Back There

Ta Da!!!   Big Drum Roll !!

It is here - at last.   Our new CD has been born.

It is entitled Back There and features 11 songs - some that we have written, and the rest from some of my favourite songwriters.

We are currently in the process of getting the album out into the wide world - radio and folk magazines and updating websites and so on.

To all our wonderful supporters from the Kickstarter campaign way back last Autumn I give you hearty thanks - by now you should have had your CDs or they're in the post to you if they haven't arrived yet.  I hope you enjoy it.

We played a set at the festival last month featuring the new songs and allowing Tom to get over his total panic at having his voice featured on record for the first time!  I swear he was hoping no-one would buy it!   But we're getting good feedback so far so the panic is over :)

Here's a video taken from the audience of the title track, Back There.  The song was written by an old friend of mine, Tony Kerr from Derry, who's now living and working in Nashville.  It's a gentle theme of looking back to childhood days and I love the sentiment in it.

I have been missing my visits to everyone's blogs in the past weeks - still haven't got my head into some sort of sane place, but it'll happen soon I know and I'm looking forward to catching up with what's going on in your lives.

I've been having fun playing with Lisa Sonora's Dreaming on Paper online workshop over the past few weeks - taking 10 minutes here and there to just splash paint about.   It has always been a secret dream of mine to play with paint, not necessarily to paint pictures but just to mess about with colour and this course is perfect. # lisasonora.com

Have a great weekend and I hope you're all enjoying the start of the turning seasons.

Remotely Bass

The recording process has changed a lot in recent times for all but the top  rock and pop acts.

In the old days we used to book a studio usually for 3 consecutive days on 4 consecutive weeks and completed an album in that time.   It was costly but exhilarating to be so immersed in the recording process.

Nowadays, because CD sales have dropped dramatically and online sales are negligible, recording budgets need to be controlled more tightly.   It's relatively easy to have a small studio in your own house if you know what you're doing and have good microphones and equipment.   We've had Ballyneddan Studio for nearly 10 years now - it's perfect for acoustic projects and for spoken word recordings.  Tom's a great engineer and our house is in a really quiet setting.  It's only one room but we sometimes use all the other rooms in the house to separate the instruments.

It's lovely being able to record at home, but there is a downside - everything else that you're doing takes precedence over your own creative process or practice.  Everyone else's needs take priority - teaching, recording, promotion, editing, family etc.

The plus side though is that the recording process is totally in your own control.  So if you complete one session with a musician and something needs to be changed on your own tracks then you can go and fix it.

I know there are some young singers and musicians who read here from time to time, so for you here's a bit of clarification.

A session is where one instrumentalist comes in and records that instrument on multiple tracks.   Sometimes, like with guitar for example, that instrument may be on almost every track on the album so the session may last as much as 3 days.

James, adding bass to our songs

But with bass, we are only using it on 4 songs on this recording.   So with the wonders of modern technology we were able to send the tracks by email to our bass player, he plays and records his parts on to those tracks and then sends them back digitally.  Wonderful:)  All of sudden the songs are taking shape and it's a delight.