After a short post-Hogmanay break, we set off on Sunday morning for
Monnow Valley Studio in Wales to record our debut album (woohoo!). I
awoke at 10:30, some three hours after going to bed, to the sound of my
doorbell ringing and five missed calls from Gill.
The feeling that my
brain had been replaced by a lovely warm woollen jumper didn’t bode
well for the 8 hours travelling, but after a quick pack of the van (it
was quite literally packed. There may well have been a kitchen sink in
there, but I couldn’t see it for all the stuff…) we headed off, leaving
Dave’s pedal case propping my front door wide open, a fact I was
alerted to some 200 miles down the road by a phone call from my flat.
Pretty much what “idiot checks” are made for. We finally got there
around 8, and had time to be shown round by Jo and get all the
aforementioned stuff unpacked before our producer for the month, Ian
Caple, arrived. After a quick tea of spaghetti we started setting up
the very spacious live room in preparation for Monday.
It was a 9 o’clock start on Monday, and we got to have a look at the
place in the light of day (I would say sunlight but as it’s Wales I
actually mean drizzle). There were a few sheep looking at me funny
outside my bedroom window, and a nice river out the other window, and
the place is pretty much surrounded by fields. After a hearty breakfast
of coffee and smokes, we went through to start getting some sounds
organised. Ian had brought a good selection of vintage snare drums, all
of which required testing at high volume, and Tom the engineer had a
proper vintage Gretsch (I think it is…), all of which sound magic.
Various amps were positioned around the room and set up for the bass
and guitars, and after a late-ish dinner we had a run through of all
the songs to get a feel for what we’ll be doing. The piano tuner was
due round tomorrow morning (today), so we had a good talk about how
things would be done and got a vaguely early night.
Today was another 9 o’clock start, Arne and myself decided to cycle
(shocker!) into town for some provisions (crisps/smokes), whilst the
piano tuner did his thing in the live room. I was delighted to see the
Tesco van pull up around 11, so there was toast, and even some
chocolate digestives for those of us who like to live a little… We
decided to start with the soon-to-be-retitled Ukulele Song, as it’s one
we haven’t recorded before, so Jamie, Ian, Gill and I got sorted out
and ran through it many times until it started coming together.
Luckily, as Jim was starting to suffer a case of something called
“Ukulele Elbow”, (which can actually be avoided by wearing long sleeved
shirts). There was some tweaking of guitar sounds, then Arne laid down
the cello followed by Rory’s violin, then steak pie, then Dave’s piano.
I left to type this somewhere after the second ukulele track (well, it
is still called the Ukulele Song…) but things seem to be shaping up
quite nicely. It’s good to get started properly!
Keeping this brief for now as I wrote (a much funnier) one an hour ago
and accidentally deleted it, but will be posting up photos and so on
over the coming days.
BR xxx
