Dead Man Fall

Was great to be back on stage at ButeFest on Saturday. In fact it was tremendous. We were away for longer than first planned. You know it's been too a bit too long when people ask ye "what's happening with the band?" or "is the band still together aye?" In the lead up to playing the Barrowland Ballroom last year we took the decision that we wouldn't arrange any gigs for a while after it. There was a few reasons for taking our wee hiatus. Three out of four of us had become dads to young Izzy, Angus and Lani, so stepping back from gigs seemed like a sensible move. The new additions to the DMF young team are now around a year old, up on their feet, and keeping us on our toes. While we were away from the gigs we thought we need to get some new tunes into the set. When you're working full- time, and in a band part- time it's easy to get stuck in a rut playing the same set all the time. This allowed to get the new songs off the ground. Most people know that we had our attempts to get to the America for appearances on both The Late Late Show in Los Angeles, and and at a later date Firefly Music Festival in Delaware. On both occasions we were knocked back for our visas. What most people don't know is that in the background we had also signed a contract for a project in to take place in both Los Angeles and Scotland (which was a BIG deal for us). But due to legal wrangles and a breakdown in communication this fell through. This was after six- seven months of negotiation around music law and contracts and ended up being a bit of a facemelter to be honest. The story of what went on there is probably for the Dead Man Fall book and we'll keep that to ourselves for now. After that we probably needed to go away and (belatedly) get that out of our system, with the amount of effort and disappointment that involved. Nobody's ever really explicitly said that in the band, that's probably just my opinion. Or maybe I needed to get it out of my own system. Anyway Saturday at Butefest was brilliant!...we played a stormer of a set to a busy tent, and included a couple of the new songs- Overhang, an 8 minute dance groove. AO which sounded massive! (AO might still be a working title of that one though, as my wee one Izzy has just started to watch the teletubbies....) We even had people queuing outside the tent to get in on Saturday. Aye alright there was only about 10 people in the queue, it was pissing down, and the queue only lasted about 30 secs until people moved to let the people in the queue into the tent. But we'll not go into those details too much in future The gig at the weekend was just what we needed. So it's safe to say we're back. We've got a new song to bring out in October and a Glasgow launch gig to accompany it. We should be announcing something soon. Our next gig is [email protected] on Sat 14th September. If you've not been before have a look at the poster in the comments below. It's cracking three day indoor festival and the line up is top notch! Des /DMF

Our set at ButeFest was most triumphant. Wyld Stallyns x

BUTEFEST If you’re heading to ButeFest this weekend make sure you come see us on the 2nd Stage at 19:10 knocking out this classic as well as our version of “My Lovely Horse”. DMF x

A photo of us from the studio last night work on a new song.... V x

🏄‍♂️ Live at Troon 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We're back doon to [email protected] later in the summer. Saturday night. Two cracking venues in the one building. Delightful! DMFx

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🌴Butefest 2019 🌴🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We're playing ButeFest again this year. We're in a tent later on the Saturday evening. If you're going, or gonna be there, stick your head in. DMFx

“I WONDER WHAT’S HAPPENED TO DEAD MAN FALL” Yes we know, we’ve been quiet. Oh so bloody quiet. We also know you all gaze out the window thinking “I wonder what’s happening with Dead Man Fall” but we are definitely doing stuff...such as getting scooped at Fraser’s (from our splendid Brass section who paper over our cracks) wedding the other night....so BIG congratulations to Fraser and Gillian! But we have also been doing what Dead Man Fall do best, toiling to the point of despair with new songs for months in the studio and going through the rollercoaster of emotions that is the creative process. We’re not in the studio as much as we’d like to be simply due to life, families, jobs, Love Island, so it can take us a while to come up with new material that we feel is as good or better than what we have done before, otherwise what’s the point. In a band you can have a great night in the studio, leave buzzing from a simple idea, work on it the next few weeks, hit a wall with it, get scunnered with it, then everyone’s a bit demoralised and it gets tossed aside. Does every band go through this? We often record a lot of ideas on our phones in the studio. It’s a great way of capturing ideas in the moment. Only recently after much frustration in the studio, bereft of ideas, and looking at each other blankly, we were done. We had spunked our creative load. There was nothing left. It was desperate. “Can we not just do a 10 minute reggae version of Bang Your Drum and put that in the set?....I don't think people will even notice.” No Des, we can’t. Maybe next year. As a final desperate search for creativity we thought we’d give it one more try and listen to some of the ideas on Gareth’s phone that had been tossed aside many months ago. Praise Jesus that we did! It turns out that idea that we had toiled with for months, then binned because we couldn’t work out where it should go next, didn’t actually have to go anywhere next at all. Who’d have thought it!? Within two weeks we had crackin’ new song and all was well in the Dead Man Fall camp. So that’s why things take longer and we haven’t gigged as much. We’ve been toiling and nobody toils better than Dead Man Fall. So there’ll be no more looking out the window wondering what Dead Man Fall have been up to. We’ll be back. As well as Butefest we have some more gig news to announce soon. #NEVERGIVEUP Dead Man Fall xx

***HOME RUN*** We had a message on our Andy Warhol video on Youtube yesterday from a girl saying that she was at the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball match at the weekend, and our Andy Warhol track was used on one of their videos on the stadium’s (PNC Park) big screen. She liked the song so much that she put it through Shazam to find the track and that’s how she found out about us. This isn’t rounders people.....this is Major League Baseball! We don’t really know anything about baseball because we’re Scottish, but it’s safe to say we’re now hardcore Pittsburgh Pirates fans. ‘MON THE PIRATES!!!! DMF x

Dead Man Fall

Three of us are in these absolute belters from first year in High School. Big Vinnie isn't in these as he was in the year above the rest of us. He was no doubt waiting outside the hall, to take our lunch money off us and buy Panini fitba stickers with it. Two of us are sitting beside each other talking about forming a band when we're older. The other is far too happy to be at school. 😀 Happy Days! DMFx

Dead Man Fall

⚡️⚡️ LIve At Troon ⚡️⚡️ We're delighted to be asked back to [email protected] for it's Tenth Year celebrations later in the year. It's a brilliant line-up over three days of Music. Check out the full schedule through their page below. 👇 Cheers Folks! 😀 DMF xx

Next Saturday we're back playing live at Rockerbie Music Festival. First show since since playing the Barras last September. We've heard about it from other bands and seen the great line ups over the years so good to be involved in this one! While we've been quiet on here and most of our social media, we've still been in the studio working away on new songs. One of the tunes is 8 mins 30 secs long, the plan is to keep adding sections onto it until it reaches 25 mins, then we can we release it as an EP. We've another couple of announcements shortly and we're planning on our Glasgow single launch later in the year. DMF x

We'll be back and heading down to Rockerbie Music Festival on Saturday April 13th. The organisers are looking to put on a bus from Glasgow if anybody fancies a wee day out to the Borders? Tickets are £10 plus booking fee. Line up includes The Ronains, The Well Happy Band, More From Jim, Easy Skanking Crew and Trident. Bus tickets will enough to cover the cost but will depend on numbers. Let us know if you fancy jumping down on a vengabus in the comments below. DMFx

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM DEAD MAN FALL!!!! Thanks to all our lovely followers and friends for support and coming to see us. We’d like to say 2019 will be amazing for everyone, but it’ll be shit won’t it? The world is currently mental and things will probably get a whole lot worse before they get better. The good news is though that our first gig of 2019 will be at Tina Turner’s Thunderdome in May! So let’s have it! DMF xx

Merry Christmas to one and all!!!! Have a great Christmas from Des, Kev, Gareth and Vinnie. Please spare a thought at some point today for those less fortunate.....like Kevin Spacey’s agent. Poor bastard. Have a good one! DMF xx

On this day we had 40 odd celebrities jumping about to our song!....and we got a US Itunes NO 1!! Twice we tried to get to America, and both times red tape and paperwork prevented us from getting there!! We also were meant to get over for another project but there's another story to that we'll share with you sometime. Anyway nobody can take a getting a No1 in the US away from us! We'll be back.....in the springtime! Keep Bangin' On! DMF✊👊 xxx

O V E R H A N G D M F X X

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD I’m sure I’m not the only one who saw this last night on BBC 2, but thought I’d post about it to recommend it to anyone who didn’t see it or hasn’t heard of it. They Shall Not Grow Old is a Peter Jackson documentary that’s taken old archive black and white WW1 footage from 100 years ago, cleaned and touched up the footage, colourised it and added in frames so that everyone’s not walking like Charlie Chaplin. They also added in sound and after getting lip readers to try and work out what people might be saying, speech was overdubbed by actors. Over the top of this are veterans talking (i think taken from interviews in the 60s) about the terrible conditions and experiences. It’s a stunning documentary and the footage is incredible. It’s also crazy hearing the veterans talk so matter of fact about how horrific it was on the Battlefield. It’s pretty graphic and heartbreaking but an incredible piece of TV. It’s available on iPlayer so won’t be available for long. Get it watched. Christ, our generations have been pretty spawny. V x DMF

Some Saturday morning brilliant tuneage for your ears. A Soulwax remix of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Deadly Valentine. It’s like Air, Daft Punk, Another One Bites The Dust and The Warriors theme all rolled into one....and I love it. Enjoy! V x DMF. https://youtu.be/wISc326_7OM

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! DMFx

We've not put much on here since we played Barrowland Ballroom. We've decided to lie low for a while and work on new tunes for 2019- not just for ourselves but to keep it interesting for people who come to see us regularly. That means for the second year running, there will be no Christmas gig. We've had a good few people asking about this. We know it's really just an excuse to squeeze in another festive boozing session- save your babysitting tokens until next year! Anyway I read Vinnie's post after the Barras which left me with a wee smile on my face after the event. I hadn't realised that Vinnie's Mum and Dad had met in there. It made me think of Back to The Future, and that If Vinnie's Mum and Dad had never met at The Barras, then Vinnie would have never existed to have played at The Barras. Mindblowing! We had a great time playing FIVE festivals last year: Shuffle Down Festival, Kelburn Garden Party, ButeFest, MugStock Festival and [email protected] and we plan on playing even more next year. If there's any festival you think we should be playing, want to see us at, or want to let them know about DMF then tag away in the comments below. 👊👇 We've got a new Single 'Stand Up' recorded and mastered, which we'll be launching early in 2019. Talking of New songs we're thinking of recording an EP or maybe even an Album! The Album would probably involve putting a new batch of songs together with some of the more well known DMF songs and calling it an Album. This can be controversial as some people say "Aye you cannae call it an Album if it's not all new tunes" Others say "If you're a DIY band then it's quite acceptable to put songs that are 3 years old on it. People just want to have your best body of work on one Album." I've just totally made they quotes up, but it's along they kind of lines! Anyway let us know what yous think in the comments again. 👊👇 Jamming the other night on one of the new ideas. It's quite dancey, so we got the strobe lights on. Got to get into it!! Des/ DMF x

THE BARROWLANDS So last night we played the legendary Barrowland Ballroom as part of Musicians Against Homelessness and it’s safe to say it was a bucket list moment for me. I was the only one who hadn’t played it so it was another amazing personal moment from being in this brilliant band. The Barras being not only mine, but a lot of other people and bands favourite live venue in the world. The Barrowlands has been a big part of my life. My mum and dad first met at the Barrowlands many years ago when it was the actual ballroom, then I was never out the place as a teenager in the mid 90s at the height of Britpop. I was at my first ever proper gig at the Barras. When I say ‘proper’ I mean the first gig you go to with your mates and just lose yourself in it. My first ever actual gig was Gary Glitter at the SECC back in the times when unsuspecting parents would take their kids all to see Gary Glitter Live around Christmas time, but that’s for another post and possibly a psychiatric session. So my first ever proper gig was seeing Supergrass in 1994 after convincing my parents to allow me to go. I remember the unbelievable atmosphere, getting drenched in sweat and thinking ‘this needs to be my life now’. After that I felt like I was there all the time. My mate Japes and I still talk about the time we were at 5 gigs in the one week with all but one being in The Barras. I’m sure it was The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, The Charlatans and The Bluetones at the Barras with Happy Mondays at the SECC. The stuff of legend and I can’t quite understand why a statue of us hasn’t been commissioned. So massive thanks to everyone who came along last night and not only to see us but also helping to raise money for charity. We were worried there wouldn’t be anyone there at that time so it was great to see so many people there and thanks for giving us a great reception. If it’s the first time you’ve seen us we hope you enjoyed it. Sorry if you came along to see us and missed us due to the time but it was outwith our control. We only found out last week and the way Facebook controls posts now you may not have seen our time-slot posts pop up on your timeline. Last night was also our last gig until well into next year so no Christmas gig unfortunately. Of course if someone like Arcade Fire call then we’ll consider it. We’re going to take a back seat from gigging to work on new tracks, record, apply for festivals, plan next year and come back even better. We’ll make sure we have a big gig to come back with. So thanks again everyone and thanks to Ryan Ayris for his great photo! Vinnie DMF xx

A reminder to anyone that’s wants to see us on Saturday at the Barrowlands (honestly, why wouldn’t you!?) we’ll be on at 6.15pm so you’ll have to get down early! See you there. DMF x

THE BARROWLANDS TIME-SLOT If you’ve bought tickets to come and see us at next week’s Musicians Against Homelessness gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands, we’ll be kicking things off at 6.15pm so you’ll have to get there early if you want to catch us! Doors at 6pm. DMF x