Today we are working up a new track “With one finger you can block out the sun” which we will be recording in two week’s time in the studio. This is probably the fastest piece of writing ever in my history of writing 36 original songs to date. Literally twenty minutes before the last rehearsal I found a really great melody on my guitarelle and quickly sketched out a couple of verses to fit. Amazingly the verses didn’t require editing as I was totally happy with the content. The only addition was two additional verses for Agi to sing before the first two verses are repeated with us singing in unison.
This is a slow haunting song and Fergus Quill and Jed Bevington added a truly excellent violin and bowed bass introduction. I loved it so much I e-mailed everyone saying “STOP THE PRESS, WE’RE RECORDING THIS NEXT!” This is one of these magical moments when a new song literally appears out of thin air. Agi and I have been working up the vocals in recent weeks and next Friday I’ll lay down a guide track before the full band goes into the studio in 10 days time. The forthcoming “Tales of Dark and Light” is scheduled for release early 2019 and at present I have 12 tracks in mind for this. The material is quite diverse from a full-on barnstorming “Grey Skies” with eight musicians to some really stripped down tracks with me, Agi and two musicians. The challenge will be working out the running order for the live set and the album so everything works dynamically.
This is by far my most ambitious work to date and we are doing a lot of rehearsals to make sure we get the best possible results. We usually schedule two hours for rehearsal time and focus of 4 – 5 songs. This is an exciting project and of course, I continue to play with The Small Change Diaries as well who headline Inkwell for a charity gig, early July. Life is never dull!
