May 2013
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April 2013
19 posts
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Waking up after a tour tends to be accompanied by a certain “and it was all a dream…” sensation. There is no hotel check-out time to adhere to, no strict breakfast hours, no soundcheck in some far away town. For the last few weeks our days and nights have been governed by schedules and satnav coordinates. Now we are all, once again, left to our own devices and personal rhythms. The only immediate...
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Brussels
It turns out my mental picture of Brussels differs markedly to the reality. I think this is probably due to years of news stories about grey-faced MEPs shuffling around in buildings made of concrete and glass.
But no. It’s cafe culture and daring knitwear and old churches and jazz music and questionable fashion choices and tiny dogs and designer beards and creative driving and little hats...
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Saarbrucken
Venue managers and gig promoters have all sorts of important tasks to perform if a show is to be a success. Most of these tasks are unseen and often unacknowledged.
There is a secret windowless room in most rock clubs. Usually in the basement. It is little more than a cupboard. This is where money is counted out and receipts are signed. The air is stale and the colours are brown; there is one...
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Stuttgart
Bernhardt the sound engineer at Laboratorium in Stuttgart looks like a Raymond Briggs Father Christmas turned roadie and could not better suit this wonderfully peculiar venue (a venue that appears not to have changed at all over the course of its forty one years in business).
The great thing about being in an odd-looking, odd-sounding, relatively unmarketable band is that one tends to get booked...
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Nuremberg
Waiting for us in Nürnberg was another familiar face. Indeed, along with Erwin (mentioned a couple of blogs ago) this person has been the single constant sentient factor (outside of the six of us) for all of our tours on the continent (not counting festivals).
This man knows all the words to our songs. It’s really quite breathtaking. I mean that literally… to sing these songs is to be left with...
Day Off
I took advantage of this day of rest to do some essential maintenance on my guitar (there were a few loose connections that were giving me some grief at the last show) so I spent most of the afternoon elbow-deep in the sound hole fiddling with its innards. Ahem.
Fran and Tom had disappeared off with some strangers after the gig and didn’t return to the band apartment until noon, their whereabouts...
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Innsbruck
It’s never a good idea to assume you’re going to get a big crowd somewhere just because you had a big crowd the last time you visited. We are living in uncertain times: people change their priorities and change their minds; just because someone likes a band one year doesn’t mean they’ll like it the next.
But, for the time being at least, Innsbruck seems to be a dead cert for us. This was our...
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Vienna
Our van has become something of a plague ship. At last count there were three different timbres of cough, two pitches of sneeze and the odd brassy toot of a blown nose. We should really hoist a black sail. We are decidedly contagious.
It’s a shame but not unexpected. If one person gets a cold then we’ll all get it sooner or later. It’s no one’s fault. We do our best to stay healthy, the van is...
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Kufstein
The more gigs one plays, the more one realises how small the live music circuit (both national and international) really is. Of course there is an endless cycle of new venues, new bands and new promoters coming and going, turf wars, backstabbing, shallow marketing, quick fixes, chancers - all the things that get in the way of humans playing and listening to music for enjoyment. But those that...
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Basel
We try to moderate our expectancy levels on tour. Indeed, I try to moderate them in everything I do (I’m not sure if I’m a cautious optimist or a cheery pessimist). But I admit we had high hopes for this particular show.
Parterre is among my favourite venues in the world. It quite simply exudes a sense of goodwill. Usually we assess places based on sound quality, stage size, monitor mixes and...
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Frankfurt
When one spends much of one’s “working” life screaming at a group of partially invisible strangers, a tide of brow-sweat mingling with the makeup to form a dirty soup in the eyes, half blind yet all confidence, legs at an unnatural ninety degree stance as if astride a pregnant camel, it might seem a bit strange to admit how much we all worry about whether anyone’s going to actually turn up to the...
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Bruges
I write this at some unmentionable hour having finally given up on the idea of sleep. It is pitch black in our windowless hostel room and the air is heavy with the smell of feet. There is a chorus of snoring from every corner and my head is in a fog of boredom.
We always come through Bruges when we tour the continent. It’s a beautiful town that doubles as a convenient pit-stop between our UK and...
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January 2013
32 posts
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Day Eighteen
My friend Clutch Daisy recently said to me “dismantling the recording gear is way more depressing than taking down the Christmas decorations.”
He’s right. This place has not just been a place of work for the last eighteen days, but also our home. Our entire world even. Dan has barely left the house the whole time, only to pick up some milk and tea bags. In fact, he’s...
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Day Seventeen
And so came the time for my final vocals.
I generally lay down lead vocals three times throughout the recording process. One live track when we’re all playing together at the start (this tends to be quite a “safe” delivery, more concerned with timing and not surprising the drummer too much with any eccentricities - these early takes are, after all, primarily to get the rhythm...
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Day Sixteen
A busy day of (ahem…) touching up parts. Fran recorded the last of his organ, piano and accordion bits; Cleg some banjo and a few lead replacements for earlier electric guitar takes. I also replaced one acoustic guitar part with a classical guitar as the steel strings in the original were creaking a little too much for the character of the song.
Mostly, however, today was harmony day.
Over...
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Day Fifteen
Describing the day’s activity sounds a bit like the deductions in a game of Cluedo: Fran in the study with the organ… Biff in the library with the trombone… Tom in the hallway with the cowbell. Thankfully no one has murdered anyone yet.
We got a lot done. It’s been fantastic. We were joined by two guest players, Phyllida Maude-Roxby (aka Mamma Roxby) on viola/violin and...
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Around The Horn...
I thought it might be interesting to get Biff Roxby’s take on this recording project as his brass parts have become something of a signature sound in our tunes. Yesterday I asked him some questions…
Often described as a “one man trombone army” you are one of the most remarked about elements of the Bedlam Six live show. How does your performance and technique differ in...
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Day Fourteen
Today we were very much at home to Mr Bang and Mr Crash as Biff’s (even taller) brother Paddy joined us to help Tom lay down some extra percussion parts. The two faced each other across a fearsome array of drums (an evil marriage of both their kits), beaters clutched like viking pace-setters looming over a trembling galley of rowers. Needless to say they made an unholy racket.
Meanwhile the...
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Day Thirteen
Today was a little different. Cleg and Biff worked away on the remainder of their overdubs with little change in volume or intensity, the walls of the house beginning to sag from the constant sonic bombardment. But Tom and I had a mission, one that took us into the outside world.
As you may have gathered, our studio is not a typical one. It is a house and, with all the advantages of comfort and...
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Day Twelve
I’m going a little stir crazy now. We’re at the stage where the record is teasing me. I suspect I’m not the only one. It sounds so close to being finished but experience has taught us not to get complacent. There’s a lot left to do and I can’t help worrying about time running out. My general disposition in life is already characterised by a sort of premature...
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Day Eleven (the specs of tech)
Up until now these blogs have focused on our general progress and doubled as an emotional compass of sorts. I thought it may be time to get a little more technical though. But this really isn’t my area of expertise… as far as I’m concerned I just sing into a magic box and the fairies do the rest. So I asked Dan (the Debt Records technical director, Bedlam bassist, co-founder of...
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Day Ten
This was one of those days where songs start to arrange themselves. One particularly satisfying surprise was a new tune called You’re On Your Own Now. When I wrote it I was very conscious that it would probably come to be filed in the “guilty pleasures” category rather than “high art” - being, as it is, essentially folk rock. Early run-throughs with the band very much...
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Day Nine (continued)
At 6pm we packed down the drum kit and various amps etc to go play a show. We booked this gig to take care of general food and living costs while we’re here (and petrol for a return trip to Manchester). We were also treating it as an opportunity to try out some of the arrangements we’d been working on over the last week and a half.
We had mixed feelings about doing it though. Plus a...
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Day Nine
Our studio house looks a little different now. We’re done with the live set up and have turned our attentions to the lead sections. The baffles originally set up around the drum kit are now cocooning the guitar amps. We barely see Cleg anymore, he’s locked away in his special lair, perfecting solos and guitar harmonies (guitarmonies?).
We’re all rearranging a lot of the stuff...
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Day Eight
Drums, drums, drums, drums, drums.
All day the drums.
Relentless drums.
Drums with barely a pause.
A fog of noise.
Day eight in the Bedlam house was like sitting inside a headache. It was as though the drum kit was exacting its revenge upon us for neglecting it the day before. Oh god, those drums…
We’d saved the trickiest numbers to last and it took all of Tom’s might (and...
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Day Seven
One of the great luxuries of recording like this is being able to try out ideas in a relaxed way. However big the budget there is always a “time is money” factor inherent in hiring a studio (“we’re paying for this place so hurry up!”); it tends to lead to an unhelpful “that will do” attitude. In my experience clock-watching can utterly and incurably poison...
