No Tambourines……sorry Gary.
Hi folks, we’re back!
It’s been a quiet month gig wise but we’ve still been busy.
This month we’ve been mostly recording a live EP, only five tracks but beautifully rendered with the wonderful engineering and mixing skills of Matt O’Donnell at Untapped Talent in Southampton (check it out at https://www.untappedtalent.co.uk/)
The idea was to attempt to capture the live sound of the band, with all that it entails. There are changes of tempo and other bits and pieces that may not be technically correct but that’s how we do it live, that’s what makes it real. Emotions can’t be quantised and don’t run to a click track or appear and disappear with pinpoint precision.
There were no ridiculous numbers of takes and no layering of guitars and vocals (apart from a few tasteful chords in Devil’s Highwater).
So, what you will be hearing are mostly first takes with very little in the way of studio magic applied, just a little EQ, compression and reverb.
It was great, the studio has a great booth for recording in isolation.
Although it was a bit of a squeeze fitting Gary and his kit in there, Matt’s skill with miking a kit (I think there were fourteen in total!) has captured the sound of Gary’s playing beautifully. All of the dynamics and nuances are there.
Tom was in the booth next and, like Clapton on the Bluesbreaker sessions, he just cranked up the Marshall and let it rip. He was mostly done on the first day and just wanted to go back to lay down the vocals and a couple of solos on the following day.
As for me, I got the bass down along with Gary’s drums.
We had enough time at the end to do a quick version of Too Much Whiskey, one of Tom’s acoustic tracks which has started to become a part of the live set with Si on upright bass.
We are also including One Last Try which Tom wrote and was originally recorded at Metropolis Studios in London. It’s been stripped back to guitars and vocals. Nice.
All in all we had a great time and really hope that you’ll have a listen and that it’ll take you back to a great night out that you had with us.
In other news…..June is looking pretty busy with five shows in two weeks including a farewell show for Chris Harris, a former mentor of Toms who is off to Gibraltar, in Gosport (have a look at Facebook for more info), and who was instrumental in getting us in to the Wickham Festival. Personally I’d like to thank him for the cups of tea that kept making their way to the stage during our shows…..
We’ll also be appearing at the Bird in Hand, The Southgate Inn, The Barge and The Platform Tavern. Check out the Gigs page or head over to our Facebook feed for more info.