So very sorry for your loss 💚 Tumblr will still be here when you're ready for it. Take care of yourself in the meantime

Thank you, sweetheart. I'm dipping my toes in every once and a while because I have a little more time, but I'm still catching up on a lot of real life stuff that fell by the wayside while my whole life revolved around taking care of my dad (a privilege I was grateful for) so I'm still so so busy. But my dear hearts are always in my thoughts. Miss you a lot, friends in my phone!

I can't wait to show you how much I know you can be.

-The Calling by The Amazing Devil

(Art by @linyazy that I commissioned and deeply love. The fox in The Calling always symbolized transformation and new beginnings for me. Also forget-me-nots because new beginnings don't mean you let go of precious memories from the past.)

Yo! Long time no speak! I got pixelated, anyway, huge news. My TAD shirt came in today! I'm so excited to wear it! I got the one with Joey and Madeline on it. Might get the TAD heart tote bag, too.

I just saw this! So happy for you. Wear it with lots of joy!

I got one too, the Rockrose and the Thistle one. But I don't have it yet. 😔 I live on a tiny farm on a tiny island in a tiny country with a shitty postal system so I have no faith that international deliveries will find me. So I addressed my shirt to a friend who lives in London and I won't get it until she comes back home later this year. I'm so excited!

In the meantime, did you know there are shops that will just embroider whatever you want on tshirts? I discovered this and went a little bit wild.

hey love, i’m so sorry for your loss. i’ve been thinking about you and your family since you moved. i hope you find some peace soon, until then i’m sending you all the love these internet cables can handle. you’re very missed 💞

Thank you so much, dearest heart. I'm grateful for all the good wishes that have come my way. I'll be okay. 💕

I know you're strong enough to do this on your own.

- Welly Boots by The Amazing Devil

(Art by @bycharizze on Instagram, commissioned by me)

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There's a Christmas bazaar in the plaza near the hospital where my dad is confined. Loud Christmas music blasting all day every day. But my favorite sound in the world can be heard inside a dim, quiet hospital room, when my dad starts snoring. Snoring means sleeping, and sleeping means a hard-won respite from pain. These days that feels like a miracle.

Art by  clay__san

Posted with Permission (reprint/edit and/or commercial use prohibited)

Happy Birthday!!!

Archbishop James Ussher claimed that the Heaven and the Earth were created on Sunday, the 21st of October, 4004 BC, at 9:00 a.m. This too was incorrect, by almost a quarter of an hour. It was created at 9:13 in the morning. Which was correct. The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven’t seen yet.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EARTH!!!

on this day one year ago someone sewed a fried egg to a tshirt

A thing I could never say out loud

*

I always figured I'd be the first one to die in my family. Mental illness is a fucking bitch and at my worst I thought if it takes me then at least I wouldn't have to mourn my loved ones. (Yes, it's selfish, I'm aware.)

But now the doctors are saying horrible things about my dad's cancer. I'm not prepared for this. I'm not the slightest bit ready to be the one left behind. My father is a solid fact of life. HE is not supposed to leave ME.

Fucking insane how life just goes on when I feel like my world is on the brink of collapse. And I still need to feed the chickens.

Folk musicians have always employed drama to tell a story but this evening’s storytelling is more than engaging. It’s a genuinely immersive experience in which the audience, which packs this tiny club, is sucked into the vortex created by the on-stage – and off – stage antics of the band. Hyland, part-witch, part-lunatic, throws herself bodily to the ground, where she continues to sing on her back, without missing a note. It’s the sheer exuberance of the musicianship, and the beautiful quality to Hyland’s voice that allows her to get away with it

- This Devil has some of the best tunes (Tribune Magazine review of a live performance of Love Run)

Madeleine Hyland on The Amazing Devil's origin story

From this podcast interview dated November 29, 2018 where she mostly talked about Shakespeare and acting, but also this:

Ted Fox  27:05   I'm wondering, you're the front woman for that band, and you said you play the character Scarlet Scarlet performing in the band. Can you tell us a little bit about your music as well as the name? Because I think people always love band names and where band names come from. (Madeleine laughs) So both of those pieces, what kind of music you guys do, and where your name came from.

Madeleine Hyland  27:24   Oh, yeah, I love the story. (laughs) So the band was formed by my friend Joey and I when we were doing Wolf Hall for the RSC; it was like a two year job, right? So it started in Stratford-upon-Avon and then went into the West End, then went to Broadway. And by the end of Stratford, you know, because I was understudying seven parts or something, and he had a small--well, no, he had a significant small role, but it was the kind of show where it was a little like a one-man show about Cromwell with everyone else overseeing and having a couple of things. Fantastic. We had a wonderful time. But we also had a lot of downtime. So we started, Joey's a wonderful guitar player and a very talented songwriter. And we both kind of had a box of songs under the bed that we'd been wanting to do things with for a while. So we got those out. And he started tinkering with my things, and I started, you know, making suggestions. And so we started writing this album. By the time we finished Broadway, we had a sort of whole album ready to go.

So as soon as we got back to London, we were like, Okay, we have some pennies for almost the first time in our lives, saved up from being on Broadway, so let's go and put them all into into recording an album. And so we went into a tiny little studio in Stoke Newington, which was an ex-button factory. And it was a very intense experience to go in and make this album, which was kind of, it has a sort of narrative to it. But yes, I suppose Scarlet Scarlet and The Blue Furious Boy--which are, so Joey is the other co- front person, so--and the whole album is full of duets. And yeah, I suppose when we're doing it, I suppose initially, as well--because I'd done a lot of singing before, I'd done jazz singing and had this whole thing with Dexys--but I felt like there was a sort of persona that was coming out in me when I was singing these songs live. And so we started to give her a name, which was Scarlet Scarlet, and it kind of just, it enabled me to then go a lot further. As we've gone on, I feel like those boundaries getting a little more blurry now. So we're not necessarily playing the characters to such an extent, but we may do again, you know, we may. It's also just really fun. I mean, there's no denying that we're both actors, and it's very much a sort of an actor's raging against the world kind of album, you know? (laughs)

Ted Fox  29:59 How would you describe, how would you describe the music itself?

Madeleine Hyland  30:01   So it's kind of epic-piratey folk rock, baroque, theater? (laughs)

Ted Fox  30:13   I've listened to some of it, so I would say, I like that description. Yeah.

Madeleine Hyland  30:19   It's ginormous fun to sing, and we really have learned a huge amount, while singing, about acting. And, you know, people often say, You know, what's more important to you, singing or acting? And I go, Well, no, like, the more I've done the singing, the more it's informed the acting, and the more I've acted, the more it's informed the singing, so they just make each other better, the more I do both of them. But yeah, then we came to the point where we had to find a name. We started writing this big, big list of names. And then, so I was living at the time with a five-year-old and an eight-year-old who are both in the first music video that we made, as well, which you can find online, it's called King.

And they're the two little girls running on the beach. And Martha was sitting there drawing, and I'd already come up with about 50 names. And we were like, Martha, Martha, what should we call the band? And she just looked at us and stopped drawing, and she was like, The Amazing Devil. (Ted laughs) Like it was the most obvious thing.

Ted Fox  31:17 How did you miss this?

Madeleine Hyland  31:18 How did you miss it? And we were like, Oh, oh, that's really good. (both laugh) And then I sort of went away and came up with like another 50 names, and Joey was still like, No, it's The Amazing Devil, it just is. It has to be.

Hey dearest! I just felt like sending you some love! I hope all is well with you <33

Hello, love! I'm alright. I miss you a lot. I go about my day with The Amazing Devil playing on my earphones, and every so often I'll have a Thought and I'm like, "I should inflict this upon my friends in my phone." But then I crash into bed so tired at the end of the day and fall asleep at 9 o'clock. NINE!!! I am appalled. My past night owl self would be appalled.

Anyway, thanks for saying hi! You're always in my thoughts.

I think the triumph of Love Run is in how freaking weird it is. Remember that this came out years before The Witcher propelled Joey Batey into the spotlight, so they put themselves out there with no expectation of a ready audience beyond their local music scene. Yet they never tried to play it safe, never even considered taming the wildness of their art to make themselves more palatable to more people. There are overlapping lyrics, multi-layered metaphors, and a single feral music video where a band with "devil" in its name shouts "All hell and its fire waits for us." If that's not a giant middle finger raised towards the very notion of "playing it safe," then I don't know what is.

Love Run is bold, story-driven, unapologetically complex music, and it doesn't shy away from asking listeners to put in the effort to dig deeper. It rewards careful attention rather than easy consumption, and the incredible vulnerability on display invites the same in response. I love it to pieces but I can see why some people would find it too difficult, too chaotic, or too strange. I can see where other producers would've told them to tone it down or make it less complicated. I'm grateful that they didn't. I'm grateful that they fought to make the kind of music they wanted, trusting that it would find the kind of people who needed it. And here we are. <3

Can y'all believe that it has been SEVEN YEARS since The Amazing Devil released Love Run, an album so unapologetically wild and weird and wonderful that it's like tossing up word salads to even try to describe what it is? Indie alternative antifolk? Theatrical baroque folk rock? Whatever it is, it's a masterpiece, and I STILL haven't found the perfect words to describe exactly how it crashed into my heart and made a home there. Maybe in another seven years, I might.

These poor baby birds needed some help after their nest fell down (it was attached to our house). Quickly rigged up a repair and put them back inside. Thankfully the parents found them again!

Mama bird checking on her babies in the repaired nest. Wish this sunbird family luck!