So much so much…

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Hello I’m back. There’s a bit of a backlog I’m afraid. I’m pretty sure I still owe you photos from two studio sessions, lyrics for the next song, possibly a NAGfest post? And of course it’s getting closer to new music time. Hooray.

Part of the reason for this little backlog is busyness at work. But another reason is that I went to my first Glastonbury last weekend. And what fun it was.

To start with, Jack and myself rode 30ish miles from Bristol on Thursday. This was almost as bad an idea as it sounds, but despite my slight lack of fitness, we made it and it was enormously fun. And it meant we were able to have free hot showers all weekend.

Looking through the schedule trying to compose a list of what we did see, it occurs that we might have not actually got to very much. I have to say, I’d do it the same again if I had another chance. Despite my lack of experience, I’m pretty sure the best thing to do in most situations is enjoy yourself and your company and not worry in the slightest about what you might be missing out on…

So below is the golden list (including everyone we saw however briefly). Don’t ask me to play favourites, I can’t do it. It was a great weekend. Think I missed something great? Think I’m a muppet for seeing all of the headliners? Want to tell me about it in the comments? Tough luck cos I turned them off. Rage away internet!

Adele
Bad Sounds
Band of Horses
Bear’s Den
Billy Bragg
Braids
Christine and the Queens
Coldplay
Elle King
Emily Capell
Eska
Foy Vance
Jeff Lynne’s ELO
Kezia
Lewis and Leigh
Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir
Muse
Of Monsters and Men
Ratboy
Reef
Squeeze
The Big Moon
The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Wildwood Kin
Will Varley

New Ash Green Open Mic

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Or NAG Open Mic for short.

Let me tell you a story. No wait. Let me show you these:

Mark Goslett playing at Open Mic March 2006

Jack Lewis at NAG Open Mic March 2006

These are the first pictures I have from a NAG Open Mic event. They were taken in March 2006, roughly a month and a half after the first NAG Open Mic. They feature Mark and Jack.

So. I first met Jack (that I remember) at a New Ash Green band night in 2001. March 2001 I think, but that might be wrong. I don’t really recall how much we saw of each other in between, but I received a phone call from him in January 2006 and he said he was starting an Open Mic night in New Ash Green, and as a local musician would I come along and play. They were hosted at the New Ash Green Rugby Club, or Sports Pavillion if you’re being proper. The first night was Thursday 19 January 2006.

Shortly after that (May 2006) he went travelling and asked if I would take over the night. I duly did and for reasons best known to myself called it “Jack’s Open Mic Night” in honour of my travelling friend. I had a lot of help from a friend, Gary, during the next couple of years, but by Autumn 2007 we were down to once a month, and I think around January 2008 we went on hiatus.

Jack returned (a year later than previously advertised!) in May 2008 and immediately set about reincarnating the night as NAG Open Mic with us both co-running it. Previous incarnations had run at various intervals (I think at one point we were every three weeks – I can’t think who thought this was a good idea) but we were every other week at this point, as evidenced by some truly, um, ‘edgy’ fliers I produced. Eventually we settled on every 2nd and 4th Thursday and that served us well to the end.

The aim with NAG Open Mic was always to encourage younger people to get up and have a go, to encourage new music, and to foster more music in New Ash Green. I think we succeeded to varying degrees with these aims. There are definitely musicians who attribute their start to NAG Open Mic, and even at the penultimate event we had someone who was around at the start play their first live set.

Running an Open Mic for ten years wasn’t without problems. For a while the club didn’t have a live music license and we had to apply for a temporary event notice every couple of weeks. Some weeks we played host to a very few people indeed and we took it in turns to play to each other all night, other times it was all we could do to squeeze everyone in (our record, for the record, was 23 acts in one night – no mean feat!). We saw bar staff and club managers come and go. We moved upstairs and downstairs and even outside on the odd occasion. We had a power cut which led to a very acoustic singalong. We broke stuff – most memorably a table during an encouraged stage invasion to sing Feed the world at a Christmas special. We had PA supply issues, PA storage issues, PA not being where it should be issues, PA being run through a guitar amp issues (wouldn’t recommend that one). We bought a Clavinova without a stand that required electrical engineering to allow it to work with a standard sustain pedal.

And it wasn’t without amazing memories either, naturally. We had two live hookups to Glastonbury (one was admittedly very patchy), live hookups to Switzerland. We went through a phase of themed evenings – 80s music, 90s music, songs with numbers or colours, the Michael Jackson tribute evening was particularly great (the news had broken about his death during a previous open mic). We had music (originals and covers), impromptu jams, poetry, comedy, beat-boxing didgeridoo, normal beat-boxing, rant debates, ghost recordings (ish), a local choir and even a mass game of pictionary. We had numerous local bands come and play. We had Christmas, Halloween, Valentines, Anniversary and Saturday Summer Daytime specials. We tried on multiple occasions to outnumber the audience with the number of people on stage. We gave free drinks away to performers for 10 years. We encouraged so many inexperienced performers to get up and perform. We enjoyed so many fantastic performances by experienced and inexperienced. We have been pleasantly surprised more times than I can count to discover a gem of a performer turn up on an otherwise run of the mill evening.

The biggest issue we faced arrived in 2012 when new directors at the club forced a stand-off. Trying to (misguidedly we believe) save money we were forced to concede more and more until they point-blank refused to allow us to give free drinks to performers. That had always been one of our hallmarks, and was non-negotiable. In November 2012 we moved to the Badger in the centre of New Ash Green. Jen, the landlady was incredibly good to us and continued to be until the end. We were eventually asked multiple times to return to the club, but we remained with The Badger.

I’m sure if I sat and thought long and hard I could dredge up more memories. It was a fantastic thing to do with a fantastic co-host and a great investment of Thursday evenings for ten years. You can find a lot more photos, memories and even videos by scrolling through the Facebook page.

The final night on Thursday 26 May 2016 was a great night to go out on, despite the pressure of being the last night. I think Jack and I both felt strange about the whole thing. We managed 17/18 acts (depending how you count) including favourites No Limit Street Band. There were a fair few faces missing, as to be expected after over ten years time passing, but there were some old familiar friends as well as newer friends. The evening wrapped up with Jack and I joining Aid Lewis (with Nigel Lewis) and singing James’ Sit Down followed by Jack singing Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits accompanied by Nigel playing piano.

And so we end as we began. With photos. The last photos I have of NAG Open Mic. The first is from earlier in the evening during a jam session, but the second is the last photo – Jack singing Romeo and Juliet.

That was a fun game.

Panorama of the last NAG Open Mic 2016

Jack singing at the last NAG Open Mic May 2016

Dissection

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What a week. I think I’d like to talk further about some these things, but being as how I’m also pretty busy this week, it will need to wait a little bit longer. Seemed right to do a brief summary though.

  • First off, on Saturday 21st we were recording dog Tired, which I believe I mentioned. Hoping for release early next week.
  • Next, Wednesday evening was a strangeday practice. The previous practice saw all of us feeling a little tired and kind of lack lustre, but this one was way better. The practice was in preparation for NAGfest. More of which later.
  • Thursday was the last NAG Open Mic. I’ve been running this open mic with Jack for 10 years. It was a really nice evening to end on, and I’m hoping to talk a bit more about that in a post dedicated to the subject.
  • Friday was a Roo’s Radio practice, again for NAGfest. It went on pretty late as we were trying to get the set ready and it had been a long time since we’d played together.
  • Saturday was the first day of NAGfest, a local music festival in its second year. Roo’s Radio were on at 6pm. Our set went really well. Paul, who had also done a lot of the organisation for NAGfest, joined us on drums, and it all felt very comfortable. Despite having not played for a while I think the songs are with us now.
  • Sunday was the second day of the festival, and strangeday were playing at 8pm. This set also went well, although I was struggling a little voice-wise due to a lot of late nights and lots of singing. We played a new song, Long defeat, which possibly went down better than all the other songs.

It was also great to catch a lot of great bands and friends at NAGfest. Jack, Ant, Steve, 3dBs Down, Ab and the Underclass, No Limit Street Band, Sam, Aaron, Hog Roast, One Day Elliott and Beer Pressure were all very cool.

Onwards

How to make an album – ptII

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Well last week I reminisced about the week of recording for The Way Home. This week, I’d like to go a little into the detail of the time that went in to the project.

Around November 2014, I started thinking seriously about what I next wanted to achieve, musically speaking. The answer was fairly obviously a Roo’s Radio album. So I set about making it happen.

Initially I thought it might be me and Paul doing the bulk of the work, with the band filling in towards the end, but in fact, the others wanted to throw in behind the idea as much as I did. And I’m glad for that, as we have a far better end product because of it.

Not least because of what I’m about to tell you. Three extra people on the project meant a lot more working hours. Here then, is a rough breakdown of actual time that went into just the making of the music. Physical production and launch are a story for another time I think.

Album production hours

I’ve counted the total time of everyone involved, which in this case varied from just me (songwriting) to the band (four of us), to the band with producer, to a church choir (20ish). This is a very rough estimate, and I’ve erred on the side of conservative guesses to be honest. I’ve gone with 1 day = 8 hours.

The actual album process from start to release ran from January 2015 to November 2015, with some songs initially written as early as 2011.

• Initial songwriting 2011 – 2015. Approx. 2 hours per song, but I may have written up to 25-30 songs in that period. Some of these ended up with strangeday, some may still see the light of day, and some are probably just for me :P. Only 11 made it onto the album (the intro track was written during the process of producing the album and is a reworking of parts of two of the other songs with some extra bits)
~60 hours

• Extra band songwriting for 5 of those songs during band practices (2013-2014)
~96 hours

• Initial album planning (December 2014)
2-3 hours taking to Paul W about recording and the band about the project
~10.5 hours

• Building collaboration tool. 3-4 hours collating songs, influences, building an online wiki for collaboration
~4 hours

• Pre-recording band rewrites
Roughly every Wednesday evening between January and May 2015 plus one Saturday a month in the same period
~64 hours (evenings)
~128 hours (Saturdays)

• Working out final track selection and rough order/album journey/themes
~1.5 hours

• Final pre-production with Paul, May 2015
~20 hours

• Recording scratch tracks May 2015
~5 hours

• Studio week May 16-22 2015
~276 hours

• Choir recording June 2015 (inc prep) rough estimate
~43 hours

• Extra recording days July/August 2015 2-3 days with various people
~72 hours

• Cello writing/recording July 2015
~6 hours

• Mixing and editing June-October 2015 – officially 12 days, but estimating 22
~176 hours

• Band feedback on editing (very rough approx)
~12 hours

• Mastering
~26 hours

Total ~1000 hours or ~125 days
NB. This does not include artwork, physical production, design, launch planning or general low-level (casual) thinking about the songs/project management etc.

Lyrics – dog Tired

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So we’re in the studio. I totes forgot to prelude it by telling you about the song and posting the lyrics.

So sorry.

Today we’re recording the first blues song I ever did write. I doubt I have the right. I’m not exactly a blues aficionado. I always think of the bit in Lord of the Rings where Aragorn tells Bilbo it’s his look out if he has the cheek to write songs about Gil-galad in the house of Elrond. </nerd>

Anyway.

I think this one revolves around the line “what if there are fights you’re born to lose”. We get so much in films and so on about destiny and everything working out right. And sometimes things don’t work out. Not a sparkling piece of insightful observation, I’ll grant you.

What if no matter how you went about a situation you were going to fail? Probably you should still go for it. Depends on your perspective I guess. The point being, if you fail, you shouldn’t berate yourself too hard or entertain endless what ifs.

I actually came up with the title of the song by mishearing Radiohead‘s Myxomatosis. It’s not as if Thom’s diction is the clearest in rock. Turns out the lyric is “I don’t know why I feel so tongue tied”, not “dog tired”. Hell I’ll take it. At least I didn’t write a song called Twitch and salivate. Although…

As well as Paul and myself (standard), we’ve also got Ant Martin back in and the one and only Jack Lewis (Mister Jack Lewis if you please!) for the first time. Very exciting stuff.

I’ll chuck a few pics out at some point no doubt.

And here are the lyrics:

dog Tired
Hung my head found a way
To double down on yesterday
If I keep throwing words around
If I could just hold out and run to ground
That most elusive of all men
The king of black eyed fools again
I’ve been indecisive, I’ve been unkind
Mercy me I think I’ve been so blind

Tell me just exactly what’s a man to do
What if there are fights you’re born to lose?
What if I could have done it different from the start…
But what’s the point of “ifs” they’ll only tear you apart

Holding forth as if by this
Strength of belief I could dismiss
All opposition, all antipathy
But it begs the question, who are we?
And honestly I still don’t know
Whether to stay or up and go
Apprehensive of all that is required
And all of my days feeling so dog tired

Every now and then I’ll catch a glimpse
Of the life that I could lead and I’m convinced
That here to there and there to here and back again
Would take more out of me than I have to spend

How to make an album – ptI

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It was a year and two days ago, on the 16th May 2015, that we started a full week’s work on The Way Home – the Roo’s Radio debut album. It marked the first time that I had worked full time, albeit for a week, on a music project.

In actual fact, what went into that album was so much more than just that one week, as I’ll tell you more about next time, but spending concentrated time doing a project like that is always going to stand out as a special time in your memory – good or bad.

Recording an album is an interesting business. There’s a lot of hard work, but also a lot of potential boredom: waiting your turn, setting things up, getting something wrong over and over again. There are high points and low points, but you’re always striving to ensure that the best bits make it onto the record.

Prior to going in to the studio I had recorded a bunch of the guide tracks. I believe I finished recording these on the morning of Saturday 16th, and we then did a bit of work on the guitar for Flicker. Already the exact sequence of events is fading from memory. Flicker was definitely the first song we worked on though.

Paul wasn’t around in the afternoon of the 16th so we did some final bits of writing and got some rest for the week ahead.

We’d booked in a drum day on the Monday, so we spent Sunday on Flicker and possibly another song we didn’t have drums on.

Monday morning was spent setting up the live room for the drums, and then Paul stormed through the drums for six songs in one day. The last song of the day was Dream Again. Paul had to leave for a gig or practice and was right up against it to get the song done, but true to form he smashed it out.

For the rest of the week we had to try and get through as much as possible. Generally speaking we had to get bass and guitar sorted before we did vocals, so we’d spend mornings doing the instruments and afternoons doing the vocals. None of the lead vocalists were drinking alcohol, milk or caffeine so there was an awful lot of herbal tea drunk that week. And lots of vocal warm-ups and vocalzone to look after our voices.

For fun we hooked up a live webcam during the week. We didn’t have a huge number of people checking in with it, but the footage (unfortunately without sound as we didn’t want to broadcast our numerous mistakes and dodgy conversations to the internets) was saved. We edited some of it into this video, but perhaps one day we’ll do more with it.

Most days we’d decide on a plan of action for the next day. We didn’t plan anything too far ahead and just went with how we were feeling.

We had a chart of things needing to be done and it became clear as the week went on that we weren’t going to make it through everything. We still had 2 days of time booked with Paul, so as the week went on we tried to find some more time where all five of us were available. One of those days was in July and the other in August.

The last afternoon/evening of the week saw us working on However. It was pretty emotional because it was the end of a great week. And However is quite an emotional song that means a lot to all of us, especially Claire. So she poured her heart and soul into that vocal, which was the last thing we recorded in that week. Every one of us shed a tear during that performance. Magic.

Then we decamped back to mine where everyone including El piled into wine and cheese, breaking our alcohol/dairy prohibition. And that weekend was the first NAGfest where we played a set.

[Edit: You can now read Part II]

What a week! Below is a fun infographic I made to show what went into the week. There’s quite a few in-jokes there, but I think you’ll be able to appreciate it.

Making an album infographic

Long live the king

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There’s been talk for a while now about albums being dead. Talk like that is nonsense anyway, so I’m not about to write another post decrying or supporting simplistic rubbish.

What I will say is that this has been a pretty album-happy few weeks for me. I got Beyoncé‘s Lemonade and Radiohead‘s A Moon Shaped Pool as well as pre-ordering Foy Vance‘s Wild Swan (which drops tomorrow – huzzah!) and Switchfoot‘s Where The Light Shines Through.

I’m not going to get into reviewing on here. I don’t think. But I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard so far.

That said, for musicians without large followings there does seem to be less incentive to put all of that time and energy into making something as cohesive as an album. Certainly it makes more sense for me to do what I’m doing in releasing singles on a roughly regular schedule (on that note, Somewhere in between is currently with the mastering guy). This keeps me, and hopefully you, more interested and is a hell of a lot less work.

We did the album thing last year, and it took roughly 850 working hours last year to get the thing finished. And that doesn’t include physical production, launch planning, marketing or the launch itself. It was totally worth it, and we have a finished product which I don’t think is on the level of international acclaim, but which we’re really proud of and very happy with.

But it was a lot of work and a lot of waiting. And there was nothing to keep the public momentum going in between. In terms of momentum for us, that took a lot of sheer willpower and planning.

So here we are. And because it’s been a year (ish) since we went into the studio to record The Way Home, I will be posting some more about the process in the coming weeks. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the insight as much as we enjoyed making it.

Autobiographiwhat?

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I was just thinking through the veracity of my previous statement that I don’t write intensely autobiographical songs. There’s a nagging doubt in my mind that I’m possibly more autobiographical than I wishfully think I am (i.e. there’s a nagging doubt in my mind that I’m a great big liar).

I’m not sure analysing too much is a good idea, and I end up feeling like (and, yes, probably sounding like) a wanker when I do, but I discuss writing lyrics reasonably regularly with Jack and I usually reassert that I don’t write directly about myself. Very often.

I’m mostly concerned with lyrics sounding right. I don’t tend to think too hard about the individual meaning of lines, I kind of go with what sounds good to my ear. Or what looks good to my eyes if I’m writing it down I guess. So songs probably do start off directly in my own experience, but I try and make them as general as possible. Or try and exaggerate anything personal to make it more than just about me.

Clouded is probably a good example. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt that lost. I think everyone knows what it feels like to be physically or metaphorically far from home, and of course, I’ve had my fair share of confusion. But the extremes to which the lyrics in Clouded go aren’t drawn from my life.

But then I think about some of the phrases I’ve included in different songs and they could come straight from me. They probably reasonably accurately summarise my state of mind. I’m not telling you which ones though.

And I guess that’s the point. Perhaps my songs are more autobiographical than I’d like to admit to, but I do deliberately obfuscate that fact. Maybe because I don’t want to be that public, maybe I don’t think people want to hear about me, maybe songs are better the more people can relate to them, I’m not sure.

They’re only lyrics. I just write ’em. I don’t think that’s a very neat conclusion. Sometimes you can’t wrap a blog post up in a clever way. Or sometimes you just can’t be bothered.