SftBH - OTHER STUFF

The 'Too' Sessions - SK, 02/03/04

The Blue House Too sessions will always, for me, be inextricably linked with chickens. From James's "chicken carrying a cannonball" dance and the "…chuck…chuck…chuck" Cajun beat on "Big Dipper" to the lingering air of southern fried grease-magnets in the control room after many a lunchtime spent knee-to-knee on the control room sofa, the adaptable and dependable feathered fowl has come to symbolize all that was special, amusing, heartbreaking and wonderful (often simultaneously) about recording.

Gone were our last album's breezy picnic lunches and kickabouts in the garden and in came slow and careful drives through snowstorms in the dark to get to and from the studio. Away went our badgering of people we'd only just met to play instruments because we couldn't and in came a gig-hardened band with firm ideas about what they wanted to put down on the songs they'd been playing for six months. Outside of that, old friends and bare acquaintances alike generously gave up their time and tried to interpret what we meant when we said things like "do it Paris, Texas", or "make it big", or "that's the badger!". 

Endless juvenile giggling at silly double entendres; the quip on the first take that by the thirtieth playback was driving everybody spare; five hours working on the same thirty second outro; the fourth euphonium track; overdubbing the sound of twenty-odd thousand people going "Oooohhh!!" - these are some of the memories I'll take away from Soundmagic in January and February 2004. And all this time the track sheets were filling up, James' big list of things to do was being ticked off, the flowerpot in the garden outside filled steadily with cigarette ends until with eight minutes to spare on our last scheduled day of recording we look at the clipboard and everything had been crossed off.

People have dragged themselves from their sick beds just to put down a banjo part, folk have put up with us answering their question "What do you want?" with "We don't know!", home games at Portman Road have been missed. And now, it's done. Finished? Oh no, no, no - parts have yet to be examined, surreptitious coughs eliminated, contexts conceptualized, harmonies dissected, autotunes applied, faders preset and reverbs treated. And we haven't even decided on a final running order yet. 

So that's one tikka wrap, a bag o' breaded fried chicken, one crusty baguette, a ham and pasta salad, a box of individual spreadable cheese triangles, two healthy option chicken sandwiches, one piece of fruit, a tuna bap, half a bag of pre-grated cheese, six bottles of water, oh, and get something for yourself…

SftBH Don't Run For Cover - SK, Nov 03

It's sometimes difficult for folk to understand that in The Blue House we're not necessarily too concerned about what's currently going on in the pop charts, so when we go out to play there are a limited number of times that we're going to be able to pull the latest top ten smash out of the bag for you (and an even more limited number of times that we'd actually care to), so I'm afraid you're just going to have to bear with us while we play you some things we made up out of our own heads.

This is possibly why we tend to avoid the regular pub gig scenario, what with the likelihood of there being an awful number of people prepared to shout the names of their favourite songs (with no mind to the dreadful roughing up we're likely to give them) at us in that sort of situation. 

These days we have a fairly comfortable cushion of our own tunes to fall back on when required of course, but in the very early days of having to stretch a forty minute album out to two hours-worth of material, there were some uncomfortable choices to be made about the fine line between artistic integrity and continuing to drink free beer because we were providing the entertainment. Personal thanks are due to Gibbon and James for the many occasions where they busked songs they'd barely heard OF, let alone heard, with a vague hint at a key and a "one-two-three-four" to go on.

Some days, as the saying goes, the bear eats you - I'm thinking here of the legendary second set at Notley which involved not only a half-formed version of Richard Thompson's "Shoot Out The Lights" but also Radar's doubtless heartfelt, but entirely impenetrable, three chord Johnny Cash tribute (that may even have been its title - since the event it has taken the mantle of some sort of embarrassing minor Royal relative who was packed off to a home some years ago and no-one cares to bring up in polite circles…) - and some days you get to eat the bear - I particularly remember a stirring "This is the Sea/Sweet Thing" medley at the CD launch gig, and Tony Winn's delightfully banjo-led candlelit "Norwegian Wood" the same night.

Then again, some days, the bear just comes up behind you and mutters "You're not really here for the hunting, are you?" in your ear while you're not looking. Compare and contrast, for instance, a beer-festival-rousing romp through Hank Williams' "Mind Your Own Business" with a thankfully foreshortened version of folk staple "Matty Groves" at the same performance; an ill-advised version of Neil Young's "Powderfinger" with an absolutely mesmeric "Moon River" at (yes, again) Notley.

These moments are becoming rarer now and the live set is more settled, what with all the new material we've been writing there seems less and less time available to fit in that run through some old half-remembered classic (which not only audiences but group members are occasionally audibly relieved about, I have to say), but there's always the chance that someone will feel the urge to run through "Pretty Vacant", or there'll be a shout from the audience that one of us will pick up and run with. Please, though, don't ask us to just play something you know...

Songs from the Blue House Origins - JP, July 03

Is the brain-child of two guitar and singing people, Shane Kirk & James Partridge. It is the result of many drunken evenings on various East Anglian sofas. It's been made with the able assistance of many folks, most notably Richard Hammond (or Gibbon, as he likes to be known).

Some time ago, when they were young, James & Shane had mullets, goatee beards and unlike now, only very sporadic proper jobs. They whizzed around all over the country and beyond, playing very loud pop songs to a varying response and with varying rewards. Then they got fed up with it. James decided to jack it all in, and Shane kept on doing stuff. This was 1992. 

Now it's much later, and the boys have got together and made music again. This time it's just for them and anyone else who wants to come along for the ride, as opposed to before when they pretended it was just for them and anyone else who wanted to come along for the ride, but in fact wanted deeply to be loved and fêted, and thought anyone who didn't immediately understand what they were doing was a short-sighted fool.

In 2002, S&J had sobered up after yet another night getting pissed with the gals on the sofa. These evenings normally involved marathon drink-ups followed by the girlies falling asleep while the boys listened to recordings of themselves which were more than a decade old and mused about how super they'd been. Then they would decide that they really must 'do some stuff again one day'. One fateful morning, they remembered to actually fix a date, and 'The Songs From The Blue House' was born, or more accurately, began to gestate!

Much had happened since the power-pop ('loud love songs', no less) of the past, bluegrass and country influences had seeped into James' consciousness in particular, and it was generally felt that a gentler approach was perhaps more appropriate for a duo approaching 40 years of age...each!

So, at the very end of June 2002  they spent a few evenings writing some songs. A very old song of Shane's was added and suddenly there was a 'project'.

They got Gibbon involved on bass, played the stuff to some people and decided that it would be fun to record the tunes. What should perhaps have taken a couple of days and a few hundred quid quickly mutated into an extremely rewarding number of months and expenditure of thousands of quid. All of which must seem like an awful lot of money to spend on a hobby.

No matter, it's been well worth it for everyone involved, and maybe you'll come along for the ride.

Writing The Songs - SK, July 03

There were three main writing sessions for the collection. The first two involved James and I sitting opposite each other in his spare room-cum-office at The Blue House with acoustic guitars and wondering exactly how you went about this co-writing lark. Previously we’d written separately, perhaps amending the odd line or middle-eight once we’d got as far as rehearsing, but now we were eyeball to eyeball and trying to construct something together. It was like Lennon & McCartney’s career in reverse. The broadest brief I had for the style we were after was ‘bluegrass’ and since the nearest I’d come to an authentic bluegrass experience was buying a Chris Hillman album I put a capo on at the fifth fret to make the guitar sound a bit mandoliny and hoped for the best.

I think the first thing we came up with was “Let’s Do It Country”, which was pretty much our theme song; I thought the line about “a couple of pilgrims praying for rust” was a terribly clever reference to the pair of us trying to move on into this revered genre (James had gone bluegrass crazy over a period of time) while all the time being aware that (in the words of the mighty Neil Young) “rust never sleeps” - you have to go on exploring, working, moving on or you will simply just decay. On the other hand he may have been thinking of something else entirely, as once you get a girl singing on it, it starts veering off to a different place altogether. You’d have to ask him, or make your own mind up, whatever you prefer. The physical upshot of this, however, was that I was fingerpicking the same chord sequence for about twenty minutes while James hovered over a yellow legal pad, scribbled, crossed out and eventually sang (melody perfect) the first version of the song. This, I’m assured, is his normal modus operandi, and I resolved to subsequently pick some easier chord shapes if I was going to be playing them for that long again. We moved on, and a similar routine ensued for ‘Bike’ – after an hour my fingers were throbbing a little – and then, I think, what became ‘Follow Me’. It was all very reflective and low-key at this point. So far, so good - after a near-decade of lyrical inactivity by the end of the evening we had four new songs and although there have been editorial tweaks in the intervening months the lyrics now are pretty much what arrived in that first burst of creativity which shows how strong they were to start with. We realized that we might need reference copies and so hastily jury-rigged a couple of mics, went through the whole lot again and laid down the first of the demos which eventually led to the SftBH CD.

The second session shortly afterwards was pretty similar to the first, but now emboldened by the fact that we knew we weren’t just pissing in the wind we stretched out a bit. We went consciously country for what became “Special Kind Of  (or ‘Kinda’) Love” – James couldn’t come up with anything suitably genre-like and so threw me the pen while he did the strumming thing and was then exasperated by my need to fill a linear story structure fully and wholly by tying up the loose ends and introducing third-person characters properly, having already laid down the ground rules by trying to impress on me the need to keep everything down to under three minutes and eschewing the traditional verse - chorus - verse - chorus - middle eight - chorus - outro structure wherever possible. I clearly wasn’t prepared for these fanciful Bohemian ideas and insisted on having a happy ending, although I did agree to change “the most salubrious” to “the nicest” in the first verse, In true L&M fashion he came up with the bridge (which in the finished version is where his superb Green On Red guitar lick comes in) and debate continues to this day as to whether “One step forward, two steps back” (dig that crazy Springsteen reference, kids) or “Two steps forward, one step back” (it might be that way round) is the better way to sing it. I may have got in wrong, or right, in the recording, depending on who you listen to. End of day two’s work, and we were up to seven songs already.

The third session took place at a pub back room rehearsal for the forthcoming recording sessions in the company of Gibbon (Richard Hammond to the registrar) on bass and one Paul Read, who’d come along to hear what we were up to and offer hints and tips, and drink Guinness where appropriate. Mostly we started jamming (as I believe it is referred to in some circles) on a chord sequence and the things developed pretty much spontaneously. From this session came “Breaking These Rocks”, which James took away and worked on the lyrics further on his own at home; “All The Way To St. Dunstan’s” (see elsewhere for the original title) a riffy thing of mine which had bridges & breaks added to by James (Gib confirmed a couple of minors or sevenths upon consultation) and which Reado made a point of interjecting during, making some good suggestions about the arrangement and sequencing of the different sections; and what became “Don’t Ever Let It Go”, which I started as a standard 4/4 country thing before it got converted into waltz time (there was a brief discussion about whether it was 3/4 time or 6/8, which never would have happened if James and I had been there on our own….) and had various minor chords, off-beats and passing phrases added by the group as we went along. Gib had his recording gear with him so we put versions of these new things down and James went home and worked hard on “Don’t Ever Let It Go” on his own, coming up with some words and a melody that I believe rank among his best. I was surprised to find, however, that we apparently had “a song about a rabbit” as at the pub he’d been mainly mumbling and it wasn’t really clear what he was up to. Okay, so you could take some of it to task – if you really were “all adrift out at sea” you really wouldn’t think it was “the natural way to be” as you’d probably have lost engine power, or split the sails or something, but every time that line comes round I’m reminded of some of my loved ones who are (at the time of writing) sailing The Pacific Ocean. It makes me smile and think of them, and so in the tradition of great songwriting I’ve adopted that line as my own and I won’t have it changed. You probably hadn’t even noticed, but that’s the thing about waves – it’s the breakers.

“Bless My Broken Heart” is all mine and comes from a different era, but has been a (very popular) sore thumb in every other musical project I’ve been involved with and like some sort of wandering country orphan it seems to have found a home at last. I’m glad for it, as I thought I’d never get it down anywhere.

First Gig - SK, July 03

The first live performance of the Songs From The Blue House was at The Milestone in Ipswich on their monthly songwriter’s night. We had been allocated one of the two pre-arranged ‘showcase’ spots late in the evening and as a result had plenty of time to over-lubricate beforehand while discussing how we thought it would all go – this was, after all the first time we’d played these songs to anyone but each other. 

James was very nervous as he hadn’t fronted anything onstage for about a decade, Gibbon had only just learned the songs so that we could play them live, and I was concerned that we’d been told that one of the other turns hadn’t showed and we were supposed to stretch out the set a bit – not easy when you’ve only got five songs to start with. 

In the event we  (I) rambled on between numbers to the extent that we were asked to finish because time was getting on when we still had one song to go. I hastily improvised a segue between two songs in completely different keys and tempos in order to complete the whole set (after all, we didn’t know if we’d ever get the chance to play these things live again) which James and Gib manfully went along with. People were very nice about the whole thing generally, but did seem a bit confused about the two part opus we finished the set with…

First Gig - JP, July 03

I really was very nervous, and very drunk.

Songs From The Blue House...Why? - JP, July 03

Why are we doing this? It gives me a perverse feeling of satisfaction to say that I just don't know...is it ego? Is it for applause? I think we've all grown out of those. I think perhaps we're doing it because we can, and we enjoy it. That's it. We seem to have developed a policy of not wanting to be paid money for gigs, which on a straw poll of publicans I've spoken to, has gone down rather well. We will however expect some beer. Quite a lot of beer.

As I write, the album is almost finished and we're starting to wonder what we'll do next...more in the same style? A bigger band with drums and all that stuff? Strip it back down to the duo? Forget about it and never play again? Don't know. Excellent.

Fun With Capos - SK, July 03

There are a lot of songs featuring capos on Songs from the Blue House. A capo, for anyone that doesn’t know, isn’t some sort of Sopranos-esque wise guy (not in our world, anyway) but is that fiddly bit of metal, plastic, rubber or string that you see guitar players strap across the neck of their instrument in order to hold down all six strings across a fret while they get on with playing the same chords as they do normally, but higher up. It saves growing an extra finger (although who the hell wanted to design an instrument to be played by people with four fingers and a thumb on each hand and decided to put six strings on it to start with needs a whole separate discussion). 

The effect of this is that you do get a different feel to the whole thing, so the ‘C’ chord you’re playing while capo’ed at the fifth fret becomes an ‘F’ in real life, and you can play little runs and drop fingers off  the neck to change chord voices in keys that you wouldn’t normally do. This means that if two of you are playing the same song with capos on different frets you end up with a nice mesh of different chord shapes playing off each other which can be quite an interesting mélange of information for the human brain to try and process. 

A nice example of this is on the song about the rabbit, where James doubles up a picking part of mine, only (and this is the clever bit) WITH A CAPO ON, giving a textbook example of the stuff I’ve been banging on about above. One of the problems, of course, is remembering which fret you had your capo on in the first place when you come back to next week’s rehearsal, and then transposing the real key of the song, which a patient bass player will remind you of, into what you need to be playing now. 

For reasons of safety I generally stuck to putting mine on the fifth fret (that’d be the nice mandoliny intro to ‘Bike’ for instance) while James was up and down the neck like a good ‘un.  Our only real regret was not processing this information BEFORE asking Gibbon to play a trombone solo in a completely alien and agonizingly difficult key for the instrument. There’s no way you can capo a trombone people, there really isn’t.