ON SONGWRITING

August 18, 2014
LUKE, MUSIC

I love learning about the creative process of others – I’ve absorbed all the writing rules I could find, and spent happy hours reading the interviews in The Paris Review. In the same spirit I thought I’d break down the process for one of my recent songs – Love, Or Leave It Alone (For Iris).

Everyone starts with an inkling of an idea for a song, and at some point later, has a finished product.  That much, arbitrarily, all songwriters must agree on. The middle is harder to quantify – some refer to the muse striking, to telephone lines with God; for others it’s cerebral, about getting in the right headspace to forge new connections in your brain. The reason I’ve chosen Love, Or Leave It Alone (For Iris) is that, atypically for me, the route to the finished work breaks into several delineated steps.

 

It began with the melody.  I had been tinkering on an arrangement for a punked-up version of Iris DeMent’s Let The Mystery Be. The melody that became both the vocal and glockenspiel line was the guitar solo I wrote for this abandoned  cover. When the concept for ‘X’ was hatched, I went looking through my demos and re-discovered it.  Using the same stock I-IV-V-I progression, I refashioned the solo segment to be the entire song. It was a new way of working for me – like sampling, starting with a base material and reworking it into something completely different.  That’s why Iris is named in the title – my version of the literary ‘with apologies’ used when a work is based on another.

 

For me, lyric-writing starts with a strong opening line or title.  Until that comes, I’m powerless – I had the chord progression for Faux Faux Amis song Don’t Grow Up Too Fast for years until I found words worthy to be paired to it. The process for this song was compounded by three factors:

 

1) I couldn’t wait – I only had weeks before I needed to teach it to the band,

2) the strict and windy AABCCB rhyming structure I felt the melody suggested, and

3) I knew I wanted the song to be a boy/girl co-lead vocal.

 

I could have capitulated on the third point, but my gut wouldn’t let me budge. Not only a boy/girl co-lead vocal, mind, it had to be a “couples bickering” song. These are, to me, the pinnacle of duets.  The most famous example is almost certainly Meatloaf’s Paradise By The Dashboard Light.  Other favourites are Johnny Cash and June Carter’s Long Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man and Jackson, John Prine and Iris DeMent’s In Spite Of Ourselves (Iris again!), The White Stripes and Holly Golightly’s It’s True That We Love One Another, and The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairtytale Of New York. Most feel like they’re between couples in long-term relationships – they get me where I live.  I’ve written a couple of my own over the years, including for The Bluffhearts.  I knew once Mel and Catherine joined FFA that I’d want to start writing them again.

 

But the model for this particular song is not any of the above  – it’s The Specials I Can’t Stand It. Uniquely, the duet is not call and response –  it’s Terry Hall and Rhoda Dakar singing the same thing to each other at once. It’s ingenious in its mirroring of actual fights in a relationship, when people tend to echo each other (“I’m not the selfish one, you’re the selfish one!”).

I decided I would demur writing the lyrics until I was in New York City, confident its bright lights would inspire me to new heights of lyrical accomplishment. The only problem was once I got there, I was in holiday mode, and had no inclination to work on lyrics.  Eventually, I forced myself up early one morning and, armed with notebook and pen, went for a walk around Brooklyn.  Lots of people (including luminaries like Nick and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) attest that walking is one of the best ways to spur creativity. I’d hoped to colour the song with experiences from the trip – references to streets we’d walked down, or diners we’d visited.  None of that was forthcoming.  In fact, the first verse I made it through had nothing to do with my intentions for the song, and everything about just getting a handle on the rhyme structure. It’s complete fluff, and utterly cringeworthy, but I wrote it down all the same to get the juices flowing:

 

I call my dreams the kingdom of nonsense

It’s where all logic hides

Pterodactyls

Crystal fractals

Divide and multiply

 

Most of the rhymes are slanted, and the syntax is forced. Crystals were on my mind as a result of reading J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World while in NYC, so the best that can be said is it bears the subliminal influence of my trip.  ‘Kingdom of nonsense’ is a Martin Amis reference, but so obscure no one would notice.

 

The next attempt was slightly better – it was definitely about a relationship, and the rhymes had improved:

 

When you see children, you see the future

My crystal ball’s less clear

We both were kids

Know what they did

I just can’t hide my fear

 

There’s an honesty to the sentiment, and the suggestion of a difference of opinion (if not a full-blown argument), but it’s still clunky – the ‘crystal ball’ line especially – and it didn’t give me anywhere to go in the second verse. I still like the volte-face in “we both were kids/know what they did”, but it wasn’t enough. I’m also still missing an internal rhyme in the first line.

 

The last attempt that morning had enough of an engine to get me through two verses:

 

Lived in the desert since I remember

Waiting on climate change

It’s just red dust

From dawn to dusk

And then you came my way

 

It started raining first time you kissed me

We should have bought a boat

Now every swoon

Brings a monsoon

Grab anything that floats

 

Written down, I admit it looks bad – the perky melody helps tremendously to sell it. And while I got two reasonably coherent verses out of it, it’s goopy stuff, and I’ve completely failed to deliver on the bickering tone I wanted. “Climate change” is too technical a phrase for a dippy love song, especially when it doesn’t even help fill out a rhyme – I knew when I wrote it I would need to replace that part. I like the desert-rain-love analogy, but it’s well-worn. And, again, it has absolutely nothing to do with my time in NYC (if there was any doubt, ‘red dust’ definitively places the story in Australia).

 

You’ll notice I began all of these without the one thing I insisted above that I needed – a strong opening line or title. The result is they all fell flat, and in hindsight, were always going to fall flat.  I was stumbling around, looking for a foothold – but I had to try, if only to get into the headspace to recognise the right line or title when it came.  That night, it arrived.

 

Lou and I visited Skinny Dennis – a Brooklyn hipster dive bar – to watch Pete Donnelly. His performance was great, but it was a phrase painted on the wall behind him that stuck with me – LOVE IT, LEAVE IT. There was no further context, but it felt strong.  I played with it against the melody and found my title.

 

Love, or leave it alone.

 

Once I had those five words, I was more relieved than when I’d penned the whole two previous verses – I knew the hard work had been done and the rest would fall into place. That one line alone unpacks into an entire argument between a couple. The remainder of the lyrics were written at home, drawing on a boozy Brooklyn night when Lou and I had an argument over nothing. We only argue after concerted drinking – too much alcohol brings out a bad combination of my pompousness and her stubborn nature. To give it balance, I wrote it from her perspective, delivering the words to myself, the drunken boor that won’t let go until he’s achieved his meaningless and pyrrhic victory.

 

There comes an hour when wine turns sour

Nothing good comes when you take that tone

You’re always right

So why even fight?

Love, or leave it alone

 

The bar is spinning but you think you’re winning

Your arguments bore to the bone

You won’t let up

I’ve had enough

Love, or leave it alone

 

I had the rhyme structure, the bickering tone, connections to New York, a strong hook, and it’s honest. I like the phonetic subtext of “love, or” as well – said aloud, it could be “lover, leave it alone”, several degrees sweeter than the ultimatum of the actual line.

FAUX FAUX AMIS – HOLIDAY INN

August 12, 2014
FILM, LUKE, MUSIC

Huzzah! Check out Faux Faux Amis’ debut video for our slow-burner Holiday Inn. CAT FROM JAPAN have called it “a misty blues, injected with hints of Velvet Underground-esque New York vogue.” As a big Velvet Underground fan I’m thrilled with the comparison.

The video was shot in an afternoon in Brooklyn. Originally, I’d wanted to do a ‘serious’ video, starring myself.  Some kind of Wong Kar-Wai montage of beautifully photographed night scenes – smeary lights reflecting off car bonnets in the rain, and the like. I wanted to be Tony Leung in Happy Together, basically. As you’ll see, that is not even close to what happened, but a few traces remained.  Part of the reason we jettisoned that idea was we’d already shot the similarly structured White Roses.  It felt like we would be repeating ourselves, replacing Queanbeyan with New York, and Tom Woodward with me.

The idea took on a life of its own when we discovered ‘Stan’. Friends had clued us in pre-trip that we could create our own muppet(!) at FAO Schwarz – the resultant moustachioed progeny seemed destined for the screen. Lou proved a natural puppeteer (though as a director, I was alarmed by Stan’s limited emotional range). Stan got a great reaction out in public – people smiled and waved, and at one point, a barber came out the front of his shop offering to cut his hair.

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

Even now when I close my eyes and imagine my original conception for this video, the strongest image is a glowing neon sign, its letters reading from top to bottom.  The kind of thing that probably hasn’t existed in New York City since the 70s.

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

Shooting in daylight would not have captured it anyway. Still, I was intrigued with finding a way to interpolate the concept – that’s how I struck upon the scrolling, glowing text. In English, it would’ve looked like a word jumble; in Japanese, it looked natural, and its literal meaning was obfuscated enough to not distract (the individual sentences, each seven characters long, are like bad haiku lines, extraneous sentiments pertaining to the song (e.g. “with heavy heart abandon, I seek truth”). For better or worse, it’s not something I’ve seen used in a music video before.

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

Cross-dissolves, frequently used to show the passage of time, are on overload here, underlining the endless questing of the lyrics.

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

We recorded the song in Melbourne with Nick McCorriston, but the resultant version felt thin and too ‘rock’. Starting with the original stems, Paul Heslin and I remixed it, altering the arrangement and adding elements (Mel and Cath’s sultry backing vocals, Nick Combe’s killer saxophone). The result is bass-heavy and flecked with dubby touches – I think it’s now cool as fuck. Rewriting songs and/or continuing to tinker with elements post-recording is something I learnt to do in Cool Weapon. I would bring the guys a demo, and it would always bounce between us several times before the final iteration. Invisible was like that – it got built up and stripped back several times – the massive guitar solo began as the vocal line.

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

The first live incarnation of Holiday Inn was by my mega-talented friends Jasmine Sym and Geoff Wells, who performed it around Edinburgh after I had left. I don’t know if there is anything more satisfying for a songwriter than having others perform your song – it’s only happened a handful of times in my life – I still remember the first time, when Ben Stiel performed a song of mine at a Pot Belly open mic night.

The song prominently cribs two lines from Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight – my influence for using another’s lyrics as a jumping off point is The Beatles’ Come Together, where John rehashed some Chuck Berry lines to kickstart his muse. In this case, it contrasts the narrator’s nocturnal search for their partner with the seeming fun and frivolity going on around him – as if the Sugarhill Gang’s party-calls are bleeding into the song as the narrator passes a nightclub blaring the tune.  The rest of the song is based on an actual night in Cairns where I did wake up in the back of my car in the centre of town, and stumbled out in search of Lou. Though my ensemble wasn’t nearly as dapper as Stan’s…

Luke McGrath Faux Faux Amis

SLOW TURISMO – BREATHE

August 8, 2014
FILM, LUKE

Behold, the video for Slow Turismo’s scarily good Breathe. Again I wrote, directed and edited (Lou and I produced).

My initial pitch was to tar and feather the band, ending with them playing the song.  However, they were adamant they didn’t want to appear in the clip, no matter the idea.  When they arrived on set, and saw what we subjected Brendan to, they were pretty happy with their decision.  I’d still love to feature them in a clip though – maybe next time.

This marks the third part of my psychosexual trilogy, beginning with Cracked Actor’s Lemon On Your Lover, and continuing into PROM’s Half In Shadow, Half In Light (for a couple of happy-go-lucky guys, Nick and I have some odd predilections).  The dancers are dressed in highly stylized crow costumes (again, ably provided by Julia Johnson). They could probably also find work as cat burglars, Irma Vep-style. For me, the idea of a couple of birds attempting to turn someone else into a bird had a perverse appeal.  There’s also the subtext of two women torturing a man – a hazing essentially, where he’s tied up, stripped, beaten, and rubbed down, in order to conform to the cult.  There’s no explanation provided, for either the literal action or the symbolism – we begin in media res – a conscious decision to stimulate questions from the audience, and allow them to fill in the gaps.

Alison Plevey Luke McGrath

I love trying something new every time I shoot – in this case, it was a remote location, and working with dancers.

The remote location is actually only ten minutes from my house – a section of Kowen Forest accessible by Sutton Road.  Still, with no onsite power or facilities, Lou and I had to be thorough in bringing along every conceivable thing we would need (it took two cars). A few weeks prior, I spent a really fun morning scouting locations.  I took my camera and stopped at half a dozen places, looking for somewhere suitably ominous… that was also accessible. The highlight, beyond discovering the perfect spot, was finding an unidentified animal skull (we used it in a sequence that didn’t make the final cut). Our location, as you can see, was gorgeous – I loved the ghostly grey of the spindly trees, and the dense covering of orange pine needles. The earthy tones contrasted perfectly with the blacks and whites I had in mind for the costumes.

Jess Pearce Luke McGrath

Alison Plevey Luke McGrath

Slow Turismo - Breathe - ali

The two dancers/avian spectres are Jessica Pearce and Alison Plevey. I met Alison through You Are Here – we both competed in the Artist Olympics. I was bowled-over by her (as many were) in the solo tour-de-force Johnny Castellano Is Mine. From then on, I was looking for an opportunity to work together (I pitched the band four ideas for the video, two of which I wrote with Alison in mind).  Alison choreographed the performance and enlisted Jessica to join her – they played the role to perfection, alternating between mischievous and sensual, otherworldly and vicious.

Brendan Kelly Luke McGrath

Our beleaguered protagonist, Brendan Kelly, is one of the leads from my sitcom pilot The Real. He’s such a relaxed presence on film, and I knew he could easily portray the vulnerability required. My only worry was that the role is confronting – not every actor is happy to re-enact archaic forms of punishment on screen. However, after reading the concept document, he accepted without hesitation – I met with him a few weeks beforehand to make doubly clear we were going to strip him and cover him in “tar” –  dude didn’t even blink. I’ve seen the video at least a hundred times, but watching it again just then, I’m still blown away by his performance.

Slow Turismo

This was one of the most stressful shoots we’ve yet to pull together. I kept an eye on the forecast for the weeks before the date, but the night beforehand, I had to concede to Mother Nature and cancel the shoot – the Bureau Of Meteorology was predicting a 90% chance of a thunderstorm. Lou and I ended up taking a day off work the following week to film – our only chance to capture it before we would have had to re-cast or abandon the concept (the band were tied into a promotional schedule which afforded little wriggle room). It was only through the generous flexibility of our performers that we were able to proceed.  On the day, it didn’t rain… but it was bitterly, bitterly cold.  We tried our best to keep the cast warm with hot water bottles, blankets, and thermos’ of coffee, but there was no avoiding the chilly conditions. Again, to their credit, our tenacious talent never once complained. I remain incredibly impressed with all of them.

Slow Turismo Luke McGrath

Brendan Kelly Luke McGrath 

Slow Turismo Luke McGrath

Another ‘first’ was adding an overlay of film grain to the footage.  This gave it a smoother, cinematic feel  – more Evil Dead than The Blair Witch Project (I don’t know if there’s a way to film in a forest and not automatically tap into some horror tropes).  My dad had built a DSLR stabilizing rig out of PVC piping when I first got my camera; this was the first time I’ve made extensive use of it (thanks Dad, and umm, sorry it took so long).  I used it to get all of the voyeuristic shots, peeking around trees and through branches. Horror is not a genre I’m particularly familiar with – my naiveté probably made it easier to just hook in.

Brendan Kelly Luke McGrath

As popular culture becomes increasingly fractured, the audiences for arthouse and mainstream cinema less frequently mix. The exception remains music videos – while many people aren’t interested in arthouse cinema, they’re happy to sit through something completely fantastical and outré if a song plays underneath (or if Scarlet Johnansson is in it). As an artform, music videos often obey the rules of music more than video, in that mood and texture can be more important than structure or narrative. In the same way you can’t ‘explain’ a saxophone solo, music videos are allowed to follow their own logic, so long as the spell is not broken.  I don’t have much interest in the short film format, but I could happily make music videos forever.

EP IN A DAY- THE MINI-DOC

August 8, 2014
FILM, LUKE, MUSIC, NICK

The second of five EPinaday vids is up, and instead of a song this one is a short interview piece, also captured on that one day, that explains the whole enterprise.

The song featured is World Of Hurt, which you’ve already seen performed in it’s entirety as the first video. This is a song that I’ve been playing with PROM since that band’s first gig, so Julia was already well-versed with it. That said, it was completely re-jigged over the course of the day, changing both key and genre and morphing from a chord-based chugger into a latticework of nimble riffs.

I wrote the song in the wake of a particularly intense one-night-stand experience a few years back, one where the friendship was protected by me pretending that I hadn’t fallen hard for the other person. I wrote the song as a ‘what- if’ story, what kind of disaster might have happened if I’d let the person know how I was feeling. As is my want, I leaned hard on the melodrama and the apocalyptic imagery.

I’d always thought of it as my Springsteen song (or at worst my Hold Steady song) but the version we’ve recorded reminds me more of one of my favourite bands, Memphis-based post-soulsters Reigning Sound. The live-in-studio approach really seems to have been a perfect approach for this track.

Stay tuned for another track in a weeks’ time!

THE REAL MARCHES ON

July 30, 2014
FILM, LUKE

Last night, Tim Duck, Lou and I sat down and listened to the finalised sound mix for The Real. It was a momentous occasion, one of the final stages of post-production. As we near completion, I’m really trying to savour these moments.

Tim Duck & Luke McGrath

I first blogged about The Real in April last year.  The script went through a couple of re-writes, we built up a cast and crew, filmed in December and have been in post-production since.

By my standards, it has taken forever. In the same time period, I’ve also shot five music videos, participated in the You Are Here festival, set up a whole new band that’s signed to a record label and has 19 original songs (and is on to our third drummer…), and travelled to Peru/Argentina/Chile/Brazil/Iceland/Netherlands/USA.  I like to work quickly, and move from one thing straight to the next – in addition to all of the technical and management skills The Real has taught me, it’s also teaching me patience.

Tim Duck & Luke McGrath

Photos by Louise McGrath

And this is just the first stage – once the pilot is complete, the more challenging next phase is to present it to industry. But right now, after hearing what Tim and his class have done, I’m going to be on a high all week.

EP IN A DAY – WORLD OF HURT

July 30, 2014
FILM, LUKE, MUSIC, NICK

Here is the first (of five) videos to be released for Nick’s EP In A Day adventure.

 

I turn down most offers to film live music, but when Nick asked and explained the concept, I had to say ‘yes’. When he told me he had also brought Shane Parsons on board I suggested we go all out and get as many cameras as we could. We wrangled a couple of extras (with Sam King’s gracious assistance), and were good to go.

World Of Hurt

On the day, filming was surprisingly straightforward. Adam Thomas was brought in as photographer, but ended up doing double duty, manning our static cameras. Shane is an Energiser Bunny when it comes to filming, constantly on the move, picking up shots from any angle he can find. I prefer to concentrate on focus shifts and steady panning shots, letting the edit provide the momentum.  Between the two of us, we get the best of both worlds.

The split-screen effects and widescreen aspect ratio make the edit for me – it was a chance to use more of the footage, and to present it in a cinematic context. Nick and I are discussing other approaches for the remaining videos, but for this initial foray I tried to leave the footage as close to how it looked in the room, to preserve the intimacy we had on the day.

World Of Hurt

Thankfully, the release schedule isn’t Heartbroken Assassin pace – we’ll be releasing a video every week or so from now.

 

PROM AT LINEAR PT 2: THE RECKONING!

July 14, 2014
MUSIC, NICK

photo (2)Here are some candid snaps I took of PROM’s latest recording weekend. Not pictured: me cutting vocals with a chocolate milk in hand.

photo (1)This was our second time at Linear, but our first time working with engineer Nick Franklin, who you might know via his own group The Metal Babies. Nick was a dream to work with and a great help when it came to massaging the arrangements for our next two singles, Number and No-One Can Here My Love.

We were a whole bunch tighter than our first hit-out in the studio and the two days gave us plenty of time to sweat the details. Recording Number was a particular thrill for me as that song is years old, finally having a fully-realized version on my Ipod will be totally sweet.

We recorded to tape, which was a first for me. I’m nobodies’ audiophile but I liked how ‘mixed’ the initial takes already sounded, it made the overdubbing a breeze.

PROM now have our next three singles ready to go. Julia will be living in Berlin for pretty much the rest of the year which gives us plenty of time to plan and stagger launches, as well as get some videos done. Watch this space for all your PROM news!photo

DEAR DIARY

July 11, 2014
LUKE

Like camping, the last couple of weeks have been intense.  I’ve been running on coffee and to-do lists scribbled on post-it notes.

In addition to prepping, recording and overseeing a 10 song EP for Faux Faux Amis, we’ve also had to find a new drummer and bring them up to speed for the upcoming launch.  If that wasn’t enough on the FFA front, we are making videos for all ten, so I’ve been meeting with and coordinating artists, filmmakers, writers and animators to bring on board.  Oh, and I’ve been working with Paul Heslin on a remix for Holiday Inn (now with added saxophone!).

During this same period, I also took on two filmmaking projects – a promo for a magazine, and a music video for another band (which, in many ways, was our most ambitious yet). Both were more challenging than I anticipated – there were cancelled shoots, wardrobe calamities, re-shoots, and lots and lots of editing.  This weekend, I’m going to Sydney to colour-grade The Real. After that, I’m hoping things will quieten down.  I’m in the enviable position of having to say ‘no’ to things in the latter half of this year, so that I can concentrate on progressing a few longstanding projects (mostly I’m aware I haven’t been writing enough).

All of which is to say there’ll be a lot of stuff coming out from me soon.  I like to use this blog to talk process and catalogue triumphs, but this time I want to record how overwhelming it sometimes gets pursuing so many creative endeavours (I work full time too). I love my life and thrive on being busy, but like the runner who forgets the agony as soon as he crosses the finish line, I won’t remember this feeling soon. I want this post as a reminder next time I say ‘yes’ to too many things at once.

Luke McGrath

FFA & EARLY MUSIC

June 16, 2014
LUKE, MUSIC

I am thrilled to announce Faux Faux Amis have signed with record label Early Music (formerly Holy Eucharist Line).

Early Music logo

I met with Sam and Oscar from the label a few months ago and we bonded over ideas about performance, prolificacy, and to paraphrase The Streets, “pushing things forward”.  Early Music’s output is eclectic, including Canberra’s best vocal artist Aphir, big-in-Japan glitch-hoppers Gunwaif, jazz-flecked abstract beatmaker Stenxh, and acoustic folksters Northumberland – we are their first punk band, and both sides are excited about the possibilities.

Our first release will be for their winter/fall schedule – an EP of all-new material entitled X.  The elevator pitch is this: ten songs, all a minute long.

Faux Faux Amis

Photo by Tiffany Gleeson (Catherine, Mel and Nick Peddle not pictured)

Writing short songs is not unusual for me –  the Shine Tarts pieces were all brief, and my songs rarely include dead weight like, say, middle eights or third verses.  I’ve always had a fondness for albums that include fragments and pieces – Money Mark, Cody ChestnuTT, and Badly Drawn Boy spring to mind.

But I didn’t want fragments on X –  I agree with Chuck Klosterman when he wrote that he can look at an album’s track-listing, find the shortest song, and be confident that will be his favourite.  I treated each song on X as if it was that one awesome short song on a regular album.  It’s a microcosm of our standard set – there’s the occasional odd time signature, some French lyrics, hummable solos, a couple of in-jokes, and lots of backing vocals.  All of these songs could be “full-length”* – it feels decadent to blow them in ten minutes.

Early Music are big on multimedia outputs and cross-pollination between their artists – I’m keen to get involved with that aspect of being on a label, and looking forward to sharing the results. We start recording this weekend!

We are also planning a staggered release of videos for each of the ten songs – excitedly I’ve begun to enlist writers, animators and artists to come on board – basically either people I love working with, or people I wanted to work with – the list so far includes Tom Woodward, Nick Delatovic, Emma Gibson and Joel Barcham.

* Well, except one song, but more on that another time…

EP IN A DAY!

June 16, 2014
FILM, LUKE, MUSIC, NICK

EPLearning

Hey Guys, Nick here with anther absurd logistical pressure cooker disguised as an art project!

Sam King is the best record producer in the ACT and I’ve made him do some pretty cockamamie things over the years. This one might have taken the cake- putting a band together for one 14-hour day, in which 4 songs of mine were learned from scratch, arranged, and then recorded while also being filmed as a ‘live-in-studio’ performance vid.

EPAmpsEPLukeEPBandI always like to be the weakest link in any project I put together. This whole thing was a cheap tactic to get to put together the most bullshit-awesome backing band I possibly could to cut versions of some of my more Americana-ish songs. As well as Mr King himself on guitar and and slide, my Murderers Row included Julia ‘and the Deep Sea Sirens’ Johnson on vocals and ‘lectric, Nick Peddle (Fun Machine, Pocket Fox) on drums and Matt Lustri (Spartak and Los Chavos and well as playing with me in Cracked Actor and Prom).

EPSamEPJulesEPNickEPMatt

 

Our ‘studio’ location fell into our lap in somewhat comical fashion. The gym where I work, Elements Fitness, used to be an RSL-style venue. Bizarrely, the original stage has been walled off from the rest of the building and remains intact, leaving a room with little functional purpose aside from providing an acoustically-sound room with an endearingly odd feel for EP-in-a-day projects.

EPGymEPLaptopEPCase

 

Some of the guys had played  a couple of the songs in other bands with me so I thought we might run ahead of schedule. Ha! My naive dream of an 8-hour day disappeared on the breeze as each song was tipped, flipped or turned completely upside down by the rogues gallery. The guys exceeded my hopes in terms of their engagement and the efficient way they explored creative side alleys. EPHeadphonesEPBanjo

After 10 hours of woodshedding, it was time to roll tape (read: laptop) and turn on for the cameras. The film crew was every bit as over-powered as the band: Luke ‘Another Fine Mess’ McGrath, Shane ‘Nick Wants To Do What?’ Parsons and Adam ‘What Would You All Do Without Me’ Thomas (who is also responsible for these fine still photos). The cameras were extremely patient with a shoot that involved even more hurry-up-and-waiting than the usual film set. Thanks also to Leon Twardy for his exemplary engineering assistance.

I’m blissfully happy with the rough mixes of the audio and will post them soon. The whole thing is a big experiment in Instant Musical Gratification and we’ll see how it scrubs as a video thing, but in the meantime I’m sold on the format as a fun and rewarding way to record.

EPFringeEPDrums