Making an album, part 10: Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?

When I was a lad, it was quite the thing for people to sing at family gatherings. I had relatives who would regularly ‘do a turn’ and entertain the company with a song or two. At the time, I was too young and self-conscious or, later, too cool for school to appreciate any of this. I didn’t really know much at the time and had a slightly patronising view of folk who could (and would) get up and do a song at parties; it all seemed a bit passé to me. Now that I can usually tell the difference between my arse and a hole in the ground, I know that singing is a fun thing to do and that it is also good for you. I’m sure there have been studies carried out which can prove this scientifically (or at least pseudo-scientifically) but all I can present is anecdotal evidence, carried out by a sample of one, i.e. me. I feel better when I’m singing. I believe that when I’m singing, it’s not just my vocal chords that are being exercised; I believe that I’m taking my soul for a walk.

I wish I had known all this back then; I wish I could have been relaxed and confident enough to join in with all that singing. I get the impression that not as many folk sing at parties these days, although it’s possibly just the case that I don’t get invited to the parties at which people sing (although, come to think of it, I don’t get invited to parties, full stop).

The generation that sang at social gatherings was, in at least one respect, richer than their children and grand-children. They didn’t have the gadgets, the disposable income, the satellite TV or the foreign holidays, but they were familiar with songs that could be sung from start to finish without embarrassment or, indeed, embellishment. And that lack of any need for embellishment was a testament to the quality of the words and melodies of songs that were written to be sung. The wonder of the popular song resides, as Clive James put it, in “the way a colloquial phrase can be multiplied in its energy by how it sits on a row of musical notes.” Some may think these examples a bit cheesy, but old songs like ‘And I love you so’, ‘Spanish Eyes’ or ‘The way we were’ can be sung from start to finish by anyone. The melodies are simple and memorable, the lyrics evocative and universal; these are songs which do not rely on elaborate musical backdrops to sound convincing. Their energy and pathos are, indeed, generated by the skilful placement of colloquial phrases on rows of musical notes. We might not know exactly how this magic works, but when we listen to a piece of recorded music we make an unconscious assessment of at least one (and probably more) of these components: melody, chords, words, rhythm, sound and context. Our unique responses to these stimuli lead us to subjective conclusions about the quality of the song. 

If it is true that there is not as much unembellished singing going on today, then perhaps it’s the case that there are simply fewer contemporary songs that are fit to be sung (beyond the realms of karaoke). I’d suggest that advances in recording technology have altered the balance between form and content within the popular song, to the extent that the sound of the recording has usurped melody as the defining characteristic. Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’ is a really dynamic piece of music, but it’s not exactly rich in melody. And try singing along with these number one hits without karaoke accompaniment: ‘Professional Widow’ by Tori Amos, ‘Firestarter’ by The Prodigy or ‘Two Tribes’ by Frankie goes to Hollywood. 

If the sound of recorded music has improved (and not everyone would agree that it has), has that improvement been matched by improvements in song-writing? I generally don’t listen to chart radio, so I’m not aware of how much rubbish and how much good stuff is around just now, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s more or less the same amount of rubbish and good stuff as has always been in the charts; every era has its share of great songs, good songs, mediocre songs and bad songs. But how can we tell what is rubbish and what is good? Without some objective measurement of quality, all we can really offer is opinion. We know that if a song is popular it must be liked by large numbers of people, but we could all name examples of terrible songs that were big hits and great songs that never made the charts. 

Longevity, I’d suggest, is a reasonable indicator of quality.

To take one example, Stevie Wonder’s ‘My Cherie Amour’ was a top ten hit in the UK in August 1969, yet that song is still sung (and is still familiar) in a way that other successful tunes from that era are not. These songs were all in the top ten at the same time: ‘Baby make it soon’ by Marmalade, ‘Early in the morning’ by Vanity Fare, 'Goodnight Midnight' by Clodah Rodgers, 'Wet Dream' by Maz Romeo, ‘Make me an island’ by Joe Dolan and ‘Conversations’ by Cilla Black. These songs all performed well in the charts, they probably got played many times on the radio and were bought by lots of people, but how many of them would be recognised or sung by anyone today?

(Mind you, looking at that same chart, I’d imagine that lots of folk could probably sing along with ‘Give peace a chance’ by the Plastic Ono Band, despite it being a dreadful song).

Although that chart from 1969 was probably typical with regard to quality, I’d be willing to come off the relativistic fence for a moment to suggest that, if we took an average pop chart from the mid-to-late sixties and compared it to an average pop chart from the 21^st century, we’d observe that the popular song is now painted from a somewhat diminished palette. By that, I mean that it has lost some of its rhythmic variation (the 4/4 rhythm now seems more or less ubiquitous), it has fewer chords (and fewer interesting chords; yes, that’s a judgement), the structures have simplified and the subject matter (indeed, the vocabulary of pop) has narrowed. Songs used to be written to be sung, but -with less of a focus on melody and words- it seems that many of them are now made to be listened to. This is partly about who is making music, partly about why they are making it and partly about the tools they use, but it’s also a socio-cultural development and one that someone else should write up for their PhD.

In suggesting that the songs of forty to fifty years ago might have been generally ‘better’ because they had more emphasis on melody, I’m perfectly aware that I’m:

a) Stating an entirely subjective viewpoint

b) Ignoring Paul Simon’s wise words about every generation throwing "a hero up the pop charts"

and c) Sounding like an old fart. 

But when an old fart claims that such-and-such is a great song because people are still singing it fifty years after it was recorded, he has a point. The fact that people are singing it means something. Lots of modern songs may turn out to be great and timeless pieces, but we don’t yet know if people will be singing them fifty years hence.    

All of which leads me to reflect on my own efforts.

As well as being limited by ability and imagination, my song-writing efforts are generally filtered through subjective judgement criteria for melody, chords, words, rhythm and sound which were set many years ago, when I listened to music on the radio or on the family record player. In other words, I like my stuff to sound like other stuff that I believe to be good. One of the reasons I’ve been talking about old songs is because the piece I’m linking to below is something of an homage to a certain type of old song, one that I have fond memories of.

I’ve stated in previous instalments of this ‘recording-an-album’ saga that I often find musical inspiration easier to access than lyrical inspiration. I’m more equipped to emulate than innovate, so will often have a particular feel in mind whenever I start composing; this ‘feel’ will sometimes be based on something I’ve heard and admired before. The trick is then to disguise the source material as the piece develops, but in this case I was inclined to be faithful to the germ of the idea. The song started out as a doodle on the piano and I knew, as soon as I stumbled upon the descending chord sequence of the verse, that I was about to write something which would owe a debt of gratitude to The Kinks, (by way of The Beatles and ELO).

Although I could quickly imagine how the recording would sound, I had nothing in the way of lyrical content. As the structure developed, however, it occurred to me that the ambience I wanted to create would best be served by a direct lyric, a ‘story’ as opposed to an impressionistic poem. Once I came up with the title, the story fell into place. The end result -‘Mr McIntosh has left the building’- is about a man experiencing his last day in employment. Having spent all of his working life in the same office job, he reflects upon the speed with which the whole thing seems to have passed him by. I love the sly humour of Ray Davies and the way he creates believable characters to inhabit his evocative urban vignettes. But there is also an undercurrent of melancholy in his work (in ‘Autumn Almanac’, for example) and I wanted my song to have a touch of that.

‘Forty years have come and gone; he’s been there man and boy and now he’ll leave without a fuss to catch that evening omnibus’.

Having decided upon the direction of travel, the deliberate use of the archaic ‘omnibus’ was designed to place the piece in a sixties context, as was the deployment of brass (splendidly played by Dave Webster). In the chorus, the bass sits in E under the first four chords, a device I’m much more likely to use when writing on the piano. It creates a bit of tension, which -in this case- aids the purpose of lyrical exposition. 

The character reflects that it ‘seems like two blinks of an eye’ since he started the job; he realises, with a sense of numb bewilderment, that decades of graft have amounted to not very much at all.

‘All the stories he could tell: they could fill a book, but there’s one thing that is guaranteed: no-one else would want to read it’.

I don’t like songs that sneer at the ordinary lives of ordinary folk and I hope that the lyric doesn’t sound like I’ve tried to do that here. The aim was merely to say something about the fleetingness of a life spent in gainful employment and to capture the feelings of a man about to leave work for the last time.

I was talking about the process of song-writing to a friend recently (now you know why I don’t get invited to parties) and he related a lovely quote from Leonard Cohen concerning the elusive and frustrating nature of inspiration. The old boy said: “If I knew where the songs came from, I'd go there more often.” 

How that simple observation resonates! I would happily slice off and eat my left arm to be able to write a truly popular song; by that, I mean one that lots of people would like, buy and want to sing along with.

But, if nobody wants to sing along with this song, I’ve cunningly included a bit of whistling on the final chorus. To paraphrase Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in 'Apocalypse Now':

“I love the sound of whistling on a record. There’s nothing like it. It sounds like … victory.”

Mr McIntosh has left the building 

Making an album, part 7: How not to write a song for Shania Twain

A few years ago, I was asked to provide some material for an up-and-coming young female country singer. A friend in the business who was familiar with my writing style (I was going to use the phrase ‘writing prowess’ there, but that would have been a bit of an exaggeration) thought that I might have some songs which -given the right treatment- could have worked for this particular vocalist. My name was passed to the singer’s manager, who also happened to be her mother. After a perfunctory phone call (“I’ve been told you write songs. We’re looking for songs”), an appointment was made for us to meet. I packed my guitar and notebook and drove out to a big house in the country, about a mile and half from the middle of nowhere.

Upon my arrival, it was made clear that the singer’s mum /manager (let’s call her The Mumager) was the director of operations. I was led into a room that could have passed for a middle-sized function suite (complete with its own stage) and it was explained that I would be auditioning my songs to her before she decided if the enterprise was to proceed beyond first base. I’m being polite here when I say that she was not the kind of person who liked to waste time with idle chit-chat. Inasmuch as I had expected anything, I thought that I would at least have met the singer before introducing her to the songs which, in my head at least, had ‘surprise country smash’ written all over them, but the daughter was -as yet- nowhere to be seen. The Mumager, with a small hand gesture, invited me to take the stage and perform. She positioned herself on a chair a few feet from the raised platform and, from that distance, looked like the smallest and possibly the toughest audience I would ever have to play to. There was no point in trying to crack a joke to ease the tension, because the meagre conversational scraps of our opening exchanges had made it obvious that my sense of humour and hers had about as much in common as scrap metal and scrambled eggs.

Mindful of that ever-useful mnemonic beloved of all performers (TNT MAFFOY – ‘Try Not To Make a Fucking Fool of Yourself’), I had come prepared with a number of possible contenders for the surprise country hit of the year. I assumed that The Mumager’s idea of country music would have been based on songs she had heard played by proper country musicians. As I’ve stated in some previous articles, I’m not a particularly gifted musician, let alone a gifted country musician. My playing style, such as it is, could best be described as ‘tipsy welterweight’; I don’t really do finesse and, rather than tease a melody out of a guitar or piano, I’m more naturally equipped to bludgeon the instrument with some ham-fisted chords. Accordingly, I figured that each song would require an eloquent preamble; rather than let The Mumager judge my songs on what she was about to hear, I needed her to judge them on what I imagined they could be, given a bit of investment and finesse. Before essaying the first strum on each song, I tried to explain how a recorded version might sound, given the proper backing. Imagine, if you will, Woody Allen trying to talk his way out of being whacked by one of Tony Soprano’s henchmen; that is more or less how my song pitches were delivered.   

“This one could turn out to be a bit like Shania Twain, if we arrange it properly” I heard myself saying. Somewhere in the background, a clock ticked. Slowly.

There was little to glean from The Mumager’s inscrutable expression, although as the audition went on, I began to suspect that my preambles were going down about as well an attempt to get her to buy into a time-share in a beaten-up caravan in Arbroath. I introduced another song. “This one would sound a bit country if we added some pedal steel” I said, probably sounding a bit feeble. Or, now that I think about it, actually sounding feeble. In my experience, one of the biggest mistakes a songwriter can make is to let people hear something that isn’t finished; where the songwriter can hear the glorious possibilities of embellishment, imaginings of beautiful harmonies, echoes of eloquent guitars, the layperson just hears whatever is placed in front of them.      

As I ran through my various would-be country classics, The Mumager said nothing, although she did nod her head occasionally. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but, given her almost complete lack of chat, facial expression or interpretable body language, I chose to take any occasional nod as a positive sign; perhaps, inside, she was all cartwheels, laughter and pure country joy. Five songs (and five rather laboured explanations) later, the audition was over. The Mumager said “We’ll do number three”. And that was it; the first part of our business had been conducted, leaving me glad that the pool of sweat on the stage beneath me had not been deposited in vain.        

The daughter was called through from the west wing and we were finally introduced. I played the song for her and –thankfully- she seemed to like it. We ran through it a few times until we found the right key for her and, before I left, I gave her a handwritten copy of the lyric to practise with. A few weeks later, we were in the studio recording a decent version of the song but, sadly, it didn’t turn out to be a surprise country hit; this, I realise, has been a recurring theme in my musical career.   

Of the five songs I pitched that night, one had seemed to me like a stand-out candidate (and it wasn’t number three). I had the feeling at the time that they would (and should) have picked song number four: ‘Read my Lips’. 

Like the vast majority of songs that I write, this had started with some chords on a guitar or piano, before I improvised a vocal melody over the top. Only after that initial ‘brainstorming’ phase would I have considered a subject matter, a title and some words to suit the mood that had been set by the basic components I had already put in place. As I played around with the chord sequence and melody, I had not only pictured someone like Shania Twain singing it, I also had the distinct feeling that it would somehow have suited a lyric with a universal theme. With, however, no pressing need to finish it, the song was filed away in my burgeoning ‘one-day-I-might-do-something-with-this’ file. Once I had accepted the assignment to try and write a hit for someone, it seemed like an obvious choice. I drafted, tweaked and re-drafted the lyric several times until it felt just right. I imagined a tight rocking band delivering the backing with some real torch and twang, while Shania belted out an empowering lyric along the lines of my-man-gone-done-me-wrong-so-he-can-sling-his-hook-and-I’ll-be-just-fine.

I thought that the tune was catchy and that the universal theme gave it some extra hit potential, but with my modest track record I don’t suppose many folk would see the percentage in betting on that. The Mumager was unmoved by the song (and my sales pitch), so ‘Read my Lips’ was consigned to the ‘pending’ file.  

Writing a pop lyric presents a different kind of challenge and is, in some ways, harder than writing something just to please yourself (which is what I usually do). It’s quite easy to write lyrics, but it’s rather more difficult to write good lyrics and, in my experience, even harder to write good lyrics for someone else.

A few years ago, I was in a band in which I had to write for another young female vocalist. She had a lovely voice, she looked the part and she had some pretty good ideas of her own, but her lyric-writing pace could best be described as sluggish and I often had to push matters along in order to get new material into our set. A man in his forties composing for a woman in her twenties was not necessarily a recipe for insightful writing and, in my desire to increase the band’s productivity, I tended to steer very firmly to the lyrical middle of the road, drafting lines that were, for want of a better term, generic. 

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with generic lyrics, but –sooner or later- you’ll find that you’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name and it’ll feel good to be out of the rain; or, as is more likely, nobody will have a clue what you’re talking about. I know that for some writers, this is actually something like a state of bliss. It is often the case (for a variety of reasons) that songwriters don’t particularly wish to be understood and plenty of folk have sustained entire careers on being vague and evasive in their songs.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Coldplay –to take but one example- have sold so many albums is that, in addition to the fact that their music is relatively easy on the ear, their words are usually just vague enough to have a broad appeal.

Take the lyrics to ‘Yellow’:

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called "Yellow".

So then I took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.

Your skin Oh yeah your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
You know, You know I love you so,
You know I love you so.

What does that even mean? I’d suggest that the answer is: nothing. Or, maybe it’s everything. These lyrics are so vague that any notion of meaning is conferred entirely by the listener. ‘Yellow’ can mean whatever you want it to mean, which in pop music terms, probably makes it a good (that is, commercially appealing) lyric.

Take, by way of contrast, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Song for Sharon’. Here’s the opening few lines:

I went to Staten Island, Sharon.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazyOn a storefront mannequin     

In addition to delineating a very personal and perceptive observation, these lines prepare the listener for the complex subject matter of the song. In exploring the idea of the path not taken, ‘Song for Sharon’ compares Joni Mitchell’s life -that of a successful musician- with that of a friend who has “a husband, a family and a farm”.

Mitchell acknowledges the powerful attraction of that “long white dress of love” (and all that it implies) then reflects on the lifestyle choices she has made in pursuing her muse. The lyric explores the tension between, on the one hand, her need to create art and, on the other, the desire for love, constancy and security.  

In the final lines, she sings:

But you still have your music
And I've still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I'll walk green pastures by and by

This is open to interpretation, but not in the same way that ‘Yellow’ is open to interpretation. Where ‘Yellow’ trusts the imagination of the listener to sprinkle some fairy dust over its prosaic phrasing, ‘Song for Sharon’ probes the complexity of big life choices. In laying out the consequences, regrets and rewards of opting for the life of a musical free spirit and rejecting the role of wife and mother, Mitchell sketches her ambivalence so skilfully that, by the end the song, we’re not really sure which woman has got the best deal.

There is no right way or wrong way to compose a lyric, but ‘Song for Sharon’ is clearly the work of a poet, while ‘Yellow’ could easily have been written by someone employed to churn out greeting cards for Walmart. I’d love to sit at Joni’s end of the song-writing table, but it’s a very long table and the reality is that I’m way down at the other end, using the wrong cutlery, knocking over the condiments and trying not to slurp my soup. But at least the songs on my album will make a series of statements that I’ll be reasonably happy to make. And, although ‘Read my Lips’ may have been written with the specific aim of having a hit by putting words into someone else’s mouth, it’s still something that I’m proud of. If I hadn’t had to audition this song, I might never have gotten around to finishing it. The discipline of pulling it all together, the imagining of Shania Twain performing it, improved me as a writer.

The Mumager might not have cared much for my material, but her daughter is now doing very well for herself on the Irish country circuit; by the sounds of it, she wanted something closer to old-school country than I could provide. My recorded version of the song is very close to what I had in mind when I wrote it. The band (Les, Fraser and Peter) absolutely nailed the arrangement, with Peter’s country-tinged guitar, in particular, bang on the money for the mood I wanted to create. 

On the subject of the album, work is now moving into the closing stages. I’ve recorded around 50 pieces of music and they currently sit in three distinct piles, each of which will hopefully see the light of day pretty soon.

More will be revealed shortly, but -just to be on the safe side- I have left instructions in my will that, in the event of my sudden death, the entire body of work should be performed at Hampden Park with a 60-piece orchestra, a male voice choir and Shania Twain on lead vocals. 

And, if we can swing it with her management, I’d like her to be dressed as Catwoman. 

Making an album part 4: I’m not with the band

Although I’m working with several different people on my album, I’ve chosen not to go down the route of forming a band to record it. Instead, I’m bringing in musicians as and when required. I’ve been in plenty of bands over the years and I’ve always been the main songwriter, but being a ‘one-person-does-most-of-the-writing’ kind of band is not necessarily the greatest formula for longevity. When the songwriting is a truly collaborative process, with everyone having a more or less equal say in the composition, you’ve probably got a better chance of keeping everyone in the band happy. But that’s not usually how I prefer to work, for reasons I’ve been exploring with a psychotherapist for the past decade or so (another three or four years, she says, and I should be almost out of the woods).    

Assuming that talent and hard work are already in place, one of the things that can keep a band going is momentum; you not only have to recognise when you have it, you need to be able to capitalise on it. From a songwriter’s point of view, momentum –or even the illusion of momentum- can only be maintained as long as the musicians believe that the songs might be able to take them places. With the benefit of hindsight, I can recognise the point at which various bands I’ve been in have lost momentum and belief, but failed to notice it. When that happens, it’s possible to trundle along for months and months, a bit like that Bruce Willis character in The Sixth Sense, not knowing that he’s actually dead. 

Up until sometime around your mid-to-late twenties, it’s relatively easy to maintain the enthusiasm, energy and belief required to maintain a band. At that stage, you are pretty resilient because, essentially, you believe that a big break might be just around the corner; but keeping a band together gets harder as you get older, particularly if the gigs you are playing aren’t bringing in much money. As the years pass and you start to realise that you are still quite some distance from earning a crust from music, you’ll sometimes wonder why the hell you are still doing it. And, as band members start to accumulate significant life baggage, the option of suffering for their art seems somehow less attractive. 

If you’re lucky, the business side of your operation will be looked after by a manager, leaving the sensitive artists to concentrate on playing music, drinking and showing off. I’ve had several managers over the years; most of them were nice enough people, but were often largely ineffective when it came to the main item on their job description: helping the band become much more successful. The management continuum has ‘autocrat’ at one end and ‘best friend’ at the other, with lots of variations in between; each style has its advantages and disadvantages. I once had a particularly autocratic manager who terminated our contract over an argument about the clothes that were to be worn in a promotional shoot. The manager wanted me, as the vocalist, to dress in a certain way. What he called -with a straight face- ‘his people’ had carried out some research into ‘winning’ colours and styles and had come up with what they believed was the perfect formula. This appeared to involve me dressing as what a Victorian novelist would have described as a popinjay.  I thought that what I was being asked to wear would make me feel even more stupid than usual, so I politely demurred. We couldn’t find a sartorial middle ground, so the manager, rather less politely, ripped up our contract. Sometimes it isn’t just about the music.           

Autocrats can be tricky to work with, but having a friend as your manager is also not without its pitfalls. Someone who is very close to the musicians might be unable to bring the necessary hard-headed objectivity to what should be a business relationship.   

I was once in a band that was booked to play a big student rally in a park on the south side of Glasgow. The placard-wielding students were marching from the centre of town to the event, which was to include a number of guest speakers and some live entertainment (namely us). As the park started to fill up, we sat backstage slugging warm beer and nibbling at the corporate hospitality crisps. Our manager (bless him) said: “This is it, lads!  This is going to be the turning point.” Having slogged for some time around various pubs and clubs in the West of Scotland, slowly but surely building a reputation as we clawed our way from the depths of nonentity to the giddy heights of relative obscurity, we felt that yes, indeed, we might well have been on the cusp of a breakthrough to a bigger audience. The organisers had very kindly given us the choice of either playing our set as the students were arriving at the park (i.e. warming the audience up for the speakers) or going on after the various student leaders and politicians had worked the crowd up into an indignant frenzy.   

To a band accustomed to performing in grotty, sparsely-populated bars, the crowd that day looked to be of Woodstockian proportions and we were buzzing at the possibility of performing for them. As bodies continued to flood into the park, the manager announced that we would go on after the speeches; this, he suggested, would give us ‘maximum impact’. We all agreed. Why –so our thinking went- should our unique brand of rock and roll play second fiddle to a bunch of boring old speakers? No way, man! Let the politicians do their bit and then we’ll rock this place! Hell, yeah! This is the turning point! With the benefit of hindsight, our manager’s statement was probably correct, but only if by ‘turning point’ he meant ‘career-defining clusterfuck’. It was certainly the point at which I realised that our plans for world domination were sadly unsupported by anything approaching a coherent strategy. 

Not knowing our collective arse from a hole in the ground, we had chosen to ‘top’ the bill, having given no thought as to why hundreds of students had bothered to walk all the way from the city centre to the south side. They were there to protest, to listen to speeches, to vent some spleen, to stamp their feet and shout ‘Tories Out!’ (although it was such a cold afternoon that I’m pretty sure that some of them must have felt like shouting ‘What do we want? Some hot chocolate, please!’)  

By the time those speeches had ended (and there were more than one or two), that Woodstockian throng had already started to dwindle; by halfway through our opening number, the crowd had shrunk in size by about 50%. Once we were three or four songs into our blistering set, the remaining punters could comfortably have been accommodated behind the goal at a Ramsden’s Cup preliminary round tie between East Stirling and Stenhousemuir. During our last number, what was left of what I’m now embarrassed to call the ‘crowd’ could have gathered in the average student bedsit and each of them would have had more than enough room to swing a cat. It’s not that we were that bad a band (honest), but we were certainly stupid enough to deserve everything we got that day. Had our manager been more than just a supportive buddy, had he been capable of strategic thought, he would surely have advised us, in the strongest possible terms, to go on before the speakers. So if you ever get invited to play at a political rally, kids … just remember exactly where you are in the food chain.                                 

But I digress; back to the album. I’m playing bass on a couple of the tracks, but the majority of the songs require something a bit more sophisticated than the root note simplicity I can just about get way with. I had a great session a couple of weeks ago with the very talented Fraser Sneddon (pictured above). I’ve played with Fraser before and know that he can be relied upon to nail some really wonderful bass lines. Hearing the bottom end of my tracks start to take on a bit of heft and groove was a joyful experience. I enjoy the experience of sitting face-to-face with musicians and talking about what you want to achieve with an individual piece of music. A good player will usually give you options when it comes to specific parts. I like to give talented people their head and let them interpret the part as they will. I will then make one or two suggestions, with perhaps a point or two about emphasis or rhythm here or there. I might suggest that the part needs to be more or less aggressive, or perhaps requires more or fewer passing notes. Little alterations can sometimes really alter the feel of a piece. 

The best recording sessions occur when folk are relaxed and feel confident enough to experiment a little. My co-producer on the album, Eddie McArthur at Stealth, has a much better ear than me for spotting little tuning fluctuations or deviations in timing. Our preferred method is to get the player to run through the parts a couple of times to loosen up and then get a version which is more or less the part we imagined. Then we’ll pursue the ‘what if?’ strategy, which involves letting the player wander off-piste to see what kind of unusual or interesting stuff gets thrown up. The wonders of digital editing will often allow us to construct a part which might be a mixture of the basic idea, the loose ‘off-piste’ take and maybe a dollop of additional studio surgery.        

Another way of collaborating on recording projects is to have musician friends send you stuff through the miracle of electronic mail. For this album, Alan Robertson –a former colleague in the band ‘Gum’- has been recording material at home and firing it off into the ether; somehow, it ends up on my laptop. Alan’s one of those chaps who can knock out a tune on a variety of instruments, a great ideas man with a good ear for hooks and textures which can help add flavour to a piece. Fraser and Alan both make excellent contributions to the song I've linked to here.  Since I posted the original demo (featuring just a vocal, an acoustic guitar and some rudimentary piano), they have helped me flesh it out a bit.

I said at the time that I was hoping that it would one day inhabit a lusher soundscape and, thanks to Alan’s electronic noodlings and nurdlings (and what I hope is the judicious use of some backing vocals) I think the track is now close to being complete.  Another tweak or two and it’ll almost be there.