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.
- Posted in: Folk Music ♦ album ♦ Folk Music ♦ Guitar
