Hell O.

Mr Crook here, speaking from my hand-made soap box, placed as precariously as ever… somewhere south of madness, north of a better place, deep in the Medway mud flaps.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we’ve been busy hatching our plans for 2010.  With the new album near fixed to throttle, its eggs in their last stages of gestation, it’s time to tell you a bit more.

First, you’ll probably notice that the logo now says “Lupen Crook” and the website domain name has been changed to lupencrook.com.  If we’ve done this switchover well enough, everything on this site should still work as it did before.  If not, I suggest you take it up with Hg.  In the coming weeks we’ll be revamping a few more things and adding further treasures, like the lyrics for pretty much every song in our back catalogue and all those featured on the forthcoming album.

For those of you who are curious about this name change, I must impress on you that The Murderbirds have not taken flight or been forgotten.  My beginnings as wandering folk fuckhead to the present day Crooked Family have seen numerous changes in line-up.  Because creation insists upon variety and progression calls for constant re-evaluation, this name change became inevitable.  However, the people that have until now been referred to as The Murderbirds remain my nearest and dearest conspirators.

Nevertheless, life had gotten a little too crooked for even this Family . . .

Those of you who have seen us live would have seen me play solo gigs, as well as gigs with The Murderbirds – full electric band to “box set” acoustic outings and a whole host of different combinations in between.  Quite simply, the practicalities of a penniless band being able to maintain a consistent line-up have always proven tricky.  As well as this, the ever-changing nature of what we do has often made it necessary for different combinations to come together as and when creativity dictates.  This state of constant evolution sometimes confuses people and, of late, had been confusing us too.  The simplification of the name addresses this issue.  Whether performing by myself, perched on a bar stool, or screaming out from a stage alongside my rag-tag gang of punk rockers, the message has always been consistent.  Now, so is the name.  Be sure, I have not “gone solo” and The Crooked Family is still in full effect.

This is all part of a plan to build on last year’s successes, to learn from the results of our self-funded, self-managed, self-release experiments and to ramp things up to the next level with the help of additional resources.  To get our message and music further out into the world.  Mostly it’s about the securing the continuation of what we love doing, ensuring we have the freedom to draw upon all our resources as necessary, without compromise.

So, all is well in hell.  My f(r)iends and I will be telling you more about what’s planned over the coming weeks.  We’re aiming to get back into more regular communication with you now we have a better idea of where we’re headed.  Apologies for the absence, I hope to speak with you again very soon.

xxx