The real beginning

Beginning to get real

Well, how are you? I’m sure you’ve been busy writing, creating, being ace. That’s a coincidence, we’ve also been busy finishing tracks, recording a sneaky little end of album ode to my wife, I can’t back up the being ace bit on my part but obviously the guys are always ace, so there is that as well.

I did mention somewhere on here in a previous post or note that we were doing a secret live session with a few friends and family. It was to serve several purposes, I wanted us to have a live video recording of us playing about half the tracks from the album as a little reminder to people that some of us are keeping it as ‘real’ as we can. I also wanted us to have the live audio recordings which are winging their way to me over the next week or so as additional versions to release and probably most importantly for me, a needed a mini stress test to see what it felt like to play live for the first time in 10 years.

We set the date, the line up was set, myself, Daniel J Logan on drums, Pete Wilson guitar and keys (sometimes at the same time, what a fucking dude!) and a bass player. Everyone was sent the setlist and the tracks to review and learn (more me than the pro gigging and session can play anything, anytime, anywhere super heroes). The set would consist of five of the ten songs, we’d meet up at just after lunch on the day (musicians morning ;) ) rehearse each song until we were happy and then do the live video/gig at sometime after 7pm.

NEWS FLASH! Bass player drops out a week or two before the date, in steps the final super hero, totally awesome, more pedals than a lead guitarist Pete Attwood. Our world was complete.

Worth mentioning that by this time we had secured an equally awesome dude to film the session, Martin Tomlinson and my very talented son-in-law is, as I type editing the footage Alexander Standish-Murray.

The fixed cam was operated by my wife and she’s so special she got her own song, sorry guys.

So you can see from this quick synopsis of the prep for this hour long event a little of the effort that goes into it, the creative and artistic connections that shape this single small event. Ok, most of the people swimming around the music stack community are already embroiled in this world so maybe it’s a so? moment for you. Soooo! Maybe I’m just reminding myself this is what makes each recording, each performance special, this is why as well as being scary, after ten years of hiding under a rock, it’s also exciting and motivating.

Little note, the whole event consisted of us doing the band session, a small break where we all watched the ‘Conspiracy’ video on a huge projector screen and got refreshed and then I quick changed into alternate attire to do a trip hop session of the ‘Owls are Electro’ tracks which were backing tracks on vinyl.

The two streams are steadily building, apparently I’ve got to do another live session out in the wilds of South West UK (wilds = beautiful surroundings) soon.

If you’re still with me, thanks for getting this far and as a thank you, here is a sneaky listen to the final track from the Album ‘Owl Theory’ which I did live in the studio the day after this gig. It’s for my beautiful wife, and it’s called ‘We Two’.

And finally everything is recorded and this is where the work really starts as this is where we come to the point of playing it out in the real world for people to enjoy, endure, listen, ignore, connect, misunderstand, isn’t it exciting?