I had a really wonderful time putting this recording together and hearing it come to life with Kane's excellent vocals. (A lot of the harmonies and other touches came from him on the spot.)
My first time working with the very talented Tim Matthews, who I recorded here in my little studio. Kane Chamberlain (The Juniper Club) there providing the harmonies, too. Somewhat of a change of direction from my eighties pop rock songs.
Another track that took on a lot of different forms before this one (it has been a traditional style drinking song among other things). Slightly bleak lyric, which I think works, and in the third verse you get to hear Dave Mikulskis singing in his boots and out of character. Other than his parts, this one was recorded and mixed by me.
One day I was watching on YouTube the video for Nik Kershaw's Wouldn't It Be Good. One of the comments below said something along the lines of how cool it was that the verses were written from the perspective of one Read more
One day I was watching on YouTube the video for Nik Kershaw's Wouldn't It Be Good. One of the comments below said something along the lines of how cool it was that the verses were written from the perspective of one person and the choruses from another, creating a conversation. 'What!', I thought, 'No way. Surely the first verse and chorus are person A and the second verse and chorus are person B.' And that's how a comment you disagree with can give you an idea for a song.
One of my explorations in what I call 'Clean Guitar Rock' (my jazzer friends assure me these guitars are far from clean), this song went through many iterations to become what you hear now. This finished demo was made by Read more
One of my explorations in what I call 'Clean Guitar Rock' (my jazzer friends assure me these guitars are far from clean), this song went through many iterations to become what you hear now. This finished demo was made by me in a garden room called Charlene at my house in Oxford using a Tascam Model 12, the vocal parts being subsequently replaced by Dave Mikulskis (of the Chicago area band Hi Infidelity) and mixed and mastered back in my shed.
A kind of 80s radio ballad, beautifully sung by my good friend Mike (www.michaelkentish.com), and other than that put together by me at home on the Tascam. "It's only love, girl!" Is a line I wouldn't write today, but is preserved here in delay-drenched glory.
An acoustic rock song with a theme of loss. Sweet natural vocal from Mike here. Having always liked the Danny Wilson song Mary's Prayer I wanted to write a story that followed a passage of time, verse by verse, as theirs Read more
An acoustic rock song with a theme of loss. Sweet natural vocal from Mike here. Having always liked the Danny Wilson song Mary's Prayer I wanted to write a story that followed a passage of time, verse by verse, as theirs does. Of course, unlike my Dee their Mary had the good sense never to have been given a surname (Dee DeVine was a name I invented to fit phonetically where it needed to in the vocal line, and which lends some playful alliteration to the song's title [itself obviously an echo of David McWilliams's 'Days Of Purley Spencer']); Some very late-in-the-day googling tells me that all sorts of Dee DeVines are currently engaged in various wheezes right here in the real world. (Who knew!) Well, this song is about none of them (I picture my Dee as something like Greta Gerwig in the film Frances Ha, if you want to know). Anyway, as usual this one was recorded in my studio, Charlene, with Mike remotely engineering his parts at his place.
