Archive for the ‘Personal stuff’ Category

In My Life …

#3
I had a meeting with Martin and I left him a demo CD with a selection of songs and when he had listened to it he called me and said he wanted to do it. He sorted out a studio and engineer and worked out some costs. I told Susie and she said ‘lets do it’, so we did.

We started a few months later with a production meeting and then we went over some material with a couple of guitars. I then started to put down the songs at Andy Seward’s studio. We went to Keith Angel’s and recorded his drum and percussion tracks, then it was back to Andy Seward’s. Next was Andy Cutting’s session.

We spent an hour talking about great lasagnes Andy had eaten at my old house! Then we recorded the waltzes live on fiddle and melodeon and then Andy did all his other parts. Martin had done various parts on different days and when he’d finished, Hugh Bradley did all the bass parts. I did my final vocals and that was it, 18 months later, it was all ready to mix.

Andy Seward made a fantastic job of recording the album and mixing and mastering it. Martin liked the material so much that he played on 8 out of 10 tracks, and he has played some brilliant dobro and guitar.

The arrangements are all built up around my acoustic guitar parts and on one track, Now I’m In Limbo, Martin played all the guitar parts. When I heard what he’d done I re-wrote the song and it took on a new dimension.

Recording was not as easy as it could have been due to all of us being away and not all available together and I had a virus that affected me for almost 8 months and knackered my voice up. My Dad was very ill during this period and he died just as we were finishing the album. It was sad and I dedicated the album to his memory.

In My Life …

#2
A friend had calcium build ups on the sheath of the tendons on one of her hands and the symptoms were similar to mine. This is what gave me the idea to stop the calcium supplement that I’d been taking for years to keep my nails tough for my guitar playing. The lumps on the tendon of my left hand started to disappear and it wasn’t so painful. I started to think about getting back into my music and I started playing again. I had only played occasional gigs and dances for about 3 years, it seemed like longer.

I was staying with an old friend, Susie Stockton, she used to be my manager when I was young and got me my first big break as fiddle player with the Shetland band Hom Bru

I had played Susie some of the demo tracks of my songs a few months before when she was visiting, and when we were down at her place she asked me to sing some of my songs and then thrust her guitar into my hands. I sang loads of my songs and Susie said she thought that they should be heard and that I should make a song CD. We had a good talk the next day and I left with instructions to think of who I’d like to produce the album and how much it would cost to record.

I went away and I had a good think. I decided that I would like Martin Simpson to produce it and I told Susie. She told me to contact him and see what he reckoned, so I did.

I had gigged with Martin and recorded with him, so I called him and asked him if he’d be interested in the project. He said he wanted to hear demo’s of the tracks and we arranged a meeting.

In My Life …

#1

I’ve been working on a solo album of songs and it’s just been released. Martin Simpson and Andy Seward produced it and Andy engineered and recorded it at his studio.

This album has been a long time coming, I recorded demo versions of some of the songs in my own studio in 2002 and then I didn’t know what to do with them.

I had a selection of songs that I’d written but no money to make the album, so I shelved it. I tried to have a normal, quiet life and see what life was like on the other side of the monitor speakers. Things were good until I had an encounter with the gutter press… It was very damaging what they did and I let it hurt me. They told me I wasn’t entitled to privacy.

So, I decided that I had to go back to my music.

I started doing some gigs and then I had a problem with a tendon in my left hand and I had to stop gigging. I thought that my career was over and it was hard to accept, I’ve always been able to make a living playing music and I’d ever thought what it would be like if I couldn’t do it anymore. I cancelled all my gigs in the UK and the USA and just kept my fiddle teaching going and a few gigs with my dance band. I shelved my trio and rested my hand. I had 3 cortisone injections and they didn’t work and so the next step was surgery.

I really didn’t want an operation so I rested my hand as much as I could and stopped taking calcium supplements, which kept my nails tough for my guitar playing. After a while, things started to get better.