Category: Nick Cody music

I just received the latest album “All is fine ’til the world goes pop” and the first Green Eyed Records sampler.

It seems like only yesterday when we recorded the first Small Change Diaries album “Adam Blames Eve” and the follow up “Lullabies for Cynics” In between we released the protest songs EP. After The Small Change Diaries, I formed a new band “The Caravan of Dreams” which expanded the sound of SCD and included Agi on vocals as well as Laurent Zeller on violin, as well as David Bowie Jnr on bass as well as Fergus Quill on bass and Jed Bevington also on violin.

During covid 19 I started writing for “The Heartache” and moved to playing electric guitar for the first time. I also met Towse and was so impressed by her that I asked her to contribute to what turned out to be a fourth album, “All is fine ’til the world goes pop” released on September 30th with a follow up album planned for 2023. As well as these projects, in conjunction with Black Star Liner, I’m releasing an electric album under the name Code – E1 in 2023. Two tracks from this appear on the Green Eyed Records sampler.

To quote Jerry Garcia “What a long, strange trip it’s been!” with 56 tracks released to date and another 25 tracks planned for 2023. Special thanks to everyone who have played on these albums and/or come to see us play live.

We are close to completing “All is fine til the world goes pop”, the first of four very different albums and I am blown away by the contributions of amazing musicians from all over the globe.

Here are the musicians who made this album possible. This album is different to anything I have done before. One of the biggest gamechangers are the vocal contributions from Towse, who is an extraordinary artist giving this material a new edge that is a genuine surprise and complete inspiration in developing this project. We both worked on this material during covid and didn’t actually meet in real life for two years. This made for some fascinating tracks and I’m delighted with the results.

Originally I planned a single album, but the material became so wonderfully diverse, it was clear that we needed a second album which was more pop in nature and reminded me of the classic Talking Heads “Remain in Light” period. The second album ‘Take Heart” will be released in 2023 and 40% of that album is already completed.

I thank all of you listed below from the bottom of my heart for helping making this such a terrific album.

Towse CA USA – vocals

Michael Ross Nashville USA – guitar

Laurent Zeller France – violin

Manitoba Hal Canada – slide guitar/vocals

Corwin Zekley USA – fiddle

Fergus Quill UK – bass

David Bowie Jnr UK – bass

Howard Taylor UK – bass

Agi from UK – backing vocals

Emily Mercer UK – keys and backing vocals

Rich Ferdi UK – percussion

Josh Burnell UK – keys

Sharon Cannings UK – backing vocals

The album will be released via Green Eyed Records this Sept, will live appearance Oct 7th

The last two years have meant covid musical adjustments with the advent of covid 19. For almost two years I only played one live gig which was the debut with the Heartache. It was a slightly surreal affair to suddently be playing to a full room of 120+ individuals. It was a great set and an absolute joy to be back playing, especially with the new electric material

I started rehearsing The Small Change Diaries ahead of a major future support slot and we’ve all been super careful to do lateral flow tests ahead of each and every rehearsal. In the UK currently more than one in 15 people have covid and although if you’ve been vaccinated it probably won’t kill you, it can still mean 10 days of being out of action and personally I can’t afford to roll the dice on that happening. This has meant cancelling a bunch of live activities I was looking forward to attending, but next week I’m in the studio on Monday working on the Towse collaboration, interviewing Sylvie Simmons on Wednesday, doing a band rehearsal on Thursday, so I can’t take the chance of missing any of these engagements.

I’m also hearing of many events being cancelled and I’m amazed at some close quarters indoor events still happening. With the Ukraine situation it seems many folks imagine covid has disappeared which of course is pure nonsense. This means making covid musical adjustments and taking as few risks as possible. I’m already seeing some festivals being cancelled due to covid and have great sympathy for all those artists who are touring and need to play out to maintain some income streams.

If 2020 and 2021 was the period for writing and recording music, 2022 is going to be a bumper year for music releases. I’ll be working across four main projects, which are the duet material with Towse, the resurrections of The Small Change Diaries acoustic ensemble, the Code E1 remix electronic work and the all electric Nick Cody and the Heartache band.

This means a lot of rehearsal time and a great deal of time working with a creative team for music, video production as well as social media. All music will be distributed through Green Eyed Records and we’ll be looking at digital and physical products.

The importance of a great creative team, plus time and money

Running one band is time consuming, but working with two ensembles as well as other projects requires a great deal of organisation and planning. The heart of all these projects is having an excellent producer and sound engineer, Carl Rosamond. This was never more evident than soundchecking the Heartache under very tight time constraints at a recent live performance. The whole sound check with five members took just 15 minutes and many people commented on how great the sound was. I’ve used Carl for all music releases to date and he remains an essential ingredient to all four projects. Similarly Karen Turner has been the photographer for all ensembles to date and has captured many great photos including those from overseas festivals.

I’d love to think that great music alone would be enough to reach a wider audience, but that’s simply not true. Any music distribution and promotion requires time and money. The recent downtime with Facebook and Instagram highlights the importance of having your own web presence online and not relying on third party social media platforms. I recently decided to use Kycker for all music distribution as the company is far more user friendly and personable that those I have used before. I’ve also started to hire external radio promoters and digital media specialists to increase audience reach and this is working really well. One of the keys to success is to only work with professionals and skilled individuals. Its also crucial to work with people with good communication skills as recording and promoting music requires a lot of coordination. I’m lucky to have a longstanding core team that get the job done and are a pleasure to work with,

Amplification Challenges

One of the challenges in playing small bodied instruments is figuring out how best to amplify them in a live gig setting. Different musicians have different takes on this, but my personal view is to simply amplify the natural sound of the instrument in a straightforward manner. This is far easier said than done of course. Many of the standard amps for acoustic instruments makes by Marshall, AER, Fishman etc are “ok” to my ears but really not great sonically. I previously used Schertler amps which were expensive and heavy, but did a good job. The top end Unico Deluxe did the best job.

Then along came Henriksen with The Bud and now The Blu and it was game over. Both these units are so far ahead sonically that there really is no contest. Yes, they are more of a financial investment, but its like night and day sonically. I’m currently exploring a stereo amp setup option with Henriksens and I used the new lighter Blu at the New York gigs to great effect. Both the Henriksen Blu and the Bud are 120w output and can be used as stand alon amps or as monitors with a line out to a PA system. The superb Fire Eye Red preamps are great for boosting signal and of course Mogami cables unsure the best sound connection.

Sound Recording in the Studio

One of the benefits of sitting in on mastering and mixing sessions is that I am able to better understand and appreciate “music production” I have previously blogged about UAD plugins and how these are real game changers for the recording musician. UAD like Henriksen have achieved a new level of sonic quality that previously didn'[t exist and I use UAD in my home studio as well as the big studio for all final recordings.

Creating a great sound is like baking, you need to balance all the ingredients and in this case ensure that playback works equally well on a range of playback systems from a laptop to a really high end system. Having an experienced producer is the difference between an ok album and a great album.

Pet Hates – The Dreaded Reverb done to excess…

My previous pet hate for album production was engineers mastering everything so it was sonically as loud as possible and in this pursuit, really destroyed any subtlety in the music. My current pet hate is excessive reverb on recordings which make the singers sound like they are performing at the bottom of a well. When I hear the phrase “ethereal sounds” all too often this means a wash of reverb that kills any dynamics in the music. Check out any Grace VanderWaal videos and you’ll hear this. Some newer aspiring uke artists have also gone down this max the reverb route and of course many folks love it, but personally I’d rather push bamboo shoots through my fingers than be subjected to such a sonic onslaught.

Great sound engineers knew how to use reverb and even engineers with a reputation for enthusiastically adding reverb such as Daniel Lanois, knew exactly how to make it work with the artist. Lanois’s work with Dylan and Emmylou Harris is outstanding, but he has mad skills when it comes to production and always ensured that the reverb didn’t totally kill the expression in the vocals.

Final Thoughts

I fully admit that I am not in the majority when it comes to musical taste. These dayes I’d far rather see an act in the small venue playing original material than attending a stadium gig. I love writing with the ukulele, but most ukulele based music is really not great and the quirky cover versions are almost as bad as the excessive use of reverb. That said I applaud anyone creating and performing music even if its not to my personal taste. These days although I still write on the uke, I am far more interested in incorporating other instruments to ensure there is much better sonic range for an audience. 

 

Just back from an amazing trip to New York.During this time I managed to see Bill Frissell twice at The Vanguard as well as Fred Hersh. There really is no better venue for live music with a capacity of 125 attendees and superb acoustics. I was literally a few feet away from the artists. The Bill Frissell Trio with Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston is quite amazing. These are three artists at the very top of their game and as a band are quite unique. I also saw the superb Ronnie Earl at BB Kings. Ronnie is an exceptional artist and I have been a fan of his music for many years. The two gigs in Harlem went really well and it was a lot of fun to play at Shrine and Silvana. I also saw some amazing musicians on this visit and highly recommend The Red Dog on Monday night for their weekly blues jam. 

New York is an extraordinary city and I managed to catch the Bowie exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum. Bowie is a wonderful example of an artist full of creativity and the exhibition was a superb showcase of his work. I grew up with Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust as well as Station to Station. Low and Heroes. Each album was very different and quite brilliant. The event got rave reviews and it was a somewhat surreal experience to be literally immersed in Bowie for over two hours. Every attendee had the opportunity to wear a set of headphones which sychronised with the exhibition material. I was especially fascinated by Bowie’s writing process and looking as many of his handwritten transcripts of lyrics.

I also had the chance to work on “the big project” while there and there will be more news about that later this year. There are many moving parts to this and it will take the best part of a year to organise before the launch. I was massively impressed by the standard of musicianship of all the performers I met there, all of which had an obvious love for music.

Last night I had the opportunity to play Shrine in Harlem with my good friends Doug O Brien on keyboards, Alan Thornton on uke and vocals and Terri Thornton on bass. As “Throckmorton” they wonderfully opened the evening. This was the first time I played material off my solo album “Tales of Dark and Light” and we opened with Dunning Kruger Blues” Later in the set we also did “Grey Skies” which I have yet to record. Both of these tracks are really groove based, think ‘Papa was a rolling stone” coupled with the Doors “Break on Though” The guys did a great job making these tracks really swing and I am looking forward to recording Grey Skies with a cast of many great musicians back in the UK this April.

This was also an opportunity to try out the new Henriksen Blu and it did not disappoint. I ran my ukulele through the fire eye red pre amp straight into the Blu and it sounded great. I have yet to find any amp that works as well as Henriken gear. The Bud and the Blu work perfectly to amplify the natural sound of the instrument. There’s nothing worse that an instrument that doesn’t sound good and with the ukulele its tough to get a really great sound and I’ve been to festivals where the sound its really terrible. The Henriksens have massive EQ options (which you rarely need) and a line out from the amp to a PA is just heaven.

Saturday night we’ll be playing the second gig at Silvana in Harlem. This is like The Cavern in Liverpool and should be a lot of fun. Its a real joy to play with other talented musicians and my wife Sue took some great photos of us in action..