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Fairly Aged Feline update

The Fairly Aged Feline, Ginger Edition, has been feeling rather rough of late. After his scary cancer thing at the end of the last year, he’s been on weekly, then monthly chemo, and it had been keeping the tumor (which at the time it was discovered was the size of a satsuma) at bay, so that it was undetectable. He was looking a bit rough yesterday so I took him into the vets on the way to the gig, and found out that his kidneys were both swollen, and an ultrasound showed that they both have tumours in them, which was just about blocking them.

He was given a steroid shot and a different chemo on a drip overnight, and seems to be a lot better than he was yesterday, but it’s still not looking good for the lil’ guy again. So we’re here praying for another feline miracle like the last one, but knowing that he may not be around too much longer. It’s a really horrible thought.

If you’re of a mind that talks to God on behalf of small furry people, please have a word on his behalf.

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End of the mini-tour

Last night was the last date on the iddy-biddy tour with Muriel Anderson. Four very fine gigs. Small audiences, but lovely venues, and very appreciative peoples. And for me, a great chance to try out a load of the new tunes from Behind Every Word. Thanks so much for all the feedback on the new tunes – the overall opinion seems to be that they’re fab, though it would take a pretty churlish person to turn round and say ‘those tunes you just played, they’re crap’. So make of that what you will.

Anyway, I really liked them.

Was also much fun doing the duet stuff with Muriel in the second set. At the first gig, we just did one tune together at the end, but in all the rest of the gigs, we did the second half as a duo, playing a whole load of stuff from Don McLean’s ‘Vincent’ to ‘Autumn Leaves’ to tunes by both of us to some lovely improvs. Much fun all round.

Now, back to the album…

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Recording again…

Back to recording today… Why? Well, on this album adventure I’ve had a remote co-pilot, the Shark. It just started by me sending MP3s over for her to hear, but her comments were (usually) well placed and useful, and she’s become a very valuable sounding board. So album was finished, and Shark drops into IM conversation ‘is that the version of Behind Every Word that you’re having on the album’. The evil lady sows seeds of doubt in my mind, and I head back to try a new version, coming up with a new (trickier) arrangement, so I’m back recording again… The new version is sounding fab though… so that’s one thing, I guess!

If you want an easy life, don’t listen to anyone else!

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Portsmouth gig

Fine first gig on the tour with Muriel. Nearly didn’t happen, as my car almost overheated on the way down, but some water and a half hour cool-off for the engine seems to have fixed that…

The gig itself was at the Eastney Cellars, a lovely pub with a landlord who’s massively pro-live-music, and has spent a small fortune converting it into an even better live music venue. He’s also generated a fab listening environment.

Most fun for me was having Linda and Geoff there – they’re my step-aunt and uncle (I think that’s right…), and we at my first ever gig! (well, I’d played one school show before that, but they were at the first one in a venue – The Galleon in Spittal, for anyone keeping score).

At that gig I was playing with my band EARS (Eric Adam Robert and Steve – we could have been ARSE but wouldn’t have got to play at school if we had been). And we were rubbish. Largely. We had one good song at that point called ‘Through The Tunnel’ which I could probably still play on bass and guitar (I wrote the guitar part too!) Can’t remember much else of what we played, other than doing Foxy Lady despite only knowing the first chord (or thinking we knew the first chord, we might even have got that wrong…) and Venus by Bananarama. Oh yes, we were that hip. I think we got paid about a tenner between us, by a very very drunk landlord called Keith. Who claimed to be ‘tired’ when he was clearly inebriated beyond the ability to string a sentence together. And we were opening for Faldstool – Berwick legends, formed from the ashes of my first non-gigging band, Mother’s Legs. Maybe I’ll tell the rest of the story of my early bands at another point, when it’s not 1am…

That was 18 years ago! So G and L were back for more, and got to hear the slight improvement I’ve made since those days.

Was lovely to hear Muriel play again – she’s a fab guitar player, and write great tunes. I’m looking forward to the rest of the dates – Colchester Wednesday, Petersfield Thursday and St Ive’s in Cambridgeshire on Friday.

See you there!

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Learning the songs…

This is the fun bit – learning the stuff that came out all improv-y and naturally on the recording so that I can play it live!

A couple of the tunes should be fairly easy, given that I’ve had them written for a while – ‘Deeper Still’ (that’s the tune for Eric Roche, it now has a name, write it down so you know what I’m talking about in future) is easy enough to remember, just a bitch to try and play in tune! Scott Peck is fine, cos I know it, though it’ll be odd going back to playing it solo now that I’ve been listening to it for a few days with BJ Cole‘s pedal steel part on it. HappyHappy I can remember, fairly well, as it’s very easy and fairly short.

I’ve just learnt ‘Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins’ – a fun little tune with lots of multiply of sync’d loops to get thing to come back a long time in the future. I can play that.

Now I’m just checking out the title track on the album, trying to remember how it goes! Am listening to it at the moment. And have just remembered what happens in the middle. G2 no. 1 routed through G2 no. 2, both of them recorded into the looperlative… the hardest thing to remember is how to set it all up before the tune begins, which aux sends to route to where, which buttons to push to make sure the right things are being recorded into the Looperlative.

In other news, loads of people have been checking out the tunes on my MySpace page – major amounts of plays! MySpace is, indeed, as Imogen Heap’s manager mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago ‘the new radio’.

Right, back to learning these songs!

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At last, some new tunes to listen to!

Well, thanks very much for your patience, you shall now be rewarded with not one but two new exclusives from ‘Behind Every Word’ on my MySpace page – the first of them is Jimmy James, a new recording of a tune known to those of you who’ve got Not Dancing For Chicken – the tune’s always been one of my favourites of mine, but the recording just didn’t do it justice. this time it does!

And the second tune is a track called Me, Myself and I, starts all twiddly, gets all blissed out a mellow in the middle and ends all twiddly again. Much fun

Enjoy!

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Album deadlines – it's all suddenly very real!

The recording part of the album is just about finished (still might do another version of the tune for Eric… watch this space), and I’m onto mixing now. Not only that, but it’s booked in to be mastered on May 10th. The mastering will be handled by the genius that is Denis Blackham – Denis mastered Grace And Gratitude, and he got that gig because he’d mastered Theo‘s albums, as well as Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden. He’s good. Very good. So he gets the repeat gig.

The album now has a name – it’s called Behind Every Word. The title is taken from an interview I heard on Front Row with Guillermo Arriaga. At the moment I’m mixing the title track (which got an airing at the Recycle Collective on Wednesday, but thanks to my having pulled one channel of the Looperlative out, it wasn’t sounding its best…)

It’s amazing to think now that Not Dancing For Chicken was all recorded to stereo! that explains why some of it is rather noisy (so noisy in the case of Jimmy James that I’ve rerecorded it for this album). With being able to separate out the loops from the direct signal from the extra weirdness process is a real treat, and means that I can get better separation between the tracks, less noise, and clearer stereo imaging. I can’t wait to get a production model Looperlative and start doing this stuff with the loops going to 6 separate outs!!! that’s going to be amazing…

Anyway, From today onwards, for the next couple of weeks, there’s going to be a lot of mixing happening. next week I’ll be mixing each morning, and gigging each evening (with a little bit of teaching on Tuesday). All very exciting.

Gimme a day or two, and I’ll get a couple of tracks up on MySpace for you to hear.

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Special guest no. 2

Just finished recording a huge improv piece for the new album with singer Julie McKee – I’ve played with Julie quite a few times now, and she’s definitely one of the finest singers I’ve ever worked with (now I just need to get her and Cleveland on stage together!). She’s got a glorious voice, and a fantastic improv instinct, reacting beautifully to the many many layers of her own voice coming back at her.

The vibe is similar to the piece we did at St Luke’s on Good Friday, but with different words. We’ve done three takes, all three of which are useable, and now have to decide which one to use, and whether I’m going to steal anything from the other takes to drop in over the top… The three takes are 20 minutes, 13 minutes and 15 minutes long, so that may have some bearing on which one makes it to the album, given the not-unlimited amount of time one has available on a CD!

It all makes me look forward even more to doing the show at Edinburgh this summer with Julie!

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A great day's recording…

Album is coming along rather nicely. Have finally got a version of my song for Eric Roche that I’m happy with, and then this afternoon, BJ Cole came round to play on a track. The track in question is called ‘Scott Peck’, and was the first thing I played after I heard that Scott Peck, author of ‘The Road Less Travelled’ had died last year.

The bass parts were recorded as a single solo live performance earlier this week, and BJ then overdubbed three full takes through the entire form, which I’ve added fades to. I’ve actually ended up with his last two takes both happening for most of the track, panned left and right. BJ’s sound and playing are just so perfect for the track, it’s amazing. When we were recording the different takes, it wasn’t in mind that they be playing simultaneously, but the two takes work so well together that they just HAVE to be there!

So I’m rather grateful to The Shark, who both suggested that I re-visit Scott Peck (having heard an MP3 of it when I first recorded it last year), and suggested BJ for this track. It was in my mind all along to get BJ on one track on the album, and this is the perfect one for it.

You’re going to love it, believe me. :o)

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Recycle Collective gig 5

Another fine ‘n’ fun Recycle gig last night. The run up to it wasn’t good at all – thanks to Arsenal playing at home, we got there 45 minutes later than we needed to, and even then I’d left my laptop at home which I’d planned to set up and record it.

Eventually got set up, but didn’t do a proper soundcheck, so it wasn’t til I started playing that I realised something was wrong somewhere in the system – the problem being that when I’m recording, I use all 6 of the Mic channels on my desk ‘cos those are the ones with insert/sends. When I’m doing a gig like this, I need to free up the mic channels for other things (like mics), and somewhere in the process, I’d managed to unplug one channel of the Looperlative from the back of the machine.

Much sonic struggling ensued through my first couple of tunes – the combination of trying out new tunes and malfunctioning gear was a tricky one – but the improvs with Cleveland and then the trio section went really well, so no worries there.

Leo Abrahams was up next, and play three amazing solo tunes (one called Slippery Jack was particularly amazing). we then did ‘My Song Is Love Unknown’ together, which was fine, but would’ve been better if I’d worked out what that weird minor chord was in the middle (!), and then onto the trio, which was really interesting. Leo introduced it as one of his own tunes, and played the progression from the tune (with a beautiful delay and filter guitar sound that I want to steal!), Cleveland and I responded to it in the way we would any improv, and it soon morphed away from whatever Leo had initially intended, as his first loop faded out, and we transitioned into some amazing space. Cleveland is quite possible the most intuitive musician I’ve ever performed with – his instinct for reacting so clearly to whatever is going on, and taking it to new heights is remarkable.

Third set was Cleveland solo to start – he’s got some new Echoplex tricks up his sleeve, and really knows his Lexicon processor now and put on a really great show. Followed by an equally marvellous duo set with Leo, that went to some very strange places in a beautiful and beguiling way.

The last of the trio sets comprised two beatbox-related tracks, with similar grooves but very different textures, the second of which ended up with some crazy double-time swing section that really ended the gig on a high.

All-in, much fun. ‘Twas nice to try out a couple of the new tunes in front of a friendly audience – need to get them down a lot tighter before next week.

For those of you asking for recordings, i’ve got some of it on the laptop, but it crashed three times (my guess is that trying to run a firewire powered soundcard and the laptop itself off the same battery is a bit much for the machine) – so I’ve got a few bits, and I’ll fire it up later to find out what. But the distraction of faffing with it reminded me that if we are going to record these things, I really need to a) get there a lot earlier (like we’d planned to without the Arsenal traffice) and b) DELEGATE.

Next RC gig is May 18th – see you there!

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