The Strand

March's 'new' song:



Like 'Fairytale' in February, this has also been kicking around for a number of years (I think it goes back to the last millennium...) We did record this when we first started Nobodaddy, and that recording had a certain charm, but we didn't quite do it justice. I've always been hugely fond of it, as it is a hugely personal song, so I'm glad we've managed to revive it.

For me it is full of allusions to and resonances of people, places, poetry and songs that I love, but I hope it also has resonance for others who can bring their own take to it. I think of it as a bit of a secular hymn  (like 'Fountain', the last song on our first album), exploring a more 'spiritual' (for want of a better word) theme than our recurring love tropes. So take a walk along the strand, see what the tide brings in...

A song for lovers

This month's new song is 'Fairytale:



This is unequivocally a love song, and a bit of a change from our normal folk style, but hopefully still recognisably Nobodaddy. It's actually been kicking around for a number of years, but never quite found an outlet so it's nice to breathe some new life into it.

Song of the month

We'll be recording and sharing a song per month throughout 2015, so over the year we'll have 12 songs covering the full year. As much as anything it gives us a reason to record songs that we've written over the years but may never make it on to an album, maybe because they are stylistically a bit outside our normal sound, or just don't quite fit somehow.

We start the year with 'Little Robin':



This was written for a songwriters night at one of our local venues, and owes a huge debt to one of our favourite Beatles songs, 'Blackbird'. Hope you enjoy it...look out for more songs each month.

Walking in Willie's Footsteps

I remember the first time I was aware of him. It was a Friday night at home, I was maybe 16 years old, watching TV with my parents. Friday night was comedy night - 'Cheers' was a favourite and then maybe something a bit swearier after the watershed, Clive Anderson ridiculing guests or Blackadder, but still not really edgy, something you could watch with the olds. This particular Friday night, Channel 4 was showing a special by an American comedian called Bill Hicks. I guess it would be about 10pm so getting towards bedtime for the folks but, hey it's Friday, let's see what this is like. Out he comes, dressed in black, but pretty unremarkable looking, even a bit chubby, and a dodgy mullet, but he's off with something about moving to LA and people saying how good the weather is, then the pay-off "What are you? A fucking Lizard?" Not maybe the greatest gag of all time, but it scored on two counts 1) it was funny and 2) it was too sweary for Mum who toddled off to bed to leave me to enjoy the show. In my memory, Dad hung around for a bit, but maybe he didn't.

I wish I could say I was immediately struck by his genius, but I don't think that's true - I just thought he was very, very funny. The stuff about trying to blow yourself, about hating George Michael and loving Jimi, the smoking and swearing, that was all pretty much perfect for a 16 year old boy, just finding out how much fun the world could be. But I think I was aware that there was something a bit more going on than you average comedian even then - I guess his political stuff about Bush and the Kuwait invasion and then the last bit about 'exploring space, both inner and outer, together forever, and peace' resonated with an idealistic teenager who could grasp simple political and philosophical slogans.

Mike and I must have watched the same show because I think we talked about it on the phone the next day - did you see that? Wasn't he great?

And from then on, we were an item, us and Bill. We learnt his stuff verbatim.  We were maybe the last generation that properly had to mine music, comedy and films for everything they were worth because they were hard to come by. You couldn't just go on the internet and take your pick of the entire output of humanity at a moment's notice. You had to save up to buy an album, to scour the TV guides to see when there may be a late night concert film shown. A few minutes of Bill live from Montreal would be taped and watched again and again, until we'd caught the cadences, the rhythms, the little details that made it Bill, just like we obsessed over Jimmy Page solos to pinpoint 'that moment - there it is, listen to that. Aw man...'.

His world-view seeped into ours - detached, cynical observers of the absurdity, the hypocrisy of people, the way we are all manipulated by big business, politicians, the media, religions and everyone else with a vested interest. Foul-mouthed and interested in the seamy side of life, knowing, KNOWING, that rock music was real music, that reading was the key to evolution, that facts and truth win out over cant and received wisdom. But alongside that snuck in the other stuff as well, the love, the knowing that it could all be better if we could just all let go of some of the distractions, the selfishness, the pointless humdrum of life, and seek enlightenment.

And then he died. No-one seemed to know he was ill, so when I heard his death from cancer announced one Sunday morning on the radio, I was shocked. I was at university by that point, and I went next door to speak to a friend who was also into him and we just sat there listening to a tape of Bill that we probably knew by heart, but now with the knowledge that we'd never see him live. I probably called Mike and asked, have you heard man? I can't believe it...
 
Of course we grew out of him in due course, slowly stopping listening to his stuff, and maybe even thinking he was a bit juvenile for us, as we became more philosophically, culturally and politically sophisticated, and realised that there was more to music than Zep, The Lizard King and other dead rock stars (even if you could prove on an etch-a-sketch that there wasn't).

And then about 10 years ago, I read a book about Bill by his close friends and family which reawakened my interest and made me realise that some of the stuff around the edge was really in the middle. Yeah there was the stuff about drugs, and porn and waitresses in Possumridge, Arkansas, but that stuff to me is just part of the evolution of his thought and values. And there's a huge honesty in the admission that we are all to some degree horny, bacchanalian goat-boys, and that's not a bad thing, and it's not all we are, but it is a part of us. By the time he died, he was fairly explicitly spiritual in his discourse - as far as I know his position on mainstream organised religion and the hypocrisy therein didn't soften, but his talk was not dissimilar to religious or philosophical teachers, it was of the need to love, to evolve and be enlightened. He was still a comedian, but comedy now seemed to have been in service of enlightenment (as I guess at some level, all great art is), of drawing back the veil, of revealing something essential and true about the human experience. I don't want to pretend he was any more than he was, and there is always a risk of casting him as some sort of messianic or guru figure, which he wasn't, but at some level, he seemed to get close to some of the really important things about what it is to be human, and what is needed to be a successful one (successful in the broadest sense). And my response to this book was to write a song 'Walking in Willie's Footsteps', which is simply an attempt to reflect back some of that good stuff about friendship, love and enjoying the good bits of this all too brief and fragile life. And we've sung it for a few years, and now we've recorded it again, and Mike has brought it back home by putting it together with this great footage of Bill:

As I write this, 20 years to the day since he died, life seems to be going out of it's way to ram home the lesson to me - get on with it, focus on the good stuff, create something, anything, love, keep on  with the true friends, create again, shout into the void 'I am alive', evolve, think, be. So that's what I'm gonna do, as best I can.

For some reason until today, I never came across his 'Last Words' but they seem to stack up still:

"I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.”

Thanks Man.

Taking Flight

Morning everyone. Well, we've got here, to the day of releasing this album, our second Nobodaddy album 'Longing for Flight'. It's been a long journey, from original conception to here, so it is immensely pleasing to know that as of today our work has born fruit that can be enjoyed. Here is a bit of a story as to how the album came about.

The last album we recorded was 'My Confession' with Niamh Cavlan which came out in 2010. After working with her to promote that we then took stock of what we wanted to do next and the long gestation of this album started. By mid 2011 the spirits started to move and the thoughts began to take shape of another album, finally brought together to a clear vision inspired by our trek down to worship at the feet of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at the Brighton Dome. As The Independent said of them at the time, "No Fuss, No Frills". We knew then that we we wanted to strip our songs back to the bone, let them breathe through the strains of guitar and voice, just the two of us being present with the songs.

So then we needed the right space to let that happen, and it came to us through happenstance; calling in for tea at The Ravenous Cafe near our home in South Norfolk I found a card mentioning the nearby The Old Granary Studio with a contact for Ben Giller. I love the area with its wide field margins, hares and hedgerows so thought we could pay a visit. A few days later we headed to the studio, and found ourselves in rural heaven, in the titular Old Granary, surrounded by several pianos in various states of undress. We had our guitars with us, and on sitting on the stage and playing one of our songs, the space leant its voice to ours, blending a sound of its own. But mostly it just felt right. As it is a concert venue for chamber music it has a fabulous acoustic, and is well-equipped with classic microphones to capture the live sound.  Ben and the rest of the Giller family could not have been nicer and, despite our limited budget, we agreed a few days of recording time.

After an abortive start that winter (it was very cold and we just couldn't quite warm up in all senses enough), we rescheduled for early summer 2012.  We had originally aimed for completely live takes, with no overdubs, which we did achieve on 'Brief Encounter', but with most tracks it was guitars first, maybe with one vocal and then more vocals over the top. This way we were able to strike a balance between capturing the truth and essence of a performance with the awareness of the modern ear attuned to clinical, digital perfection. We had no desire to make something without blemish (in fact I remember discussing the beauty that encompasses imperfections, as in the Japanese sense of Wabi-sabi) but the odd edit does help smooth out the rougher edges! Some of the takes came almost immediately, and others took a while to brew, but Ben gave us the peace, time and tea to allow this to happen.

So we continued to record a couple of days at a time over the summer of 2012, surrounded by a bucolic beauty which seeped into both our selves and our music - sometimes seeping in to the extent that birdsong can periodically be heard on the album. We did not know quite which songs would make the final album, but we knew we wanted 10 that hung together, and finding ourselves by autumn with what felt like a good selection we took them away to see if we had we wanted. Although we had set out with a clear vision of simple arrangements, we decided that at the end of the album we would like to let out the dam with a more expansive sound. Bass and drums? Electric guitar? We weren't sure, but walking through Norwich one day, I came across a trio of young folk musicians busking. After listening for a while to their skilful interpretation of trad tunes I approached them and discovered that they were called Triette, and were from Norwich and Sweden. The way they were weaving lines in and out of each other just seemed to me to be the prefect approach to what we needed for Heel and Toe, so I asked them if they would be prepared to join us in the studio to add their magic - with Ida returning to Sweden almost immediately, Nic Zuppardi (mandolin) and Nick Wiseman-Ellis (accordion and fiddle) agreed to come out to the studio with us. Being such fine musicians, they picked up on what we wanted straight away and came up with just the perfect lines to sprinkle over the song. One final session then to add the small 'choir' at the end of Heel & Toe recruited from family and friends, and we were done...

With the album recorded and mixed by spring 2013, we were moving towards release when I managed to rip my achilles tendon whilst playing football, and suddenly we had an enforced break whilst I healed, hence here we are almost a year later, allowing it to take flight.

We shall blog again soon about the artwork, the title and our take on the themes, but for now, let us thank again Nick, Nic, Bec, Hannah, Emily, Mary, Niamh, Su, Andy, Jill, Steve, Sarah-Jayne, Dani, Row and above all, Ben.

We hope you all like the album as much as we adored creating it.

Adam

PS You can get a sense of the studio and our time there from this film

Butterfly Video

Album Review

With our new album due for release on 10th February, here's the first review c/o of Mike at Ninehertz:

http://www.ninehertz.co.uk/viewitem/4326

'Longing for Flight'

We're really excited to announce that we now have our mixed, mastered and pressed album. It's called 'Longing for Flight' and we are going to release it on 10th February 2014. We shall be sending updates out via our mailing list so sign up on the form on this page for updates - we'll be announcing track listing, sharing artwork and previews over coming weeks. We're so happy with it and we really hope that you'll love it as well!

An exercise in songwriting

After a recent gig, we ended up in a pub with a Bar Billiards table. It's a game with a particular resonance for us - when we first started going to pubs, our regular haunt had a table and many an evening was spent drinking, laughing and playing a few games of bars with our friends. Anyway, for old times sake, we played a couple of games and it reminded me that (as with all successful games) it has a very pleasing balance of risk and reward - you can amass points over time with little risk but can also score big or then lose them all with a single shot. Anyway, this led to a brief exchange about bar billiards as a metaphor for life and having been waxing lyrical about songwriting during the gig, it was suggested by one of our party that it should form the basis of a song. Being up for a challenge, I therefore idly tossed round a few ideas and came up with this:



It's maybe not the greatest song I've ever written, but I think that weakness is inherent in songs with a somewhat laboured metaphor. Even great songwriters like Nick Cave can get themselves tied up in metaphors that don't quite work, which for my money is the case on 'Rock of Gibraltar' from 'Nocturama' (an anomalously weak album in my opinion). Obviously in this case the metaphor is that the balance of risk and reward in a game is the same in love. This chimes nicely with some of the game theory that has been used in evolutionary psychology to explain how mating strategies develop (or so I've read), but it's not the most romantic sentiment ever (then again, hey, the subject matter hardly lends itself to grand romance!)

I'm reasonably happy with it structurally.  It deploys a classic form which I haven't used that often - verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, instrumental verse, chorus.  I say classic, but I can't actually think of any that do - anyone else? The verses include a bridge, which is always pleasing to give a lift into the chorus. The melody in the middle 8 is somewhat similar to the second half of the choruses but over a different chord sequence (again, not one I've used before with both the minor and major 2nd chords used)  which mitigates that a bit. I like the fact that it's in a 6/8 time signature as I rarely write in that but it can be very effective (Mike used it perfectly on 'My Confession').

But overall it doesn't quite fly for my money, probably because it started life with an idea (using the metaphor of the game) rather than a mood, a story or a character to build around. Not that songs can't be successful when starting with an idea, but I think it's then harder to craft something really good out of it. But anyway, there it is, I offer it and these thoughts as a little reflection on how songs can come to be.

Coffee. Cake. Music. Bicycles.

The Dandy Horse, Magdalen St, Norwich

www.thedandyhorsecoffeehouse.co.uk

Goodbye the Bull & Gate

When we were younger, hairier and louder we used to play around London with a full band. One of the places we played several times was the legendary Bull & Gate in Kentish Town, which closes on 4th May. It's going to become a gastropub apparently. It was never beautiful, and we always seemed to be promoted along totally inappropriate other acts, but it was a proper old-school indie venue.

Things come and things go, and the next generation of venues are hopefully making their own history now, but it's still worth noting its demise. I remember the palimpsest of band stickers in the gents, the old Irish fellers in the front bar, and the sticky floor and rank smell of the venue out the back, a different sound engineer each time we played, all called Dave. We made a racket there, and so did thousands of others, and for that, we are grateful!

Snow Love Left

"Snow-bound and unable to rehearse, what are you going to do?"
"I dunno. I could do some backing vocals for the album. And I might dig out that song I wrote a couple of years ago during a cold snap."
"The one with the tortuous metaphor about snow melting and love fading which doesn't quite work, and sounds suspiciously like 'Hickory Wind'?"
"Yeah, that's the one"
"It's a bit of a croon, isn't it?"
"Nothing wrong with crooning. Works for Cave."
"You're no Cave."
"I get the feeling you're not the most supportive bit of my psyche."
"Oh, sorry, the supportive bits are out playing in the snow."
"Fair enough, Got to be better than recording a song that is derivative, got some dodgy syntax and no-one's going to listen to anyway."
"Yeah, well lob it up on the blog and let's go out and build a snowman..."

Wrecked

A couple of years ago, after we had completed the album 'My Confession' with Niamh Cavlan we got together for a few days at Mike's house to sing some songs and talk about what we wanted to do next. We knew we wanted to get back to a purely acoustic sound, ideally built around the two guitar, two voice set-up that we love in artists like Gillian Welch and Christy Moore. We had a stack of songs that we'd written but never recorded, so we just spent a few days hanging out, playing them, writing and tweaking a little, but most of all just feeling our way back in, recording as we went.

One song that we dug out was 'Wrecked and Reeling', a song that Mike had brought into the world around the turn of the millenium. It had started out life as a full-on driving, guitar rocker but seemed to find its way now as a slower, more twisted creature. Mike was suffering a with a cold and this leant his vocals a fractured, wasted air, perfectly complementing the lyrical darkness. Listening back to this now, I can hear that in this moment we had started to lock in to our new sound:

In those few days, in the little bubble of music and friendship we made, lies the genesis of the album we are getting close to completing.

Norwich Sound & Vision 2012

We spent the last weekend at the 'Norwich Sound & Vision' conference incorporating the John Peel festival of new music.

Love it as we do, our hometown of Norwich can sometimes feel like a bit of a backwater, so it was gratifying to feel that something dynamic, inspiring and genuinely worthwhile was going on here. A mixture of daytime seminars and panels on different elements of the music industry and evenings full of all manner of gigs attracted a diversity of local and national musicians, industry people and fans.

We met some lovely people, heard some insightful (and occasionally slightly depressing) speakers - ex-Cocteau Twin and Bella Union head honcho Simon Raymonde stood out - and heard some great music. Mary Epworth was my stand out act, despite her having a cold, but there were loads of other fantastic bands and singer-songwriters around in a range of venues.

I guess the main things I took away from it as a musician are:

• It's tough times for the industry at the moment (that's news?)
• Free booze really helps networking
• Sometimes it's a victory just to keep creating
• Label people claiming that they are 'just really passionate about music' can sound like so much BS. But not always...there may be a correlation with the proximity of the words 'analytics' and 'synch'
• The tools are out there to make, distribute and promote music for next to nothing but it requires diligence, passion, good relationships and a level of fortitude that doesn't always sit well with a creative zeal
• The same old streets can feel really different sometimes so renew the world with each breath...

Well done to the organisers. I'll definitely be there next year.

Recording Diary

This last few days we've been recording again at the delightful Old Granary Studio, just over the border into Suffolk. It is primarily a venue for classical chamber concerts, but is also fully equipped to record in the warm acoustic of the live room. Set in pastoral beauty, surrounded by the fields of the Raveningham estate, birds flitting and singing all around, it is perfect for the 'getting away from it all' vibe that we find conducive to focusing and making music. And the laid-back environment is enhanced by the calm and supportive work of Ben Giller who is engineering the sessions.

Over the years we've recorded in lots of different studios, from the grandeur of Great Linford Manor to studios tucked into box rooms in London suburbs. For us, successful recording usually flows when we can switch off from the concerns of everyday life and focus on relaxing, ideally without worrying too much about the ticking of the metaphorical clock that heaps pressure on the already unforgiving scrutiny of the studio.  If you're worried about how much time you've got to get something done, it usually yields poor results. Having said that, it is also easy to drift into weird studio time, where hours and days pass with nothing much to show for it. Certainly in years passed it has probably not been the healthiest environment for us, with late sessions, smoking, drinking and takeaways all playing their part. But these days we seem to have found a slightly better routine that allows us to give our best performances - well rested, well nourished and basically observing office hours. Not so rock and roll maybe, but hopefully, ultimately giving better results!

New Webcast

This Saturday (7th April), we will be streaming our first ever live Nobodaddy webcast. Join us live from 3pm BST for an hour or so of us singing songs and chatting about them with a few friends and fans. The stream should appear below, but if not, you can find it at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nobodaddyband

Hope you can join us!

Singalong-a-nobodaddy

Some songs take a while to find their feet, and others you start with a clear idea of how they should sound. 'Heel & Toe' was always going to work best with lots of people singing along in the final section, so it is great when this happens in gigs. Here's a video from us playing it at the end of our set at Norwich Arts Centre last Saturday:


Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks for making the sounds in my head real!

In praise of John Hartford

Like many people, I'm sure, I have always discovered music by slow degrees, working from one artist to another by influence, collaboration or scene. Through that process, I sometimes stumble across artists that I can't believe I haven't discovered before, because they seem to be so linked into lots of other things I like. One such joy came recently when I checked out the work of John Hartford. He was an American songwriter and artist who wrote Glen Campbell's hit 'Gentle on my mind' and worked extensively with one of my favourite guitarists, Norman Blake. He also appears on the soundtrack to 'Oh Brother where art thou.' I had actually heard his work through a cover by Gillian Welch (another favourite) of his song 'In Tall Buildings', though didn't know who was behind it.

When I finally heard his own performances of his material I immediately heard in him that same melancholy, yearning beauty that I cherish in the like of Gillian Welch, Kris Kristofferson and, another recent 'discovery', Mickey Newbury.  Although his songs vary from straight ahead country to more reflective whimsy, he seems to have a consistent, intelligent soulfulness married to a fine songwriter's craft and true musicality. This performance of the aforementioned 'In Tall Buildings' gives a flavour of what he's about:

Sadly he died in 2001, but I think he may be someone who will remain in my life for a long time.

Free live EP!

Here's a free download of our Norwich Arts Centre gig last week:

Hope you like it.

We sure did.

Raveningham days

We've been having a delightful time recording in the pastoral idyll of Raveningham in our home county of Norfolk. Even in the depths of winter The Old Granary Studio has a real vibe to it, with beautiful pianos, a warm and resonant live space and the charming Giller family to make us welcome. All-in-all it gives us the chance to let the world retreat for a moment and the music a chance to breathe, maybe to catch a little magic in the air. We've been simply sitting and playing, relaxed but focussed, and the songs have felt right at home...