A Song for Christian

David and I spent most of yesterday completing the recording of the song we sang for our friend Christian's funeral in October.

The song, chosen by Christian's family is a Christian song, with very moving words and is a little different to our usual style in that we've tried to keep it to a simple arrangement. There are no drums or beat until after the first verse and chorus and that meant we had some "fun" recording and editing the various instrument parts!

On saying it is a "simple" arrangement we still ended up recording a total of 9 separate tracks of instruments and voices - these are different tracks not re-takes of the same. It was an afternoon of the computer throwing wobblies and crashing the software too, but in the end it did come together and after a few attempts at balancing the different tracks we ended up with this version of I Can Only Imagine which will be added to the The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass album as track 11.

The Night Has 1000 Eyes

Always a good one to belt out towards the end of a night on stage, I've been putting guitars and bass on Bobby Vee's hit The Night Has 1000 Eyes this afternoon.

That makes it 15 songs finished, one still needing guitars and 2 or 3 more to start for the new album. One of those will be the song that we sang at the funeral the other week to fulfil a promise, although it is a wonderful song anyway, very emotional and a little unusual for us in that it's not a well-known song.

We've not yet decided whether to put a solo one from me on the album. The three albums we've done so far have all featured a solo track - Great Balls of Fire on the first, Fleetwood Mac's Need Your Love So Bad on the Kites album and the relatively unknown I Try To Think About Elvis on the last one.

So the album is moving closer bit by bit... I bet you're fed up of me saying that, aren't you...?

Creeping Bentgrass Album Four

David and Jeannie were round yesterday and we did a bit more work on the band's fourth album somewhat creatively given the working title Four.

It's going faster than we've ever got on with an album before but that may be because we have added so much new material to the repertoire since the last album that we have a huge amount of stuff competing for space. That's a mix of the new stuff competing with older songs we don't play as often these days.

Anyway, though most of the 16 tracks recorded so far are waiting for a bassline to be recorded, there is one that we recorded for the Billy Fury site and I added a bassline from the keyboard. King For Tonight was the B side to Last Night Was Made For Love which appeared on the third album, Right On The Line.

Yesterday we added a couple of tracks: Wild Mountain Thyme and Living Next Door To Alice (without swearing...)

Listen to: King For Tonight, Last Night Was Made For Love

More Music News

Talking of online music to download (see previous entry); as it's Remembrance Sunday, I've uploaded a track from our new CD for free download.

It's The Green Fields of France a beautiful song that sums up the day. Click on the song title to download it.

Yesterday I got out the keyboard and microphone and spent the afternoon recording a version of The Beatles' song "This Boy", one of their earlier tracks as it was the B side of the hit "I Want To Hold Your Hand. Thinking about it, it may even have been a double A side in fact - someone with a better memory give me a prompt!

I had great fun sneaking a guitar bit in from "Oh Darling" from their "Abbey Road" album! It'll turn up on the Billy Fury site some time next year - though it may be as far as March before I've a chance! There's a waiting list of songs.

Next month should be good as the artists are sending in two tracks for Christmas. Ours have been especially recorded and are the Greg Lake "I Believe In Father Christmas" and David Essex's "A Winter's Tale" both of which sound quite nice to my ears, but I'll let you be the true judges next month!

A Winter's Tale

Yes I know it's only September!

That's the title of the second Christmas song we are doing for the Billy Fury web site this December.

A Winter's Tale was a hit for David Essex in the days when he had hair on his shoulders. Well... so did I! None on my head, but there was some on my shoulders...

I've used the Korg keyboard on this one and it will be our first track using the Korg rather than the Yamaha. Very orchestral and quite different to our normal stuff. Moya! Have you got your Billy alerts tuned in? It will be BILLYant!!!

Christmas Comes Early

I've spent the best part of the day putting together a backing track for our contribution to the Billy Fury website's Christmas Sounds Special.

We are committed to do a couple of Christmas songs for December and today I've been putting together the song "I Believe In Father Christmas" which was a hit in the 1970s for Greg Lake.

It only sounds a little like the original because that's the way I like to do music. I would hate to be thought of as sounding "just like" anyone else!

Anyway it's been a full day. I did a full four tracks just doing the jingle bells! Then there was a backing track of drums, two of piano, two of accoustic guitar, one of glockenspiel, one of trumpets, one of french horns, one of a brass section, two electric guitars - sheesh, I'm getting sick of that song... ha ha!

It now needs one more accoustic guitar, David's singing which I'll double-track, then Bob to put bass and a bit of mandolin on it and hey presto - 4 minutes of Christmas!

Creeping Bentgrass Album Work

Bob came round last night to Burke Studios, to record bass onto a number of the album tracks.

It was a good night and we managed to finish Picture of You, My Life, Dirty Old Town, You're My Best Friend, The Rose, and Constantly.

He brought the old mahogany red mandolin with him to add some mandolin sounds to Dirty Old Town and I commented I hadn't seen that particular instrument for a while.

Apparently he was going to have it re-fretted but the workshop have instead taken a sliver off the frets with a file and Bob has also been sanding down the bridge to get a better action (the distance between the strings and the fretboard). It sounded absolutely terrific and you should be able to hear the results within a few weeks. In fact I'll try to get a bit of that track out in the next few days on the web site as a sample.

There's another 6 tracks to put bass on, so another session is booked for Thursday night. I know there's a lot of interest out there and folks waiting for this, which will be our first album since 2004.

I think we can honestly say we've stepped the sound up a notch or two!