Further to my sojourn on Sunday, the kind people at the Listening Room were kind enough to offer me a feature on the 4th December. See details here. Thanks Jim!
See you there if you can make it along!
Took the guitar out for a breath of fresh air this evening. Played a couple of songs in The Listening Room at The Blue Blazer in Edinburgh. Not been there before. Had a lot of fun – really friendly people! Headline act was Calum Carlyle whom I hugely enjoyed. We swapped a couple of CDs.
After the recent refret, my OM-18V definitely needs to be played in a little. Fingers not slipping so easily to their appointed places. Wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that right now it feels like playing over railway tracks! Got there in the end though without squealing in pain! ;-)
Play the song:
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Here’s another song which is a candidate for my next CD, Good Grief!
Irresolution Blues is a song about indecision. I’m quite certain of that. It was a blues that was crying out to be kept simple but I screwed up by messing around on the guitar between the sung bits and so denied it that. Maybe because of this misdemeanor it er.. um.. well, it has some uncertainty about its… ah… er… well…
What I do know is that listening to it is not the same as thinking about it. Making it up in the first place is not the same as playing it in another place. All that can be hoped for in the heat of the moment is that fingering and intonation is certain. To quell a flutter of anxiety. To preempt any swell of nausea. Belt it out in defiance and in any case!
Bandits at twelve o’clock! “What you wanna do?” What else but this!
This of all irresolute songs is deserving of a poll. Vote now! (Or come back later if you’re unsure…)
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Download the song (192kbps MP3), read the lyrics, and (for guitarists) view and download the guitar notation and tab here.
And, of course, I would welcome any comments below – with conviction or otherwise.
[Edit: because of the excellent comments from Phil (see comments on this post below) and my good friends over at Cubase.net , I've made some adjustments to the recording. I hope you think it's improved!]
Or, in truth, just a 30 minute uphill stroll from our house. In the middle distance you can pick out the inevitable castle and Arthur’s Seat pokes above everything on the right. I took the piccie the day before yesterday. You couldn’t see this today, though. Thunder storms bringing the curtains down once again on Scotland.
All you cat owners know that your pet’s mind is a mystery. But sometimes its deportment and its habits provide clues. My cat, Dougal, has, for example a habit of taking over my manuscript on whatever surface it’s laid. There may be acres of lie-downable space to hand, but – plonk – onto the manuscript he goes; and, for all I bloody well know, muses on key relationships and melodic lines.
But – like his staff (me) – he goes all “Fuggit. I’ll finish it tomorrow… I’ve got more important stuff to do…”
I could get out a new page or two of manuscript and wander off somewhere quiet, but My Cat The Composer will not leave me to my own devices for too long.
On any Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… these days I can be completely ignored while in my private rehearsal space.
You will see the stool which I sit on because I’m often asked to play on bar stools so a certain posture has to be “rehearsed”.
You will see a glass of wine but not the bottle that refreshes it. You will see a tuning fork in case my ears deceive me. You will see a page of paper and a pen with which I use to list down songs to practice. You will see a bottle of water for when a sip of wine is insufficient. You will see a book on the table which is called “The Indie Band Survival Guide”. You will see a leather suite of chairs I rarely occupy until exhausted.
And for fans of the Martin OM-18V – which in my case badly needs a refret, a new saddle, and a jolly good old setup – here’s a close up.
And in the height of summer when the sun hardly sets outside my practice space, there is always the light. And the light looks like this:
This is not the all of it. I’ve missed out the work with the songs for the CD because I haven’t thought yet about how to make photographs of computer screens and headphones newsworthy. Hah!
The light! The light!
Part of the reason for the polls I’ve been setting up for songs that I’m considering for Good Grief! is that I’ve too many recorded to fit on one record! “Fine”, I hear you say: “make it a double album, or save some for a later release.” Nah, neither option appeals – but thanks for the thought. I’m more inclined to put the successful candidates (see polls) on the record and do something else with the rest – like, for example, a free download album to CD customers. Just a thought. What do you think?
Here’s a discussion I came across on a forum to stimulate some thoughts:
How long is a full length album?
Do you have an opinion?
I’m often caught between the instinct to watch something or take a photograph of it. The latter seems to collapse the spell of the former. But, hey… at least I can share it here.
You can Google where Durris is, but the sky is long gone.
Sundays have never been my favourite. There’s something ineffably gloomy about them. Even when the sun is shining it causes me to squint my eyes and turn my spirit inward. Yesterday it didn’t shine. In fact the contrast between the latter part of last week and this weekend just past couldn’t have been greater, given the time of year. A falling off a cliff from to 24 to 11 deg.C. The lazy chill of the easterly wind as I stepped outdoors for a cigarette. A leaden Midlothian sky crawling westward.
I spent the day alternating between guitar practice and lying on my bed with eyes closed, pretending to have power-naps. In truth, it was all about keeping my head down. Twice I explored the television channels in attempts to find something to engage my attention without success. I cooked dinner and resisted the temptation of wine.
The guitar practice sessions made sure I had made use of this melancholy day. Trying to get under my fingers certain parts of certain songs I really should be able to play better after all these years. Finally determining to do whatever takes to unlearn mistakes and get the correct muscle memory ingrained. So as not to feel a rising anxiety as I approach these passages in the heat of battle when more than me is listening.
At 9:30pm I pulled the curtain down on the day. This morning the drive up the M90 / A90 to Aberdeen whiling away the miles with cognitive bahavioural therapy.
Rock on.
Eek! What’s a man supposed to do?
Suggestions, as always, below please.
