<<Back to previous month

I have decided to keep you informed as to my progress or lack of it as we move into record mode. I will try to explain how decisions are made and how I arrive at the treatment a song gets.

• 4 February 2010
Back In London to see Billy Connolly at his record breaking run of dates at Hammersmith. We caught the show on the penultimate performance. He was magnificent. No one was safe!

I have been playing the guitar a lot and Tom Mates has taken away the twelve string so hopefully it will be playing perfectly when I get it back.

As usual I have had a computer block and cannot retrieve the words to several of the new songs although I think of them all the time.

Some other suggestions for a studio have arrived but I cannot pursue them until I get down the country.

Miss Gibson is sounding heavenly to me although Tom thinks I might have to have another re fret as My muscular little finger is having trouble bending the string more than near to a semi tone.

I am working on a song inspired by one line from the film Citzen Kane.I won’t reveal too much at present but I am delighted with a couple of chords that sit in the song.

A song I have never recorded called Daniel O’Rourke (the words are printed in “Times Poems”) is still waiting for the Dubliners and me to put it down but I have borrowed the tune and written a song called “The London Apprentice” I know I have another tune by the same title from a long time ago but this is different.

The idea came to me when I thought about how often I hear people from outside London say that they don’t like our capital city. I always want to ask which bit they don’t like. London is a series of villages connected by the tube and Londoners don’t know each other terribly well. People in Barking don’t know New Cross and people in Chelsea don’t go to Southgate very often.

Most people come to London and join the tourist trail of monuments and the West End. Not many Londoners to be found there. I believe we sort of rent bits of the city and then move on and others move in. Whenever I return to my old stomping ground of Soho and Fitzrovia I am struck by how little has changed but how different it all is.

My song concerns our inability to know it all and in that sense we are apprenticed to London for we will never quite learn her trade.

The writer Peter Ackroyd contends that London is an organic entity that shapes those who live here. It’s an interesting idea

I love being part of this city and I love to feel I am alone in it as well. I have also managed to weave in Dr Johnson’s assertion that when a man is tired of London, a man is tired of life.

Quite how all these disparate themes will sit together I do not know.

• 9 February 2010
Back in Cornwall after a week or so in London.

The BBC folk awards were great as usual and Show of Hands were honoured with best duo and best song. We really do have a folk community and I am proud to be part of it. I talked with Sally (traffic) Boazman and Tom Robinson, Simon Nicol, Chris While and lots more friends. Unfortunately I didn't get to speak to Nanci Griffiths but I expect to meet up with her later this month at the Belfast concert.

I gave a few copies of “Affairs of the Heart” away at the awards and I am very pleased with the reaction to the set. As part of the c.d. launch I am writing dedications inside the box from couples who have purchased it for each other for St Valentine's day. I must say it is reassuring to discover that romance is not dead yet. I am only a little uncomfortable about writing some of the intimate messages I have been asked to include.

Those who have already received the albums have also been very complimentary and I have forwarded on comments to Peter Thaine (my designer,) we all need a pat on the back fro time to time!
All we need now are a few radio plays!

On the weekend I went to see the England Wales game although I clearly was coming down with some dreaded virus or other. My son in law Jim and I had a great time as he came over from Paris especially. It was hard to distinguish where the hangover ended and the dreaded man flu began, so not much work done toward the recording.

Today in Cornwall the sun is shining and I am looking again at the Scottish tune.

Talking of sun shining, I have a tune that has revealed itself to me from under the first position in C shapes on the guitar. It is one of those gifts from accidental fingering(or is it because eventually your fingers know where to go?) that play a whole tune with the bass line already declared under the chords.

I remember playing it to my friend, the late Nick Evans, and him saying how he “had to learn it”. I have been musing on it for at leat 12 years and finally last year I decided it should be about a sunny day. It may even be called “A Sunny Day” but it will begin in French “Au Jourd'hui le Ciel est Bleu et le Soleil Brillent” It has the sound of one of those tunes from a French films of the fifties. I made this decision about subject matter last year (finally) on one of those crisp spring days when bees emerge a bit wobbly like kids let loose in a sweet shop who don't know where to turn for their next treat.

I have a friend (Maite) who has checked the two French verses and I am sure this song is “oven ready” its just the additional instrumentation that I am pondering. Perhaps a clarinet accordion and double bass. It has a counter-melody too and I wonder whether to do the harmonies myself or get some girl singers in to do the backing.

Tom Mates has brought back the twelve string and to quote our American friends guitar speak”it plays like butter” Tom has re curt the nut and saddle pushing the pairs of strings closer together and tis makes the articulation clearer when picking.

Miss Gibson is about to have another re-fret as the curve in the finger board is too straight and my little finger cannot get enough pressure to bend the second string. However she sounds beautiful. It is probably the best sounding Gibson J45 in the world.

So now to the piano....

• 20 February 2010
I have found a recording studio. It is only a short drive from here and I am delighted with my first visit. I have booked sessions stating in the second week of March and held a further eight days in April.

The day before yesterday I contacted Chris Parkinson in Yorkshire and booked him for sessions as there will be at least four tracks with his contribution. I am hoping to record ensemble tracks with a live band it is utterly amazing how many bands no longer play together when they record. Even some of my best friends who play great live music prefer to lay down their music piecemeal for ease of overdubbing and computer manipulation. I usually can tell when this has been done because the robotic non variation in tempo seems so sterile to me.

I put on Bob Dylan's Modern Times CD to remind myself just what a live band recording sounds like and I much prefer the slight looseness of feel and the non blasé effect gained by under rehearsal. (everyone tries harder). It suits Bob's style and as I play usually solo, it suits me to just get it down in one or two takes.

I have a mind on several musicians to help me with the group aspect. I have again been playing piano on the Scottish tune and have made substantial re writes. I have removed much of the personal references and tried to concentrate on the emotional side without apportioning blame. This is made harder because I have bound myself to a rhyme scheme of line one matching line three and line two matching line four. As in “After rain”I feel this gives a more traditional feel to the lyric but it is hard to sustain and get specific at the same time. On looking at Dylan Thomas's work sheets it is obvious (and Dylan agreed) that in order to sustain the poetic discipline the theme sometimes had to deviate. This cannot happen with this song so I will just try harder.

I spent several hours on it yesterday and will look at it again today. This could well be a song that fails to make it on to the album. I was talking to Clive Palmer (of the original Incredible String Band) the other day. I love Clive's music ad would enjoy having him on this new record. The only track that would be suitable for him is a song I wrote about my grandmother's Saturday lunchtime treat when she was a little girl living in Hammersmith in the late nineteenth century. The song is called “Kettle Woblins” and it is the name of a dish she and her brothers and sisters ate .I have set it in my mind to an old music hall air but it is not finished yet and will not really fit on to this album as seen at present. I will give you the recipe for “Kettle Woblin's” later...

A cock pheasant just walked down the garden path from the field behind the house. He was almost glittering in the sunshine. I stood up to get a better look and he turned round and walked back the way he had come.

Steve Turner came around on Thursday last to discuss the polka tune and we agreed that it might be good to add some horns a la “Tex-Mex to the refrain tag between verses. Steve reacted very positively to all the tunes I played him. I am hoping that we can employ a recorder trio for one song and am now looking for a virtuoso penny whistle player for my “Cannabis Creek” song.

It is great to see these tunes emerging from the edge of the woods as it were and I should say that there is nothing written in stone at the moment but it is great to explore the musical clothing with fellow simpatico musicians.

I am playing in Belfast next Friday so will leave for London on Wednesday. Hopefully more musicians will be booked before then.

Go To March •

<<Back to previous month