John E Vistic Experience @ The Thunderbolt - Bristol

I have an admission to make. I've Lived in Bristol for almost 15 years and I've never been to one of the city's most established and synonymous music venues. The Thunderbolt on the Bath Road has seen many great bands over the years. When I heard John E Vistic and his band were playing there on Friday, it was the ideal opportunity to break my duck. It was also a good time to try out the new camera in a live situation for the first time.

The Fuji XT-1 delivered. It delivered to such an extent that my keeper ratio went through the roof; a huge improvement on my now lonely X-Pro1. The 6 fps continuous mode on the XT-1 is a bit too effective though. Editing, filtering and storage is going to become a bit of a problem unless I learn to curb my enthusiasm a bit.

The gig was huge. The John E Vistic Experience is exactly that, a full on blow to the senses that leaves you knowing your world was rocked and rolled in a hot, sweaty cauldron of fire.

The Thunderbolt gets a big thumbs up from me. It's a dedicated music space with a big outside area should you need to get away from the music for a while and regain your composure. This is a no-frills venue that takes it's music seriously.

Next trip there for me is October to see the mighty John Fairhurst.

New Online Store - Coming Soon

In a few weeks time, I will have a new online store on my website. To start with I will be offering a range of different size prints of the various bands in my portfolio. This includes live shots of bands at various venues and festivals, and band portraits.

One of my recent photo exhibitions on the Bristol music scene

So, if you are a member of one of the bands or a fan, you will be able to purchase directly from my store. Of course, I will also continue to handle any orders that you would like to make to me personally. So get in touch anytime: john@johnnycajon.com

All printing and order fulfilment with be handled by my independent, high quality print partner. It's gonna be slick.

More details to follow soon......

A Summer of Festivals - Part One

It's been quite a year so far; I celebrated a fantastic 50th birthday party in February at which I played drums in a band on stage for the first time to a warm crowd of friends and family. And latterly I've spent most of the summer weekends enjoying my first ever music festival season.

"What?" I hear you say. "What have you been doing with the past thirty odd summers if you ain't been going to music festivals and behaving like any 'normal' human being?"

It's not like I've spent them doing nothing in the summer. The truth is I've spent most summers doing other summery stuff which has been completely non-music related. I ain't been to prison all this time either in case you're thinking.

Anyway, this blog and a couple more to come are about my experiences attending my first summer of festivals, a season in which I lost my Glastonbury virginity; life will never be the same.

And it's at Glastonbury that we start.

My good friend John Fairhurst asked me mid June "What you doing at the end of June kidda?" "Nowt", I said. "Wanna come to Glastonbury?" "Are you kidding me?" That's generally how the conversation went.

Two weeks later I'm loitering in the wings of a sunny Hell stage on the first night of the festival in front of 2000 fans who've been gagging for the festival to start for a day or so. They're all here to see the John Fairhurst band featuring John, Toby Murray on drums and Justin Kool on bass.

The hell stage has a notoriety about it which is to be expected judging by its name.

I'm nervous as hell and I ain't even performing, just taking photos. The music starts and the nerves turn to adrenaline and next thing I'm out on stage mixing it up with the band and the crowd but I'm trying to remain discreet, not get in the way and looking for the shots that will do the band justice. I have to try to remain disconnected but it's difficult because I dig the heavy blues sound and can't help getting into the groove.

There's lots of space which is a relief and I try and make the most of this luxury. There are good lights, good smoke and loads of atmosphere; the crowd look amazing. The band hits it's stride from the off and I'm there with them in that moment. It was a magical experience and one I won't forget.

There were other great performances from the band at the fantastic Glade stage (perhaps a better performance overall), and other stages over the week long festival.

It was a terrific experience and one I'm intending to repeat next year. It's not important when you get there, only that you get there, wherever there is.

Part two - Maverick Festival with the Clubhouse Crowd (coming soon)

John Fairhurst At Drummond And Hammett Guitar Workshop

In 2014, I was fortunate to be involved at the start of a collaboration between John Fairhurst and Pat Hammett and Tom Drummond. Pat and Tom make fantastic cigar box guitars out of their workshop in Easton, Bristol. I met them at the Grillstock festival last summer and a couple of weeks later I took around my guitars to their workshop for them to look at my work.

During this meeting they mentioned they were looking for a local blues guitar player to endorse their guitars and had I heard of John Fairhurst. "Funny enough", I said "I've been working with John for a while now taking his photographs". And that was it. A couple of weeks later I'd lined up the Bristol Roots media team and we recorded several videos and an interview with John at the fantastic D&H workshop.

During the session we recorded John playing a song that he said was inspired by John Fahey and a meeting with Christopher Paul Stelling at the South by South West festival in Texas. I listened to Christopher's latest album last night and loved it and felt motivated to watch this video of John again and post it to my blog.

In the Evening When The Sun Goes Down from John Morgan on Vimeo.

John Fairhurst at the Drummond & Hammett Cigar Box Factory

I'll be posting links to all the videos that we made that night on my blog soon.

Band Portraits

Last November my friend Hannah Jones and I set up a one-day band portrait session in a small studio in St Werburghs, Bristol. The idea was to invite 6 local bands into the studio, give them an hour each and shoot as many poses as we could in the same day.

After their hour was up, we gave them some cream cakes and told them to go nuts....... and we made sure we kept the camera going (this makes for entertaining viewing also, but I'll save that for another day. It was hard work but well worth it.

Band portraits are something I'd like to do more of. So, if you are interested please get in touch - john@johnnycajon.com