Behind The Scenes - album project!

You know how 'it doesn't rain but it pours'? Well, I won't go into all the details, but this whole month has been the most insane, productive, crazy, musical and sleepless of all my months combined!

​Right in the middle of this, was the studio time we had set aside months ago for me, Jack Cookson, Lukas Drinkwater, Evan Carson, and Ciaran Algar to record my second album, with Gareth Young, in Cube Studios down in Cornwall. So, first class, and sleeplessly from playing a festival that same weekend, I hopped on the train with Jack to drift towards Cornwall late on Sunday night.

​Turns out I was not the only one with no sleep!! Ciaran and Evan made a mega-drive (not unusual for them apparently!), starting at 3am in Bedfordshire, to arrive by 10am for a full days recording. To top it all off, after our long session where me managed to track 8 of 11 songs, Evan then bumped into some people that needed his drumming, and he continued playing and recording into the night :)

​Now, usually, Cube Studios has a cottage for the artists to stay in, but it happened to be pre-booked this time, so we ALL ended up staying in the studio!! Did someone mention cabin fever? Yes. Yes there was... I must admit I probably had the comfiest sofa bed there (the only sofabed actually), and somehow we all managed to find a corner to sleep on. I can confess to watching Rick and Morty that night on the big studio monitors!! Gareth Young (producer and studio owner) did not seem to take issue with that.

​Photocredits: Ebby Tremain

Aside from the incredible feats of sleeplessness on lots of our parts (I do believe Lukas also made a mega-drive to get down - the studio is pretty far away from everything!), we absolutely powered through the recording! We had three full days, and were planning to do a live album, but took the opportunity to do it track by track, and to get really into the details, getting the best possible takes from us. We did all that, for every song, several times, and we still had time to spare!

​What I love most about these musicians I have cherry picked, is their ability to create and improvise. I am not the sort of musician that likes to get every note down, and I prefer to work with people that can be spontaneous! And with the sort of people that even when they are spontaneous, they still get it right every time ;) I am still blown away by the amount of work we were able to get done in less time than we thought we needed. You know when things just 'work'? :)

​A word, or several words of thanks are due once again to the people that supported my kickstarter campaign to get the funding for this project! I would never have been able to work with such talented musicians, in such an incredible studio without it. It's given my music an opportunity it never would have had otherwise, and boy am I making sure to follow up on it!! An extra little word of thanks goes to the band members for making a tremendous effort, and for being so damn musical, and especially to Gareth Young himself, for putting it all together, and going over and above at every opportunity. I'll never forget the lift to the curry place!! Studio-Cabin fever was peaking and so was my hunger...

​We will be launching and touring the album as of October 27th at the Sound Lounge, through to November 25th - so do come and see us! Note, not all members will be present at every gig, but for the London & Bristol launches, we will all be there. Will you be there?

​X