Plenty of people have been asking about what’s going to happen when the record’s done, so I thought I’d write a blog about it.

We’re due to start mixing towards the end of this month, so hopefully we’ll have all the finished mixes in our hands by the beginning of March. After that we’ve got some meetings to set up – I’m not technically linked to a label yet, so we’ll probably be trying to find one that feels right. They need to like me, I need to like them, and we’d share the same vision for the music. There’s also publishing, live agents, press/pr, legal stuff to consider.

Basically we’ll see how it goes – I really want to get going with showing it to the world, but the time has to be right. It’s possible it might not be released until the summer or autumn, with single releases, gigs and tours along the way. Who knows?!

Whatever happens, I’ll be telling you guys first.

Overdubs are continuing at pace! Last Sunday we were working on those two close cousins of each other  – sax and choir – and BOY what a day that was.

Firstly, Tom Harrison did some incredible stuff with the sax. We only used it sparingly, but what we’re putting on is exactly right – some fabulously breathy stuff on The Light, and beefing up another couple of tracks.

At about 4:30pm the choir started filtering in, and I have to say it might be the best session of my life. 15 beautiful voices from 15 beautiful faces belting out Feet Don’t Fail Me Now in perfect harmony left me speechless. And such lovely people too. My sincerest thanks to both old close friends and The Choir Brigade who kindly made up most of the group and performed so professionally. I was really quite overcome….

I’m going to pre-date this – ah the power of the blogger! To pretend I’m good enough to actually update often enough!

Just wanted to report on the first weekend of overdubs I did with Phill and wonderful assistant engineer / all-round-superhero Tom Loffman.

PIANO! I frickin love pianos. love em. Majestic instruments. The instrument equivalent of a horse I’ve always thought… Elegant, beautiful, often black and very occasionally white, quite heavy etc etc. I did a few things myself and then enlisted the help of a wonderful new musician friend – Kevin Pollard. Like everyone who seems to be involved in this project his talents are only matched by his lovely nature. Fantastic player, fantastic bloke. He kindly did some piano on Inside My Mind and Be With Me Once More and some hammond on Many Fish To Fry. VERY nice!

The rest of the weekend was made up of funny odds and ends – various quantities of accordion, melodica, guitar and glockenspiel capped off a highly productive weekend. My epic spreadsheet now has more green and less orange, but still loads more to come…

A quick word about this rhythm section.

I’ve been playing with Harry Mead for some time now in different projects, and I never stop being amazed at what an incredible drummer he is. His playing is a lot like his personality – unpretentious, considerate, professional and deeply soulful. He’s really stepped up to the mark on this record.

John Parker has had no end of praises for his work with Nizlopi, so it’s great to find out he’s not only worthy of the praise but extremely modest about it. It’s been a real privilege to both have him play on the album, and get to know him. He’s not just talented at playing the double bass, but talented at being a great human too.

Hopefully, we’ll all go out and play it live sometime, but that’s another story altogether…..

my oh my what a sore head I have. I was instructed not to listen to any of the tracks for a few days to get some perspective, so I bought a new pair of trousers, a new toaster and then went to get drunk in a quiet pub. Then I forgot to eat, beat someone from Noah and the Whale at darts, and starting offering to make toast for everyone. All in all quite a success.

The last couple of days were much like the rest of the week – extremely successful – tho no doubt you’re bored of hearing me say that and assume it’s some sort of marketing hyperbole. The truth is I think it has the makings of a great record, but I really don’t know. Is the music authentic? commercial? both? is there a great single? will anyone like it? should I care? I can write a song and love it one day and hate it the next, so really my opinion is worthless and irrelevant anyway.

All I know is I’ve tried my best, although in the words of the great Sean Connery from the film The Rock – “your BEST?! Losers ‘try their best’. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”

I’m going to allow myself maybe one more episode of House, then I’m going to have to knuckle down and start the hard work – coordinating overdubs and editing. Vocals, backing vocals, pianos, banjos, guitars, melodicas, percussion, violins, cellos(?), horns and whatever else seems like a good idea. Luckily I have an incredible team of people to help me, to whom I am quite unprecedentedly grateful.

x

Mixed feelings as we enter the last couple of days in this main studio stint. Pleased to have most of the album down, but a little sad that this phase is almost over. After this will be a tricky period of overdubbing and fine tuning exactly what sounds make it on to the mix stage. I can’t wait to hold the finished mixes in my hand – after that it’ll be time to have some meetings to make things happen with it.

We’ve tackled most of the band songs first cos we can only get them down here. Now it’s time for getting down versions of the acoustic stuff – This City, Eyes, Ferris Wheel – though they won’t necessarily stay solo acoustic.

One of the things I’m most pleased with is not just the recordings – which to my ears sound in a different league to anything I’ve ever done before – but the way the band has come together as people. It bodes well for the future.

much love! let’s see if we can make it through this snow into the studio today…..

x

more snow! And what does this mean? That’s right – it means John loses a bet about whether he’s allowed to play double bass on Solitude. Thank you weather gods!

Everyone’s feeling good – it’s tough working 12 hour days every day for a week – especially for layabout musicians! It’s incredibly intense. We’ve really broken the back of it all now though and the mood in the studio has been great all week. It’s amazing how well we all get along in fact – our personalities all fit together.

Many Fish To Fry was always the track everyone was most worried about getting down because it’s quite complex to record, but in the end we got it sounding fantastic by early evening. It’s like an epic slightly Irish singalong about the infinitely varied futures we could have. I’ve never really liked the idea of fate. I’m fairly sure it’ll close the album.

Sideline is also coming along really well. Guitar and bass are on and all good. Definitely taking shape.

In a crazy rush today so gonna have to be quick!

Bit of a disjointed day, but certainly not an unsuccessful one. Freddie Laid The Smack Down grooves along really nicely – that song’s been a bit of a surprise to be honest and I’m really pleased with it. Also tackled Inside My Mind – a bit slower than before and pretty intense. Calum in particular was excellent yesterday – his guitar tone on Freddie was just magical, and he was using a high-strung guitar on Inside My Mind to make sounds I’m not used to acoustic guitars making. Beautiful.

Evening was a touch more tricky – we’ve been having an ongoing battle with what to do with Ferris Wheel. It’s always such a live favourite, but what should a studio version sound like? With a band some of the guitar percussion just makes it messy – so do you change the band sound or the guitar part? We ended up putting it to one side to look at later in the week and turned our attention to the epic Many Fish To Fry, which could be quite a challenging song to record, but is so much fun to play. We’ll have to record it properly on day four though.

Hope things are well in your world. I’m full of the joys of new years and new starts.

x

YES! Another excellent day. Not only are we speeding along at a great rate, we’re not compromising in the least with what we’re getting. It’s sounding absolutely lush.

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now to kick off the day, and we had to track instruments individually but it all slotted together really well. These first sessions are just to get down the core of the tracks with vocals and other overdubs to be done later in the month, so it’s all about getting the instrumental heart of the track perfect. FDFMN is absolutely pounding along.

Pondering On  A Scenario In Which I Am The Hero was my highlight of the day I think. Just some glorious sounds from everyone. This band all compliments each other so beautifully.

Lastly we pretty much finished I Saw Something which sounds like a whole new song now.

If you’re wondering why I’m re-recording these when you’ve heard versions already, you’ll understand why as soon as you hear the new ones. It’s about what is added by some of the best session musicians in the business, recorded by one of the best engineers in the business. And it sounds…. well… the business.

x

It’s so important with these things to get off  to a good start. If you have a bad first day it can set you back for the rest of your schedule. That really puts you under unnecessary pressure which isn’t always a good mental space to be in to record music.

Luckily we got off to a great start despite a little issue with separating the drum sound. Our target is 2-3 tracks per day and we managed to set up all the equipment, wire everything up, deal with the drum issue and get two fantastic sounding tracks down so I’m thrilled. All & Forever just thumps along and has a real nice mix of grooves – part hillbilly rock, part ska, part something else. Reeling was sounding gorgeous – this band have an uncanny ability to get an instinctive feel for a track.

Roll on day two….