Appearances...

“Oh, I know who you mean,” said Maggie. “He works in the Co-op. Lovely man. Always so friendly and helpful.”

Richard is tall, covered in tattoos and has a spiked up Mohawk. At first sight you might assume he was likely to knife you if you looked at him.

And yet, everyone you talk to who knows him comments on what a lovely guy he is.

In a recent debate with the management at the Co-op store where he works, about whether his Mohawk should be flattened, such was the outcry from local residents (including many of the grannies the management feared might be intimidated by his appearance), they backed down and his spikes were allowed to remain.

I first saw Richard at the Midsummer Music Festival a few weeks ago as the new drummer for the band The Geese, and immediately started thinking he might be interesting to photograph. When a chance encounter presented itself a couple of weeks later, I asked him if he’d be up for it. The upshot of that is I now have a couple of new photos, which are among my all time favourites.

So I thought I should put them up online.

As usual, click on the for larger versions

Qiku at the Mill Sessions

I have been photographing the headline performers each month for “The Mill Sessions” – a mostly acoustic venue at The Mill on the Fleet, in Gatehouse – a town about 15 miles from here (see Mill Sessions Posts).

Last week's headline performers were Qiku (pronounced kee-koo). Usually based in London, these sisters are in fact half Scottish and half Japanese. They were warm friendly and a delight to photograph.

The rain was threatening, but fortunately held off just long enough for me to get the shots.

As usual, feel free to click on any of the photos for larger version


Clare


Rosa


Qiku

They were previously part of a 5 piece band, but are now performing as just the 2 of them, which means there's virtually nothing online about them yet.

So I recorded a couple of their track using the video function on my camera. Almost all of their songs are in English, although the 2nd video here has the one song they sang in Japanese.

When they make it big, you can say you saw them here first.





For more about Qiku, visit their website here:
http://qiku.eu/
or find them on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/qikumusic