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September 11, 2011
Autumn Almanyack
Into September already. A quick roundup of things I've been doing:
The Invisible Helpers is about a year old now, and is beginning to know what it is. When the band started we worked on a core of songs from my previous albums, but in the last 15m of a rehearsal I'd throw in something half formed or something I hadn't recorded just to see what would stick. I figured that way the band would gradually develop its own personality. It's taken longer than I thought but it seems what we have taken to the most is quite grand, sweeping themes like The Wolf Who Snared the Moon, rather than quiet lyric-based things like Come With Me. We've embarked on a recording of Under Your Wing, a song that fits that pattern pretty well. It emerged from a jam with guitarist Gil Murray in about 2004 and sat on my must-do-something-about files for all this time, waiting for the band that would do it justice (and force me to finish writing it). If you liked Wolf, you'll like this one. With several recording enthusiasts in the band it was necessary to decide who would be in charge of this, and it's Sam Barber, working with John Farrell. I hope you'll hear it soon. In the meantime I decided to learn about Wordpress and in so doing enjoyed building a site for the Helpers at http://www.invisiblehelpers.co.uk. This may not be its final look but it's a good start.
Sadly it looks like Bespoke is no more. We may reconvene to record some of the songs we spent so many years polishing, but even that is in doubt. For some of the band, life has beaten music and is beating them up severely.
On a happier note, The Wright Brothers have burst out from Hades for Nelson and myself to play some light acoustic songs with simple guitar and mandolin arrangements and we're enjoying it a lot. We're headlining The Listening Room on September25th and will pop into OOTB as well.
My solo project is still moving, albeit slowly, with Daniel Davis helping me. Titles include Fingerpuppet, The Song of Wandering Aengus, The Monk from the Mountain of Sorrow, I Started a Fire, Not About to Fly and The Portobello Slam. Don't bet anything you'd miss on a 2011 release, though.
I've been playing open mics again, OOTB, TLR and the Three Monkeys and enjoyed sets from Ben Young and The Sundancer. Can't wait till I've some decent recordings to offer you.
Have a good September ...
September 11, 2011 in Music, My music | Permalink
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