Well well!

Look who’s posting on his own website for the first time in about a bloomin year! Hope you’re all still out there!

About 3 months ago I got played a song by a new and very awesome artist called Clare Maguire, and I was absolutely blown away, this girl has all the makings of a pop-artists; great voice, great looks, great charisma, – and of course, the song, titled “Ain’t Nobody”.

Now, I have a habit of doing covers, but I really couldn’t do it justice as I strummed away to myself, so after leaving it a little while, I’m at my girlfriends house getting ready to go out, and I think it was Zane Lowe who played it on the Radio… twice.

Steph and I were just as dumbstruck as Zane and I’m sure thousands of other listeners were, this version was laid back, slow, low, bassy and so completely unique it was almost a different song – this was my kind of material for a cover, and so in tribute to two great acts – I picked up the acoustic and started playing.

A month or two later (and a couple of live tests of my cover), I have decided to record it, and to my suprise, it is now an official video response to Clare Maguire’s origional on YouTube!

To say I am honoured is a massive understatement, amazing, confused, perplexed, all understatements, all I do know is, that someone out there must like it.

So, I thank Clare Maguire and/or those in close contact with her who deemed my cover good enough to add as a video response, and I ask you all to go and have a listen, share over facebook and twitter if you can, spread the word!

Thanks, and take care

Thank you for looking and listening.

If you like, or you’ve got something to say, even if it’s just “Hello”, then please use the comments box below.

Previous comments:

Harriet King says:
November 24, 2009 at 1:04 am
Isaac I just found your album again I Love it
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Dorando says:
October 14, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Hey Isaac I love Empty Generation crackin’ song keep it up. Long live music!
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Anton says:
October 14, 2009 at 12:26 am
dude awesome songs as usual although why do you refer to yourself in the third person, are you implying your not there hehe
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Eleri says:
September 2, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Great music!Please keep playing!

I’m not used to being naked.

It’s the feeling that you’re totally exposed, and everyone can see all your little bits n bobs that are normally covered up by the blessing of clothing…

Luckily for me however, I was fully clothed for this gig, but still naked – musically that is. I’ve not done an acoustic set before, granted the gigs I do with acoustic in hand and mic in front are probably what some would call an “acoustic” set, but I’ve always had the comfort of my backing tracks to cover up any whoopsies I make.

I arrived at the Pentre club at around 7:30, after getting lost several times and having to ring my ever helpful father for help – half of queensferry & deeside explored later, and I pulled up at McLeans Pub in Pentre.

The stage area was pretty fantastic, the sound desk only mirrored this, so confident that tonights gig was going to be a goodun, I set about unpacking my equipment.

With the phone buzzing every so often with my also slightly mis-directed missus and her friends, I was still feeling confident when disaster struck. Now they say it’ll be alright on the night but as is so often the case, it wasn’t. Plugging my cable into the acoustic proved to be a little less than straight forward – the jack dissapeared inside my guitar, as did my heart dissapear into a black hole of sweat and “uh oh”s.

Luckily, one of the sound engineers had seen this a million times before, suggested I take my strings off and fish it out, lucky for me, it worked! Soundcheck continued.

I’m not too good at soundchecks if I’m honest.. when asked by said engineer to “Give me a yell”, all I could think to do was shout the word “Yell” several times down the mic… Hm.

Gig time approached, and I setup on stage, nice hot lights singeing the hairs from my fingers but by the same token drying the beads of sweat which seem to tag along whenever I get a touch nervous.

The gig itself wen’t pretty well, A nice mix of covers and my own songs seemed to go down nicely, and I’ll be honest I did quite enjoy the applause I got after covering Smashing Pumpkins epic “Disarm”.

20 minutes later, in what felt like just seconds, it was time for me to depart, exit stage right… which is just what I did, before being snapped back to reality by the promoter telling me to clear all my gear off the stage. Doh!

All in all I had a brilliant time, friends were there, the athmosphere was great and the sound quality was immense. Aside from completely forgetting the lyrics to my own song “Same”, and having to make the second verse up as I went along, I don’t think anyone noticed any of the other booboo’s I made whilst playing.

We caught a couple of the other acts who were fantastic, a great mix of young talented guitarists and singers, performing a variety of different music – seemingly much more confident than I.

So as for the nakedness, I’m looking forward to playing in my undies again, not too far in the future I hope!

Cheers to Dave Mounter the promoter for Panic Promotions for putting on a great night and the opportunity of playing!

It’s interesting, isn’t it – the way those invisible gremlins work…

You spend a considerable chunk of money on a car, it looks great, drives nice, comfort & style go hand in hand, it’s nippy, sharp, it’s a focus…

The day after you buy it the petrol pump breaks, then over the weeks, various essential engine bits go screwiff; your wheel almost falls off and your breaks don’t work anymore. Things are looking dull, but you manage to scrape through and sort them out – until you discover your exhaust is being held on with cable ties, soonafter someone unsufferably scratches all down the side, then in the midst of the highest petrol costs in years, you’re due an MOT with various failure points.

But this is all just water in the well really, these things do happen, far be it from me to blame the powers that be – car’s have long been accepted as so called dripping taps where our poor old british pound is concerned.

What I don’t enjoy however, is when those gremlins I mentioned come to life. Today, driving to Cheshire Oaks with a friend, I exclaimed that my car had been behaving recently, no gripes, no problems, I even said, outloud, that I wasn’t going to “touch wood”, as I wasn’t ready to tempt fate just yet.

Clever Isaac!

That was my cue to those lovely gremlins to have a touch of fun, and don above my nose those invisible sunglasses that completely switch my common sense and logic selectively off. It also seems to happen to those around me, again, somewhat selectively.

On the way back, we went via Demon Tweaks in wrexham, I needed to pickup two new full-beam headlights, the events that ensued have left me with little faith in the human race… however normal service should resume shortly.

After trying to comprehend a completely alien car-related language spoken by the bloke behind the counter, I simply exclaimed I wanted the “cheapest ones” several times until I was sold two bulbs, happy once again as Larry, I set out to change them.

Needless to say I’d been sold the wrong bulbs, hadn’t checked the existing ones to see if they’d actually blown, broke half the fuses in my fusebox, fixed them, broke more, fixed them, only to find after a good hour of fannying about that I’d been had.

Sad times, back tomorrow to get them changed, maybe I’ll keep quiet for the gremlins sake…

Hello and welcome to the website for Isaac Birchall!

You’ll find my music on the right, as well as my bio, and my blog which begins below.

Please note this website is undergoing a few changes at the moment, so you may not see it properly!