Hello friends! I trust you’re all well, and easing your way back into normal life following the excitement and disarray of the Christmas break.
You may well be wondering why you’re getting an email from me on a Friday, especially as you’ve already had one from me this week. The answer is, in the spirit of the New Year, we’re trying something new with the OneTrackMinds newsletter this year, and we’ve decided, for a couple of reasons, to try sending out our regular weekly update on a Friday instead of a Monday.
Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we thought it might be nice to send you something at the end of the work week, when (hopefully) you’re looking forward to a couple of days off and may be a little more conducive to reading some of our stories or following some of the links we’re sharing. Secondly - and more on this in a moment - we’re giving our Album Club a bit of a relaunch, and we thought it would make most sense to send out our Album Club emails on a Monday, at the start of each week, for obvious reasons.
Of course, this may prove foolish. We often end up doing our shows on a Friday (case in point - January 19th and February 2nd), so I’ll be adding to our prep load for those shows by also having to send out a newsletter on those days as well. Of course, with the Album Club up and running, we’ll also be needing to write up and edit not one but two newsletters each week, doubling the workload there too. All to say, this may well wind up flailing to the ground in flames, like so many other New Year’s resolutions before it. But for the time being, we’ll give it a go…
So, what’s new? Well first off, we’re less than a fortnight away from our January Shows at Wilton’s Music Hall on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th. We’ve got two wonderful lineups of fabulous storytellers, including some old friends (Rob Deering and Pauline Eyre) and several new ones (Charlie Gilmour, Kobi Prempeh, Johnny Cochrane and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett). Tickets are already selling very nicely indeed, but we’d dearly love a rollicking full house for our first shows of the year. Please come along, and bring all your friends, and remember that you can get the best seats in the house for only £11 (a saving of £7) by using the discount code OTMCrew when you book.
And, less than a fortnight after that, we'll be back at Wilton’s again for THREE more shows - a regular evening show on Friday 2nd February, and a matinee and an evening show on Saturday February 3rd. It’s a OneTrackMinds marathon! And it will probably push me over the edge! But it will also, almost certainly, be wonderful. We’ve got some incredible storytellers lined up for those nights too, including composer Matthew Herbert, Succession screenwriter Georgia Pritchett, author and poet Michael Pedersen (author of the fantastic memoir Boy Friends), writer and political commentator Yassmin Alibhai-Brown and real-life astronaut Meganne Christian. And that magical discount code (OTMCrew) works just as well for these shows too.
The first instalment of our weekly Album Club of the year is well underway. We’ve been listening to Sufjan Stevens’ latest album Javelin, which was released last year. If you missed Monday’s newsletter, there’s still plenty of time to join in. The idea is that, over the course of a week, we all listen to an album (all the way through, ideally at least three times), and then share our thoughts. I’ve done my three full listens already, and I have to say it’s a record that’s growing on me… I’ll be sharing a full breakdown on Monday’s newsletter, but you can join in the conversation on our Chat thread, on Substack Notes, or by leaving a comment below. Join in! It’ll be fun!
In related news, OneTrackMinds friend and fellow Substacker Jude Rogers has launched an epic Substack marathon, presenting a new song every day on her new Substack A Year In Music…
And, what’s more, another OneTrackMinds friend and Substacker Alice Vincent has somehow found time to launch a new substack with fellow writer Charlotte Runcie, all about the 'nitty-gritty’ of writing. It’s called In Haste, and it sounds fab.
Oh, and Alice is part of the wonderful team behind the glorious writing retreat A Haven For Stories, which takes place in a beautiful old farmhouse in the Umbrian countryside in Italy for a week each October. Your ticket in buys you a week’s accommodation at the stunning Villa Pia, in the picturesque village of Lippiano; three incredible meals a day, all the wine, Prosecco, beer and espresso you can drink; AND supportive, encouraging and inspiring writing workshops and tutorials from Alice and her brilliant partners Tobias Jones and Elise Valmorbida. Adam and I have been for the past two years, and of course we’ve already put our deposit down for this year’s edition. Come and join us!
Rhik Samadder wrote a very enjoyable piece in last weekend’s Observer about how to make New Year’s Resolutions you can keep. Some good advice in there for us and our probably foolish double-newsletter gambit…
The Guardian have a run down of the best records coming out in 2024…
And this piece in The New York Times definitively outlines what an incredible year of cinema we’re currently enjoying, and previews an Oscar race that is surely the most competitive we’ve seen in many many years… Just wait until you see The Zone of Interest (released in the UK in February I believe…)
If you’re feeling a little down about the prospect of another two or three months of bleak weather, here’s a guide to some traditions and routines from Greenlanders, who know a thing or two about how to winter…
Or, if that won’t cheer you up, this piece of YouTube magic surely will (h/t to Jen Barley!)
Right, that’s it! We’ll be back again on Monday. Until then, have a very lovely weekend…
KB.