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So during lockdown this year I realised I was one of those irritating people who were doing loads of creative things with my free time- I finished a whole lot of old half-finished songs from way back when, and I wrote quite a few poems and songs- a lot of which centred around new beginnings, regeneration, rebuilding and recycling… partly as an expression of my hope that we might come out of the Covid crisis with a vision to bounce forward and find a new normal rather than just go back to “business as usual”, and partly just because for about three months we were all largely stuck inside and it was just very repetitive. But anyway, I’ve collected together enough new material together that this Autumn I’m planning to publish it in a little booklet entitled “Recycled”. It’ll be mostly poems, but with links to a couple of songs which I’ll put on YouTube.

Also going on to YouTube at some point in August/September will be some of the material I at my recent online gig, “Wanted: Superheroes”: so anyone who missed it or found they couldn’t log in will be able to hear some of the new songs I’ve been writing and performing.

… is the provisional title for my next online concert on zoom, on Friday the 31st of July, 8-9pm British Summer Time (log in on zoom from 7.30). It’ll be another collection of comedy songs and poems: there will be a few old favourites, but I’ve been writing quite a bit of new stuff since lockdown started, so there’ll be some new material, and at least in part it’ll be about the state of the world and the superheroes who can do something about it (spoiler alert: that’s us!)

To avoid the hiccups we had last time with some people not being able to join, if you’d like the link and the password please email info@majk.co.uk and I’ll make sure you get all the details.

Majk now has two of his albums available to download on itunes and similar: his new album, “Time to Save the World” and his last album “Too Much Caffeine”, both of which are listed under “Majk Stokes”… and no longer under “Majk”, so I shouldn’t get confused with the Kosovan performer named Majk any more! The zoom launch concert for “Time to Save the World” on Saturday the 18th of April went well and had more than 50 people tune in to listen, which isn’t bad for a first-ever online gig. A few technical teething problems, but we’ll iron them out and hopefully do another gig some time soon.

If you don’t like downloading songs from the interweb and you’d rather have a physical copy of the album to hold, and to look at all the wonderful artwork by Rachel McBride and have an extra poem to read as a bonus, you can order a CD for £10 + p&p.

Well, the world has changed rather dramatically over the last few weeks, hasn’t it?

I’d just finished my new album, which I thought of as a bit of a mission statement to get our act together and deal with the environmental crisis, and suddenly we’re thrust into another crisis at the same time, on top of the existing one. And suddenly we find that the government can find the money and the motivation to change from “business as usual” and to re-think its m.o., if it has to. There’s only so much “hands-on” stuff that we can do from our self-isolation, but the environmental crisis is still there, and we still need to keep campaigning for change and writing to our MPs- hell, those of us who are on furlough might just find we suddenly have time to do just that.

And I’m hoping that when we come through this we’ll take it as the wake-up call we need, to change the way we operate, care more about the planet and our connection to it, and value the people who do the jobs that keep society functioning, and pay them better and respect them more- a few weeks ago they were “unskilled”, and now they’re key workers and they’re indispensible.

So that’s my new mission statement. The album will be online in the next week or so, and I’ll be holding an online launch concert on the 18th of April at 7.30. I hope you can make it!

New stuff is happening! Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been back in the recording studio, working on my next album- hopefully available before the end of this year. It will include more of the trademark Majk Stokes sense of humour, with a collection of songs on a range of subjects including Ancient Romans, baboons, cats and DNA… and a rather heartrending, epic 9-minute environmental song, of which I’m quite proud. I went on a songwriting workshop earlier this year, with a view to learning to write serious (or rather, not necessarily comedy) songs, and I ended up going from one extreme to the other.

The album’s working title is “Gender and Medicine and Boulder and Somersault”- see, I can’t stay serious for too long…

 

Anyone who’s looked at my website in, say, the last year will notice that it’s not been updated very much. This is because, as I put it in one of my poems, I’ve been too busy trying to deal with real life. However, things are starting to come together, and I fully intend to keep it reasonably up to date from now on. If you want regular posts and updates on what I’m doing, plus the occasional joke of the day or poem of the day, do follow me on Twitter  or Facebook  because remarkably I’m posting fairly regularly there now. Wonders never cease…

Twitter: @MajkStokes

Facebook: @TheBeetrootGuy

Well, I didn’t manage to update this website, or my facebook page, very much while I was away in Australia- which is a shame but probably doesn’t surprise anyone a great deal… I was too busy having the experiences to spend time posting online about them! But I’m back in the UK now, and settling back into things, and keen to be playing more gigs, and actually doing more social media, and doing my best to plug the gigs that I do have well in advance…

…Oh yes, and the songs from my album are now available to download from the interweb. I shall be making more of a big thing of this as the next few weeks go by.

Anyone who knows me will be almost as amazed as I am to hear me say I’m active on Facebook, but I think it’ll be an easier way of keeping a blog of some sort while I’m away, and besides everyone keeps telling me that I need to get on top of social media more if I’m going to get anywhere as a musician… so do check out www.facebook.com/TheBeetrootGuy and follow my progress: I’ll be posting something, however short, from the start of February through to (at least) my return to the UK.

Anyone who’s followed my musical career for any length of time will have heard my Beetroot song- I recently discovered a shared inspiration with a lady called Marie-Anne who runs the Beetroot Cafe police box on the edge of the Meadows. So we got talking, and she’s putting on a fantastic raw food Burns Night supper this year, on the 26th of January- so it only seems appropriate that I should arrange the musical entertainment for the evening!

If you’d like to come along, you can book a ticket at the Beet Box or online at www.beetrootcafe.co.uk. Tickets are £40 for an amazing 5-course raw vegan meal and live music, including some traditional tunes, some Rabbie Burns,  and some Majk Stokes- including the Beetroot Song, of course.

This is kinda exciting: my first interview, for the online magazine “Impulse”, talking about my songs and the songwriting process, Adelaide, the environment, and of course, coffee…

www.impulsemag-online.com/2017/12/too-much-caffeine-an-interview-with-majk-stokes/

Thanks to Ryan Traynor