"Green" man

In non smug-related news.

Watch this. It is Bonnie Prince Billy at the Green Man Festival performing “I See A Darkness.”

Now, a few things. Well, to start with, I was there.

That particular song was quite a special and memorable moment for me. As Will leans into the mic at the beginning and dedicates the song to Alex Neilson, and you hear someone whoop – yeah, that is me. Yep. That is me whooping. I’m good at it. I do it all the time at gigs. Many a bootleg has been ruined by the sound of my incessant whooping.

But this was no normal whoop. I was whooping because Alex Neilson is an old friend of mine (who used to drum in my old band years ago, sigh) and was lucky (talented) enough to have spent the summer touring Europe with Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney.

And there was my mate having basically one of my favourite songs ever, dedicated to him by the dude who wrote the song, while drumming for him! Shit.

Anyway, I don’t have much contact with Alex these days. He is a bit elusive, mostly because he never seems to carry a mobile phone. It’s that easy being elusive. Leave your phone at home. You can see how much people want to contact you. Of course, in most cases, people just get bored trying and give up. But I guess when you are hand-picking drummers for your band, you make the effort.