Free music anybody? Certainly amigos, as our debut album is now completely free to download from our website (and Five Songs For Oscar may well follow it). All you need to do is right-click on El Bandito Muerto to download it.

We’ve decided to make it free because it doesn’t really cost us anything to let you have a digital download and we’d like as many people to hear it as possible. With that in mind, you’re welcome to share the album with your friends, on file-sharing networks, torrents – whatever!

This leaves me feeling slightly guilty about the people who have actually paid money for the download. When we work it out we’ll try to sort of some sort of special gift to those of you who’ve already paid money for it. Also, the CD version is still for sale over at www.cdbaby.com/ballardmusic2 if you’d rather have a proper physical copy.

Speaking of recordings, we’ve been busy writing songs for the next E.P. The subjects range from a child neglected by his father, to a drunken soldier trying to forget painful memories all the way through to an Argentinian tango about Parkinson’s Disease. So far it’s going really well and we’re all very excited about it.

We’ve also been looking for a studio to record Mexican Boy in the Snow in. The song has been a live favourite for quite a while now but we’ve never recorded it. We intend to release it as a Christmas single this coming December and so decided to go somewhere nice to lay the tracks down. We’ve found a few awesome looking places and I personally am extremely excited about going into a studio for a couple of days and being a proper band!

Keep checking the site and don’t forget, you can follow us on Twitter (@pbandbanditos) and we have a Facebook page – just search for Pancho Ballard and the Banditos.

Oh, and before I forget, we’ve got a merchandise store! It’s over at Reverb Nation and it’s got a few great t-shirts with more on the way – http://www.reverbnation.com/store/index/artist_458517

And that, I promise, is everything!

Gracias amigos.

Tags: Christmas, Facebook, free download, Parkinson's Disease, Reverb Nation, Studio, t-shirts, Twitter

We started recording an E.P. this week. Armed with a modest amount of recording equipment we set up in our usual rehearsal room, DOA Studios in Bolton, and recorded a rhythm track to Soup Song. It was captured on film by my friend Ian Brown, who is going to be putting together a small piece about the song. Here’s a very small snippet in which Dick explains what the song is about.

He’s actually serious you know, he really does want do a whole gig that combines music and cookery. It’s not enough for him to play songs about food, he wants to actually serve it during the gig. Not only that, he wants to cook it during the gig. I’ve tried to explain to him various points of Health & Safety, of how it might be just slightly dangerous to have a gas stove onstage, of how using sharp knives in a venue where much alcohol has been consumed (and that’s just Jay and Ben, our trumpeters!) is not a good idea but no, he insists it can be done.

So, I’m leaving it to him. I know he’s going to keep slyly introducing food songs into the set and one day he’ll probably sneak a cucumber on to the stage, disguised as a shaker or something. And eventually he’ll come up with a way to do it that is both safe and practical. When that day comes I’ll be a very happy man as I’m sure it will be a great event, but until that day I’m content to just sing about food, prepare food and eat food; just not all at the same time.

Tags: dick, DOA Studios, Ian Brown, recording, soup song, video