This autumn I've been doing a lovely series of gigs with ace singer-songwriter and ex-Hefner frontman Darren Hayman to launch his album The Ship's Piano and the single I Taught You How to Dance both of which feature me on trumpet pretty extensively.

Look, here's a bittersweet video that goes with it.

We did a couple of great intimate piano-and-trumpet shows at The Albany in Great Portland Street in October; as it happened I also had another gig there that week, doing silly comedy and musical things for The Forgery Club, which was a nice way to say goodbye to a superb little venue that has now sadly been turned into a posh restaurant.

I also guested with Darren's full band the Secondary Modern at Fortuna Pop's knees-up at Scala, which was a considerably more raucous gig, and no less fun for it.

We then did a Brighton show in the Unitarian Church on 13th November which had a perfect acoustic to play that material in. I've said it before, but I really like working with Darren; I think we really hit it off both on and off stage, and he really trusts his collaborators. Plus he has a lego model of his dog in his house, which is possibly the greatest thing ever. Look, he's even got him and his wife in the head driving it. Wow.

On January 18th I collaborated with Darren Hayman as part of his 'January Songs' project. Darren is writing and recording a new song every day in January, an enterprise as impressive as it is insane.

18 The Return by Darren Hayman

It was great collaborating on a track with him; Darren had written a short story that we recorded at my place, along with some crunchy electric piano and muted, sometimes angular trumpet stuff.

Was a great day and a nice chance to play around with some stuff on Ableton, which (if you’re interested) I recently upgraded to the version with all the bells and whistles, hence the nice crunchy electric piano which we designed on the day. Darren, very wisely, wanted to keep it stripped-down though, so had to constantly fight the urge to play with the electronic gubbins that I’ve been experimenting with recently. Here's the result:

I really admire Darren’s willingness to explore different genres (had lots of chat about obscure ECM albums) and his desire to push himself outside his comfort zone. He’s produced lots of lovely stuff over the month, with a video diary and music videos to accompany most of the tracks. I strongly urge you to check it out.

December and January has been a busy time for the Hackney Colliery Band  - I even spent my 30th birthday holed up in a studio in deepest north west London, which was not how I'd anticipated my 30s would start. Still, the studio itself is superb and is one of the few still to record to tape, and by a bizarre coincidence the tape that we were recording over contained the masters of my friend Darren Hayman's band Hefner's album We Love the City.

HCB are working on our debut album and second single (out soon on Wah Wah 45s), so there's been rehearsals, recordings, and enough admin to overload the Chinese civil service. 

Still, all this prep work now will hopefully yield some exciting times for the band in 2011; lots of stuff in the pipeline. Will of course report here, but in the meantime head over here to join the Facebook group for all the latest news.

December was also a busy time for the band, with lots of public, private and corporate gigs around the country, including a bizarre gig inside the horribly-named Xscape Snowdome in Leeds (yep, on the indoor snow) for a snowboarding competition, 

a great wedding at the BAC and a fun gig at the PigPen awards (alongside my friends Charlotte Young and Darren Hayman and ace band United Vibrations), as well as various private functions. We also smashed it at a sold out gig at Scala where we played to probably our largest (and most enthusiastic) crowd yet! Was a superb gig, and thanks as always to Wah Wah 45s for hosting and having us along.

Did lots of musical bits and bobs in Autumn 2010, including a great duet gig with Darren Hayman at the Bush Hall, a gig or two and some recording at Maida Vale with the John Bennett Band. Both Darren and John are great to work with despite being very different musicians; they both trust the instincts and creativity of their musicians, which isn't always as common as you might hope.

I also did some arranging and playing on a pitch for a BBC drama. Sadly didn't come off in the end, but was good to work with Rob Lord for the first time.

HCB did a great gig playing to our biggest and best crowd ever at La Scala in Kings Cross in November as part of a superb (and massive) line-up. Thanks, as always, to our label Wah Wah 45s who put the night together and hosted. Also to Kim Leng-Hills who took these ace photos.

In March I MDed and performed at Robin Ince's School for Gifted Children. 

Music-wise this included arranging for and playing with Jim Bob and Darren Hayman as well as lots of musical bits and bobs with the other performers, ably helped by 3 great musicians: Magnus Dearness on trombone, Jeff Miller on sousaphone and Dave Smith on drums, violin. and pots and pans. Being called ‘Nick Griffin with a bugle’ by Bridget Christie dressed as an ant and playing my arrangement of the theme from Harry Potter as Alan Moore’s walk-on music were possibly the highlights of the musical side of things.

As well as the tootling I did a 20 minute comedy set which was great fun. The crowd at those gigs are so friendly, and doing a set after people like Josie Long, Bridget Christie, Alan Moore and Stewart Lee is exciting and intimidating in not quite equal measure (more of the latter, in case you were wondering).

I tried out some material that I’d been working on for the Edinburgh run of my show Steve Pretty on the Origin of the Pieces which seemed to go down pretty well – encouraging! Only problem was that I couldn’t resist using the band to help tell the complete history of pop music from 38,000BC to 2010 in 20 minutes, and I was quite aware that life was going to be a bit more tricky when I was by myself in Edinburgh…

Bits and bobs included:

Sessions with Darren Hayman, some gigs playing rock 'n roll, trad jazz and ska on stilts, recording HCB's debut single Money, some MFMO gigs and lots of teaching.