Sophie and Peter Johnston: News

I was recently contacted by a charming guy called Kurt Feldman from the US of A who is an appreciator of S&PJ's music & I really love what he's doing musically.
Check out http://www.thedepreciationguild.com/ & watch their wondrful 'dream about me' video.
He's also in another fabulous band called 'the pains of being pure at heart' try http://www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart I don't often go on about stuff but I think this guy's music & band collaborations are worth drawing attention to.
Let me know what you think.

Adios compadres,

Pete

Hi everyone and happy new year to one and all :-)Apologies to people who've tried to post messages on the 'guestbook' page over recent weeks/months and not seen their message appear. There's a simple explanation for this - SPAM. Unfortunately the guestbook has been fairly inundated with spam messages recently many of them commercial or unsavoury (or both) in nature so I put a filter wall up to block them. Sadly however this has also blocked the bona fide messages which of course are always most welcome and appreciated. I've just ploughed through the guestbook message folder & picked out & 'published' the genuine messages. Some of these are a few weeks old however so once again apologies to those concerned and we do very much appreciate all of your feedback.
All the best,

Pete

We now have a new batch of the 'best of 1983-97' CDs which is available again for order from the 'SHOP' page.

Hi everyone and a big thank you to all of you who've put up messages on the messageboard over recent months/weeks (especially Pablo! Hi Pablo). I'm sorry for not always being able to respond personally to them but I read them all, they all mean a lot to us & it's always wonderful to hear people's stories of how they heard Sophie's & my music, what it means to them, what they themselves are up to in their lives now, etc.

In recent months I've been concentrating on my celtic acoustic fingerstyle guitar 'Francis Campbell' material (see links page) as well as doing all the usual family stuff that having four kids entails! Sophie, meanwhile, has been upping sticks from London & moving with her husband & little girl to Birmingham which has been a bit more complicated than it might have been for them due to the state of the housing market etc. but they seem to be settling in to their new house fine.

As for future S&PJ plans there will probably be some action around the autumn - watch this space as they say.

That's it for now, hope everyone has had/is having a good summer!
All the best,

Pete

More self indulgent chatter and tittle tattle to add to the clutter in our already information overloaded lives.
http://sophieandpeterjohnston.blogspot.com/ There's also a link to it on the 'Links' page.

Thanks to Brazilian DJ Markus Marques who has been playing our music on his show (ALTERNATIVE MUSIC RADIO SHOW - see links page) & is going to devote one of the shows exclusively to our music.
Pete

The latest (2007) Sophie & Peter Johnston album 'Sophie & Peter Johnston' is now available for digital dowload purchase from a choice of download store outlets on the Shop page of this site.

A big thank you from Sophie & myself to everyone who came along to our gig last Saturday 12th Jan. at The Cumberland Arms in Newcastle & helped to make the evening such a success. Also thanks to Ollie the sound man & the manager & staff of The Cumberland Arms hostelry.
Our next gig is likely to be down in London, probably in a month or two's time. Will keep you posted!
Pete

Tom Robinson played 'Television Satellite' on his 2-hour 6 Music show 'BBC Introducing' which started at 12 midnight on Saturday 5th Jan. You can listen again (until Sunday 13th Jan) by clicking on this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/6music_aod.shtml?6music/6m_introducing . Our track is about 33 mins into the show. This is the email we received from Tom Robinson this morning (7th Jan.)
"Hi S&P
It was in the show last Sat - midnight is an insane time of day to listen
live but you can hear it via Listen Again this week until Sunday at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6musicintroducing - I couldn't resist using your audio
of John Peel as intro and outro to the track - I figured his endorsement
would mean a lot more to listeners than mine !
All best for 2008
Tom x"
Thanks Tom, we love you and a big thank you also to anyone who contacted his 'Introducing' show to recommend he play one of our tracks.

ALSO if you vote for your favourite track of Sun. 6th January's show (hopefully S&PJ!) here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/tom_robinsons_introducing/vote.shtml the track with the most votes by midday Thursday 10th Jan. gets played again on the next show! (only 1 vote per person allowed) So go on chaps & chapesses, you know it makes sense!

If any one of you lovely people out there feels like nominating a track from this site for inclusion on Tom Robinson's Saturday midnight -2am BBC 6 Music 'Introducing' show then here's the link from which to do it http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/tom_robinsons_introducing/recommend.shtml .
It's got to be a full track rather than a clip so I'd suggest either 'The High Ground' or 'Getting Lost Together' from this website (the URL of the page is http://www.sophieandpeterjohnston.com/music.html) or any of the 4 tracks on our MySpace page (URL http://www.myspace.com/sophieandpeterjohnston) .
Thanks folks! Pete.

As you've probably noticed from the home page I've recently dug up a couple of dusty old VHS videos with a couple of S&PJ tunes on from the 80s, learned how to convert them to digital format & posted their grainy contents up onto YouTube! Whilst these don't necessarily, in my view, give the best possible representation of our material from that era, they at least hopefully give some sort of flavour of what we were doing in those times.
Back to the present moment and our new album - I'm hoping to get hold of some video footage from our CD launch gig soon, a segment of which which will hopefully be joining the 80s video fragments on YouTube and bring things 'up to date' so to speak!
Well I'm off now to watch my team Newcastle Utd. try to regain some modicum of pride by putting in a decent performance againt The Gunners tonight.
Cheers for now folks,
Pete

Well that time of year is nearly upon us once more and bang on cue, as if by some strange coincidence 'Carols On Guitar' (an instrumental mini album of Christmas carols played by Pete on fingerstyle ambient electric guitar) has appeared on this very site & is available to buy now from the 'Shop' page.
There are a few sound clips on the Music page too so you can 'try before you buy'.
Happy pre-festive season!
Cheers,
Pete

Our thanks to all who attended the launch party for our new CD on Saturday 17th November at The Cluny in Newcastle which, happily, everyone we spoke to said they enjoyed. Special thanks to fans Duncan Watson, who travelled down from Dundee for the event, & Mick Joyce, who came up from County Durham with his son Brandon, and to all the venue staff who were very friendly & helpful. Also big thanks to Jim for the back projections, to Martin for filming the event, to Tim our brother for introducing us and to all our other family and extended family members & friends who gave us their support and some of whom travelled considerable distances to be there. Well done & thank you all!

We hope to possibly have a few clips from the launch up on 'youtube' in the not too distant future and there's also the chance of a promo video being made in the medium term. There are also other promotional ideas in the pipeline which I will endeavour to keep you up to date with as they materialize. Watch this space as they say!
Thanks again to everyone who came along and helped to make the event such a success.
Our next gig is at The Cumberland Arms in Byker, Newcastle on Saturday 12th Jan. 2008.
Cheers,
Pete

Sophie & Peter Johnston 'The Best Of 1983-87' CD is now available from 'Shop' on this site. For those people who remember the, now discontinued*, 3-CD anthology this new release is a kind of truncated version of that with, hopefully, most of the best bits of it's heftier predecessor.
A big thanks to those folks who've contacted Later with Jools Holland regarding S&PJ so far & to those of you who haven't - whadya waiting for? (see below for details) ... Actually I really hate being so pushy, it goes against my nature & feels deeply uncool but I'm constantly being told that this is the way you have to be 'in this day and age' to have any hope of your music reaching a wider audience such is the competition etc. etc. So, for the moment at least, I'm afraid you won't find me being too apologetic about it ..

(* possibly not indefinitely but certainly for a while yet)

No I'm not (sadly) about to announce our imminent appearance on said show (not yet anyway!) but... working on the principle that 'shy folks get nowt' coupled with a new found shameless self promotional streak (!) can I encourage anyone who would like to see Sophie and Peter Johnston on 'Later with Jools' to go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ (where you are directed from his personal website www.joolsholland.com to "suggest a band for the show") and recommend our good selves. Well if you don't buy a raffle ticket as they say! Thanks a lot guys.
Pete

The new 2007 CD is now purchasable online priced at £8.00 + £1.50 p&p. Get your copy now from the 'shop' page!
It will also become available over the coming weeks for download from i-tunes.

Calling anyone who fancies giving us a bit of a helping hand with pre CD launch party & new album release publicity - please drop me an email & I'll email you our press release & publicity photo. If you then wouldn't mind sending it on to any potentially interested publications in your area or which ever other possibly useful outlets you can come up with then that'd be cool. Also any other offers of promotional assistance/ideas gratefully received. Thanks folks!
Pete

The date & venue of the CD launch party/gig/event have just been finalized. It'll be taking place in the function room at The Cluny (other wise known as the Head Of Steam) in Byker, Newcastle on the afternoon of Saturday 17th November between about 12.30 & 4.00pm. It's officially a private function but it's intended to be informal and anyone with an interest in our music is more than welcome to come along.
I'll put links to the venue's website & a map for directions on the 'Links' page. We'll be playing a short live set will generally be available to fraternize & chew the fat with folks.

Also I've just uploaded some improved bitrate mp3 sound clips from the forthcoming album on the Music page including a couple of new ones. The higher bitrate means the samples take a bit longer to load but sound (hopefully!) clearer.
Cheers for now & hopefully we might see one or two of you at the launch!
Pete

We've just finished recording & mixing the new batch of tracks & I shall very shortly be posting up some audio clips & maybe a full track or 2. The new album, as yet untitled, won't be appearing here for sale in its finished form for a few weeks yet - I'm currently designing the sleeve (thanks for your offer to help with the design Andrew by the way but I think we'll be okay)& then there's the 2 to 3 weeks it takes for the manufacturing process.
I've also decided (mainly because of lack of time to print up CD-Rs and sleeve paperwork & the temperamental nature of the computer assigned to these tasks) to stop, at least for the time being, producing copies of the 3CD anthology.
However all is not lost as we are intending to release, along with the new album, a new condensed single CD compilation of, hopefully, the best material from the 3CD anthology package.
You may also notice popping up here in the near future a few new 'band' photos taken recently by our sister Julia. Thanks Jools!
Do let us know what you think of the new tracks in the guestbook and can we say a big thank you to all our followers & fans for your wonderful support.
Pete.

Our sincere thanks to Paul Hayward from Colchester and his younger brother who recently contacted me with a view to setting up a S&PJ MySpace fan site. Only the other day in fact. I gave the idea my approval and they've not been slow off the mark! You can see the results of their efforts at http://www.myspace.com/sophieandpeterjohnston .
Well done lads! And many thanks again. (the cheque's in the post, etc.)
Pete

Over recent weeks I've been busy writing some new songs on my laptop for Sophie to sing and it seems to be progressing okay (as far as I can tell!).
She's coming up to Newcastle (where I live with my wife & four kids) from London to record some vocals in a few weeks time. I've been using exclusively virtual/software synths and drum boxes for the writing and recording and it's all contained in the laptop. Quite a change from 20 years ago when there was bulky equipment and wires everywhere. However there were advantages to the ways of old & the new slimmed down hi-tech method is not without its (sometimes considerable!) accompanying hiccups as I'm finding out.
Nevertheless all roads lead to Rome, as they say, whether you get there by donkey cart or Ferrari.
The plan is still to make & release a 10-track album hopefully to be completed and available later this year.
That's all for now, I'll keep you posted on how things are progressing again soon.
Happy holidays!
- Pete

I'm about to begin writing a batch of new songs for Sophie to sing which will hopefully culminate in a new Sophie and Peter Johnston album. Release date either some time later this year or early next year (Feb. the something of which will be the 25th anniversary of our inaugural Peel session). I'll probably try to update the sound a bit. Try and keep the best elements of the early sound but also somehow sonically recognise the reality of where humankind is right now.
I was recently at the christening of Sophie & her partner Jim's baby Ava in London & Soph sang a tune at the ceremony & it hit me like a hammer that her voice was still sounding hauntingly sweet. Although we'd talked in vague terms before about 'reforming' & doing another record, or to quote the Cranberries debut album title "everybodyelse is doing it, so why can't we?", this was the clinching, epiphanic moment for me. Of course the warm and encouraging interest we've received from you our esteemed supporters via this site & through email contact over the last year or so has also been hugely persuasive.
I'll keep you posted as to how it's going over the coming months!
- Pete

Recordings from 1983 of the S&PJ tracks 'Discovery' (aka 'Rags To Riches') & 'Television Satellite' that had previously been deemed lost have recently been passed on to us by former BBC sound engineer & engineer of the recordings Martin Colley via Tom McCluskey. Many thanks Martin & Tom.
The 2 tracks are offered here for free download/streaming on the music page.

New to the Biog section - more recounting of the early years from former S&PJ manager Tom McCluskey.

As of today the 3 Sophie and Peter Johnston anthology CDs are available for online credit card or PayPal purchase. Click 'SHOP' on the menu.