Ben, Josienne, The Young'Uns and Navigator Records

Two bits of news.

Firstly, I understand that the frankly marvellous Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker - for whom the expression "I don't usually like this kind of music but..." could have been coined - have been taken on by Navigator records for the purposes of their new and third album, to be released in July and called Fire and Fortune.

Navigator will be doing marketing, manufacture and distribution. I asked Ben how that came about?

"We met someone from Proper who was interested in distributing the new album. The two ways Proper would distribute it were if we were to self release, or get it released through Navigator... So we gave the CD with an introduction to Navigator, heard they weren't interested, then a couple of days later they called back and asked to meet up..."

What changed their minds then?

"They hadn't listened to it, then they listened to it..."

Yup, that would do it... There's an album launch in July at The Forge in Camden. Get them while they're hot etc.

And the second piece of news is that The Young'Uns, who I saw at Kings Place the other Friday and who made me laugh particularly hard after a long, long week, tell me that they are about to go professional. What does that mean, I asked David Eagle?

"We're all kind of giving up our jobs. Mike is signing up as a supply teacher, Sean will do his story telling and work in schools on a freelance basis, and I'll be doing freelance work too." David does radio work.

As luck would have it, The Young'Uns are also signed to Navigator, so did they have any advice for Josienne and Ben?

"Signing to Navigator is great for profile but you have to sell quite a few albums to make it work for you financially. They should make sure they read the contract and understand what the deal is. But that's great news for them."

What are the practical advantages of being signed to Navigator?

"Exposure, publicity, radio play, media coverage, prestige, complementary groupies..."

But the terms are not especially favourable for the band?

"It depends what you want. If you're as committed and as active as Lucy Ward then I'm sure it worked out brilliantly. But we were part time. It was still a great thing for us though."

It sounds to me as if what The Young'Uns learnt was that they needed to go professional in order to make the most of their Navigator deal.

What's next?

* The Young Uns are on tour at the moment. Check out their website for dates. You can also tweet them here and if you do, it's important to only talk to David, as Mike will then get an annoying ping on his phone every time you send a message but will be unable to do anything about it...

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The Young'uns play the Olympics

Foremost for me among the pleasures of the Bristol folk festival last weekend was The Young'uns, who brought such attack to their set and such humour to the bits in between that it was possible to forget completely for the duration the terrible-ness of their band name. Like getting a tattoo somewhere where you're prone to put on weight, it's unlikely to weather the years well, is it?

Anyway, there were some fabulously politically incorrect jokes about the lady stage manager agreeing to stand behind David Eagle to hold his trousers up for him, another about what it was exactly that kept bashing into the waist-level accordian mike and a sea shanty in French sung with north-eastern accents that was unaccountably sexy.

And while it's still not clear whether there will be any morris dancing in the Olympic opening ceremony - though surely someone would have mentioned it by now if they'd been asked? - it turns out that there will definitely be some Young'uns in the cultural Olympiad. An Aardman animation called The Itch of the Golden Nit starring the voices of David Walliams, Vic Reeves, Miranda Hart and Catherine Tate and for which The Young'uns wrote a song will be showing across the country.

So *drum roll* here's The Smelly Pirate Song.

Sean Cooney explained: "We do a lot of work at The Sage in Gateshead. This was a collaborative piece involving lots of children. The kids came up with the character of a pirate called Captain Iron Ears and when they were looking for someone to do a pirate song they thought of us."

Cooney is also a freelance storyteller and told me a great tale called The Fisherman and the Toast, which had a punchline that ran "I've told you once, I've told you twice, I've wiped my arse on every slice." Ask him for it if you see him :-) But you can understand why kids love them, can't you?

They also mentioned that there's a counterculture "sea shanty mania" in Poland, a country that they recently visited, that it's "massive and really young", involves girls whooping and taking their clothes off (apparently - although by his own admission Eagle's sight is extremely poor) and which grew up partly because under Communism there were very few ways in which the young could get to travel. I didn't really understand this but am going to look into it because it's two of my favourite things rolled into one: folk and European quirkiness.

* The Young'uns will  be releasing their first album on Navigator this year and they do podcasts.

Also from Bristol, Show of Hands and ahab in (separate) extreme fandom incidents.

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