Hello and a happy new year to you all.
I have to admit that I haven’t written an update since August; the one before last. So it’s time. Can’t say I know where the time’s gone but I have entered a new stage of life. My mother died in the October of 2023, lasting only a year longer than my dad. My sister and I are now front line troupes and dealing with profound change. We have grieved and adapted as people do.
Through all of that, playing music held me together and connected me to the world. Thank you so much to everyone who came to concerts and encouraged me; to everyone who collaborated and played with me and to the promoters who booked me. I feel massively privileged to know you all.
It’s no surprise that the new album is going to reflect a lot of that change. I figured out that so far, I have produced one album every four years. I had already started to write material for the current album several years ago and before the really big changes. Even so, I must have sensed it coming. I always conceived of this collection of songs as somehow circular, like a circus ring or a massive roundabout. In the end I decided to call it ‘The World’, grandiose I know but it refers to the tarot card. I like the tarot. I’m not convinced of its divinatory properties, but for me, the cards are a map and a representation of our inner selves, full of metaphor, poetry and imagery. The World is the last card in the deck and represents completion of cycles so that the self can move on and start again. It is very beautiful and positive and most apt for a person entering their third age.
I have been recording with the wonderful Will Angelero in Frome. He is a great maker of music and it suits me to be able to wander down the hill, spend an hour or two in the studio and take things slowly. My last two albums were recorded with the equally wonderful Josh Clark of Get Real Audio. When I started the new project with Will I felt as if I had been unfaithful and it took me a while to fess up. When I did, Josh laughed at me and said it was time I shook things up a bit. So that's what I’ve done. The studio is my happy place these days.
This album will sound different again from the last two, not only because I am working with another producer but because I’m different.
We have almost finished. All ten songs, recorded initially with just me and the guitar, are in the bag. We have added gorgeous, slippery, fretless bass and a bit of light percussion to a few songs. When I say we, I really mean Will. On the more upbeat tracks, I want it to sound as if an amazingly talented but louche band have come to the last songs of a late, late night and are rather the worse for drink. It is still essentially a stripped back acoustic album focussing on the vocal but I think you are going to like what we have done with the arrangements.
Next came the extra guitar lines and backing vocals. Some of the BVs are me but I got my sisters in song to contribute too, so you can hear Sara Vian and Jane Langley singing. There is some squeeze box on Barflies, played most evocatively by my long standing friend Steve Rickets. I really wanted my friends on this album and its wonderful that that has happened and that I have made new musical connections through Will. I love what Al Cosnett has done on harmonica and Gemma White on the fiddle.
So now we mix and master, sort all the artwork, get the CDs pressed and grapple with distribution. The extremely efficient Jim Soars will be helping with the PR and all that jazz and I have booked a flurry of gigs to launch The World into the world...next Spring.
Before all that, I am getting away for most February and March; a trip to Italy to visit friends and relations and a stay in the far tip of the heel of Puglia. I’m hoping for warmer weather, a chance to write and benign adventures. I’ll be back in time for a gig at The Village Pump in Trowbridge on the 5th April.
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