This month has mostly been spent organising our first mini-tour, which will kick off in Dundalk’s Spirit Store, (one of our favourite haunts), and will see us setting foot in London for the first time as a band when we hit the Gibson Centre on Dec 10th. The London jaunt will encompass a weekend of gigs and radio slots, so keep an eye out for updates on the myspace if you’re coming from that direction.

October saw us return to The Globe in Dublin for more open mike night frolics, and as such nights go the Song Room ranks highly in that regard. The crowd are ever cheerful and appreciative and it’s such a pity we have to pick up and rush back to the K-mobile immediately afterwards but we gotta get up on Thursday mornings. We love you anyway!

For those of you in Northern Ireland who had your ears glued to the radio last October 9th, we got bumped due to an unfortunate diary malfunction, but not to worry as we received a sincerely apologetic phone call from Gerry Anderson himself, and have been felicitously rescheduled to November 20th- Children in Need day. Don’t expect to see us in a bath of baked beans or anything though- it is the radio after all.

Anyway we hope you have a fantastic November wherever you are. It must be said the sky has been unforgiving in Belfast, but we hit the road on November 28th so keep an eye out for stop-offs in your town and maybe we can cheer you up, or at least share your pain!

BOO!

KATCO XX.

Disclaimer: Kitty and the Can Openers do not sleep in the same bed together, nor do they nor have they ever shared a bath,  of water, baked beans or otherwise.

it was the month when Kitty and the Can Openers played the City of Song Festival in Derry, and Ciara and Ronan had two simultaneous but completely subjective epiphanies on the City walls:

where Paul Scott was photographed looked very large,

and very, very small

where we retired to Innnishowen Peninsula between festival slots for a bit of scenic diving

and, amongst our most singular gigs, played Derry’s Delacroix, amidst the Sunday-dinner smelling carpets and avuncular clientelle of the classic Irish local.

We took to the stage and rocked most eloquently while a single drunk  danced. And Ciara had a Coke…which she soon drank.

It was the month where we played in a circus tent (The Bosco Theatre) at the Dublin Fringe, and did a set with Shane Todd on West Belfast’s Feile FM

-here he is:

and savoured an elegiac last day of summer at the Botanic Arts Festival with John Shelley and the Creatures and the Greeters, encountering the most beautiful Saint Bernard we ever sawed;

October will see us venturing further into the mine field of  whizz kid Paul Fox’s twisted sonic imagination

and his personal portable recording studio (currently in residence in the front room of Fernwood St.) as we juggle  duties between home recording and Audio-Ill’s new studio in Belfast centre,

Additionally, KATCO will appear on The Gerry Anderson Show on Friday October 9th for a bit of banter and  a few numbers, whereupon yet another lifetime ambition will be fulfilled.

For all you Belfast ones, we’ll be doing an all day event in Laverys Bunker on the 25th- we’ve missed playing the old home town to be sure,

keep on keeping on,

Caio KATCO xx.

The new line-up debuted at Charlies Coffee Shop in Belfast at the beginning of August, and since then has been busy recording. As you may be aware the band recently signed a contract to that effect with the folks at Audio-Ill records, and have been filling their weekends since down at Earth Studios in Carryduff, listening to the countryside and making up songs about the weather in between takes…

…much of our time has been taken up by traveling to and from Dublin, and with a decent selection on one’s iPod, the late night journeys become an unexpected pleasure… we played Bruxelles two weeks ago, (beside the Phil Lynott statue) and received an encore at The Globe on Gt George’s St just last Wednesday. We finally managed to bag a gig in the beautiful Spirit Store down by the docks in Dundalk, where we spent time between sound-checks dangling our feet off the pier and sampling the local delicacies (burger and chips, that is).. here’s Ciara on the ocarina in said venue,

the upcoming month sees us similarly engaged,

…on Wednesday 9th September, we return to Charlies Coffee Shop, Bradbury Place, Belfast, to play a set, where the atmosphere routinely spills out onto the street, and occasionally goes on a little later than expected… the following Friday 11th September, Feile FM 103.2 will be chatting with us and letting us play a few numbers on their Friday evening show, 8-9 pm, after which we will be heading to bed early to prepare ourselves for The Botanic Art Festival, Saturday 12th September, an open style market event which will take place on Lower Crescent Park off Botanic Avenue, which, free of charge of course, will feature designers, musicians, artists, circus entertainers, children’s face painting and the like.

We’ll be on at about 3:30 in Marquee 2 and will be followed by John Shelly and the Creatures, The Greeters; and Mother Nature, who will hopefully give us a break and let the sun shine forth. We’re off to Dublin again the next day, being Sunday 13th September, to play Sunday Roast @ The Globe, at 9pm, immediately afterward being whisked off to The Docklands to do a set at The Bosco Theatre as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. That’ll be happening at about 11pm.

What follows will be a week off, rounded off with a set at the Sunday Strip Club, The Pavillion Sunday 20th September, leading up to our appearance at The City of Song Festival, Derry… and here is a list of our bookings therein:

The Delcroix Bar, Buncrana Rd at 5:45 pm Friday 25th September, where we will be joined by our Belfast buddies Jackson Cage, afterward hauling our carcasses southward to play…

Bound for Boston, Waterloo St, at 11:45, with Pocket Promise…

…then its off to a friend’s house (hopefully!) to rest up for the evening, whereon we will be returning to Masons, Magazine St. that Saturday 26th September at 5:00 to round off the festival in the company of Matt McGinn and Jackson Cage once again,

at which point we will return to Belfast, sleep for about two hours, and return to our day jobs as if all had been a bizzare dream. And maybe then we’ll start working on a mail out for all the engagements we have planned for October (and their name is Legion…)

all the best with your adventures and endeavours

here we are being interviewed by Dundalk’s finest, Highway 67, at the Spirit Store,

KATCO XX

please welcome Paul Fox (who we will be calling Fox Johnson from now on to distinguish him from the eminent Paul Scott).

Take a good look… those eyes, smoldering,

scepter in hand, like some diamond God-

look ye mighty, and despair..

When you’re done despairing you can have a gander at some of these lovely photies taken in and around our neighbourhood in South Belfast:

here’s us tempting fate;

and doing what we do;

here’s us apparently worshiping some kind of nether deity in the backroom of a squat we found somewhere;

…some more smoldering,

awwww;

there’s oodles more photos on the myspace!

caio

KATCO XX.

photography by Adrian Knight.  (not the hypnotist)

Involved in the agreement is a two year recording contract, as well as a tie-in with Audio-Ill’s sister company, Grand Parade Music Publishing, based in London.

What this essentially amounts to is that debut album which has been gestating over the past few years.  More than likely the record will serve as a document of our miscellaneous adventures since we put this show on the road, accompanied by a tour to promote the album and a few singles, just for kicks! This time round we’ll have Earth Studios at our disposal, so unfettered by budget restrictions (the bane of many an up and coming act) we can expect a truly unique sound to do justice to our songs.

Many thanks to all of you for your  exemplary and ever-patient support, for all who gave us our early breaks and heads-up along the way, including but not limited to AU magazine, Rigsy and the gang at ATL, Rory McConnell of Radio 1 fame, Joe Dougan, and Andy and Scott of deadon music.  Special significance should be singled out to some of our earliest acolytes, Tom McShane, Geoff Gatt not the least amongst them, who have given us lots of support during the long process of refining our sound and finding our creative direction.

Also to any of you, far too many to mention, who have handed over your hard earned cash for our music,  attended our gigs or indeed simply expressed your enjoyment of our music,  for reminding us that someone is listening.

Regards must also go out to the Delawares, who inspired us to start a band in the first place.

Otherwise it’ll all be business as usual , except now we have a piece of paper to justify our work!

cheerios!

KATCO XX

Kitty and the Can Openers!

Masons!

Derry!

First appearance thereof!

Cashier No. 9!

Tom McShane!

You lucky people

yum!

katco xx.

how about a poem:

black as the throat the fine words came slipping raspberry through
as belly wounds in battle was the colour of the fruit
and graveyard names with hoary manes all wet with dew
said you are not the worst I’ve known as bad dreams go but you will do

the angels said “the king is dead” the devils sing “the dead is king”
and feeding on his worthless flesh I saw a tiny four winged thing
they say a man is first his mask and then his task and then his dues
and you are not the worst I’ve known as bed dreams go but you will do

now, where was I? Ah yes the miscellaneous adventures of Kitty and the Can Openers. Well by some margin the highlight of the last few weeks was last Sunday’s Men of The Hour gig, in which we fondly supported Ray McGahan and his merry band of time-travelling literary adventurers as they battled the monstrous time-Nazis and the nefarious leader of the fairy rebellion, Big Jock McLargecock.

Furthermore we were enamoured by the opportunity to play with Franklin’s Kite, Damanta and the wonderful Minnows in the space of the last month, as well as negotiating our first recording contract with Audio-Ill (more on that later).

For now though, let us play you out with a quick plug for next Tuesday’s Auntie Annies gig with Kagura:

here’s the poster:

Shameless!

Caio katco.

You know the rest!

Last Thursday we enjoyed a trip to Eamonn Doran’s in Dublin where we met up with our good friend Richard of Vitruvius, who we played with in Whelan’s last February. We shared a few musical memories over an uncharacteristically cheesy Doran’s pizza.

You do meet some fantastic people in this line of work.

Take the headliners, Mongo Horn who, in spite of the obvious disadvantage of being all-male, took to the Rock Chicks theme of the night by dragging it up and adopting a gigantic pair of fake breasts. Now that’s stagecraft. They also gave us the pleasure of introducing us to the most wonderful phrase- horses for courses.

Would make an excellent song title me thinks. Watch this space.

On Sunday we were back on home turf for a Pavillion gig with our Dundalk friends, Dutch/Irish duo The Candides, who stayed over in Ronan and Ciara’s house for a bit of banter about our best and worst gigs (we’re not telling!), the general silliness of Slice the Pie (sour grapes!) and the number of words in the English language that sound like duck (dog, doug, dock, dug etc., very confusing for a foreigner in a restaurant).

Many thanks to all who joined us over the past few weeks-maybe we’ll see some of you in Laverys on Saturday (that’s May 16th) when we join Damanta and Mark Bee for a Dirty Folk Nite (not sure what that means but sure we’ll find out!)

We also have the pleasure of formally announcing that we’ll be playing the Time to be Proud mini-festival (Black Box 22nd-24th May) on Saturday 23th. This is in anticipation of the release of the Time to be Proud Oh Yeah! compilation, which of course features us doing an Undertones song.

Which one you might ask? Well some of you will already know but otherwise you gotta be there to find out.

NB it’s not Teenage Kicks ok!

cheers and beers,

Katco xx!

Thanks to everyone who made it to the Empire gig last Wednesday, in which we faced off one of our biggest crowds ever. We just couldn’t resist throwing in our cover of Let’s Dance, just for kicks, which we played at our good friend Carleen’s birthday party the previous Saturday and which went down a storm, so we thought what the hell, (which is incidently the title of our new song on myspace fyi).

We are also available for children’s parties by the way- just kiddin!

In the interim we’ve been busy doing dailies for the upcoming On The Fringes video.

If anyone fancies appearing in the video then all you have to do is send us a photo of yourself pulling a silly face to band@kittyandthecanopeners.com, or just post a comment and photo on the myspace here. The most ridiculous mug wins a part in the promo and an eternity in the KATCO hall of fame.

All entrants must be available on a Saturday morning in and around the greater Belfast area, and must be prepared for Edward D Wood style guerrilla camerawork!

In the meantime here’s a look at our Pavillion gig from a few weeks’ back courtesy of Adrien Cook.

Sorry bout the feedback

KATCO XX.

Thanks to everyone who made it down the Bowie night last Friday, the one where Ronan splashed out on a super-sexy pair of faux-seventies flairs (big deal for a poor boy like R) only to decide at the last minute that they weren’t quite Bowie enough. We settled for a last minute make-up job from John’s girlfriend Roisin (lipstick stars and scars and everything) and a castenet and stylophone rendition of Andy Warhol to round off our set. Watch this space as we are editing our version of Let’s Dance for youtube.

This Holiest of Holy weeks the band have turned the sitting room into a makeshift office as we embrace the boring Dr Jeckall half of our musicianhood, catching up on some much needed emailing and contacting work, drinking gallons of coffee and alternately laughing at and  wishing to kill each other (so far without success mercifully).

It hasn’t all been pen-pushing though. We have come up with an interesting idea for a song which is basically a repetitive minor sixth riff in E major with an impressionistic little poem attached to it:

here’s a sample;

olive burgundy rain and chime/ purple flag on the washin line/ lonely troll in a leafy bower/ oleander in sink and shower…

what do you think? We haven’t settled on a title yet, any suggestions please feel free to leave a comment on our myspace.

Which reminds me, we have a new song up on said myspace for your delectation. It’s entitled What the hell! and is perhaps a bit of a departure for the band. This one is a little darker than perhaps y’all are used to.  Check out  myspace.com/kittyandthecanopeners for a wee listen.

If that’s not enough KATCO for one week then you could always join us next week when we support Kagura at their EP launch in the Empire, with Eoghan Colgan and our old pals The Vals.

Here’s the copy:

Come on down and say hello!

KATCO xx.