A Sudden Creative Burst

Sometimes, you need to just hammer away until something gives. I was intending to post an update after every song, but that slipped and would now be tiresome, so this is an update for seven new songs since the last update was posted.

I got another 3 songs posted on my FAWM profile during the week, which brought my total to 5 and come the morning of Saturday 18th Feb. I had some basic tracks prepared for 4 more songs. That Saturday ended up seeing me locked away for most of it until they were recorded as demos and posted too. Now the total stands at 9.

My poor wife, she hardly saw anything of me on Saturday, although maybe it was fortunate for her. It was certainly peaceful for her, seeing as I had headphones on all day. I didn’t start singing until about midnight and I was determined to get vocals done, with lyrics yet to be written for all 4 of the songs I had in progress. I made it!

What was great was that I got all the vocals, including writing the lyrics (and making most of them up on the spot) for all those four songs done and those 4 songs posted on my profile page for all to hear in about an hour and a half. I’m pretty happy with how they sound considering they are rough demos. All of my FAWM output this year, so far is big, loud and electric. No acoustic guitars to be heard at all, but that’s mainly because it’s quicker to plug in an electric and get recording to save time.

It looks like it’s going to be another productive FAWM for me. Last year’s output provided every track on my latest album "Standing in the Sky" and this year’s offerings are shaping up to be as strong if not stronger songs than that.

Have a listen in the player and let me know what you think of them.

Enjoy.

A Song with Plenty of Volume!

Last year during FAWM 2011, somebody told me that I was good at writing love songs after hearing a song I had written called "Where I Fell in Love" (a song I aim to record properly and release this year). That comment always stuck in my mind and has had some influence on my approach to songwriting since.

That person by the way has a whole page dedicated to her on this website ’cause her music is awesome.

When I was in the process of writing this latest song, which I still think needs a fair bit of work I took that comment as inspiration and decided that this would be well suited for a love song.

In retrospect I have written a fair few love songs, but often they are pretty up-tempo and loud, so I like to think that I can write love songs that rock! I think this is such a song.

It’s a bit rough and ready, but it is dedicated to, who else, but my beloved wife and so because of the time of year it’s pretty apt for next week – the 14th Feb.

It’s in the sidebar player, so please enjoy!

FAWM 2012 Song 1

The songs posted will not be staying permanently because they are demos written for the FAWM 2012 challenge. The good ones (if there are any) will end up being worked on properly and released at some point, by which time the demos will be long gone and most likely forgotten!

The demo can be heard in the ‘FAWM 2012" player in the sidebar.

The first song is called "Not on Your Life". Not much more to say about it really except it’s pretty much along the lines of being wise to the attempts of control by people/entities that (think they) are bigger or better than you.

Enjoy!

Rockin’ with the Angels!

It’s taken me a while to get the time to write this, but finally I have time, so here it is. In October a really cool place in phuket town called Rockin’ Angels, which is a blues cafe put together a weekend of jamming and musical sharing in an attempt to raise money to help the victims of the terrible flooding that has hit most of Thailand.

I watched in absolute horror at the pictures I saw on the TV and it hasn’t really got any better a month later, so when Patrick, who runs the Rockin’ Angels cafe and leads the house band said he wanted to do something about it I gave him my support right away, as did loads of others in the Phuket music community. Just two days after Patrick had voiced his intention to organise a charity jam, the first Flood jam night was in full flow and what a success!

It was great to see so many people showing up to pledge their support, both Thai and international musicians and music fans. It was very inspiring and I am proud to have been a part of it. It was also the first time I have played live since I came to Phuket and the first time I’ve played live since about 2007 or something… too long!

I don’t know any cover songs or standards, but I got up to play anyway and winged my way through a few – I remember Superstition being one song I massacred! Although the house band – The Rockin’ Angels Blues Band did a great job of keeping the song in one piece, so my cat-strangling guitar playing didn’t stick out too much!

At the end of the first evening Patrick asked me to come back the following night to play one of my songs. I was really chuffed about that, because I much prefer to play my own songs (I know them better) but only just. I am so unrehearsed that I was actually quite nervous, but the next night I brought in a sheet of paper for the band to see the chord progression of the song and we rocked through "What I Got" from my first album.

The band did a great job. It was the first time I had ever played it live and the first time the band had heard the song, let alone played it. They’re great musicians, just check out the bass player – she’s a natural.

Anyway that was my first foray into live playing in Thailand and I hope to step that up a level, especially with the other project I’m involved with "Dark Fiber". Enjoy the video.

Understand Me

It all happened pretty quickly. My friend Gary Crause, who runs Legend Music recording studios in Phuket was contacted by a guy who was making a promotional video for a marketing campaign. He had seen a video on Youtube, which featured a track by "Band of Horses" and he asked if we would be able to come up with something original, but as good as that to use in his video.

Well not one to refuse a challenge I was well up for it when Gary asked me about it and it wasn’t long before we’d penned the song "Understand Me". The song features in a video promoting the Burnham Beeches Horse trials in the UK (on the right). The mood and the theme for the song was inspired by the relationship between a rider and their horse. I’m not a very horsey person, but I have people in my family who are and the love they have for horses goes deep and is something that I sense can only be experienced first hand to really understand, so I tried to put myself in that position.

So together Gary and I created what I think is a pretty emotive song and I’m happy with how it turned out – happy enough to put it out under the Boy@Heart name! We decided to add another co-composition – "Bon Voyage", which is a bit of a departure from my usual style and I added a song that I had recorded ages ago and loved it just the way it was in all it’s lo-fi glory (also a little different from the usual offerings from Boy@Heart).

Thanks to Justin White of White & Wong for inviting us to take the challenge of writing the song, now go buy it!

It’s Here

Well, in the short time it’s been available I’ve been getting some really good feedback. It was worth the wait and the one-month delay, so I feel glad about the way it’s all turned out.

I’m giving away one track for free in exchange for your email address, which will be added to the Boy@Heart mailing list – a non-spammy, non-pushy, pushy (buy my shit) style of mailing list that will not be too frequent, but will keep subsribers updated whenever I make blog posts and the occasional newsletter, informing you of any shit that I have, which you can buy if you really want to.

Feedback for the album is very welcome and much appreciated. You can listen to the whole thing without spending a bean in the Bandcamp player on this site or on the dedicated album page.

Well that’s all for now. Have a listen to the album and let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

New Release Date

After a very heavy workload I have had to put back the release date of "Standing in the Sky". It was unavoidable, but as it turns out I think it’s for the better.

I don’t like missing deadlines, but this is more than just a delay; it feels like it is meant to be this way. The release date will now be my daughter’s birthday, so it seems obvious to dedicate the album to her.

The benefit of this change of date is that the mixes are shaping up to sound even better than they would have if I’d been able to meet the September 1st release date. After revisiting the mixes in their current state after a break of about 3 weeks I heard all sorts of things I wasn’t happy with, so now those issues will be taken care of and the sound quality of the album is going up a few more notches, which I’m really happy about.

The album is pretty much 50% mixed now and the next song I’m working on (track 5) is probably the most challenging to mix on the entire album. I’m mixing the songs in order as they play on the album and song number 5 is called "Another Part of You", which features Bonnie Anderson on vocals. She put in such a fantastic performance I’m still buzzing from it. She came in late one night and just went through 3 takes of the song. All 3 takes were so good that I had a hard time deciding what bits to keep and what bits to leave out!

Her voice is just soaked in soul. There’s so much in there from Aretha Franklin to Randy Crawford, whilst remaining distinctly Bonnie! She rocks!

Don’t forget you can pre-order "Standing in the Sky" now and be one of the first to hear it on release day!

Mark it in your diary OCTOBER 1st 2011.

How it Always Happens

Just a reminder – Standing in the Sky will remain at the special, pre-order price right up until the release of the album and the two tracks available now will be alternative mixes to the ones that will appear on the album, so if you want to get in there now then I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so.

Without fail, whenever I have anything of significance to accomplish, lots of other important projects show up and all demand attention at the same time.

I’ve grown to accept this as a part of the process of how I remain creative and productive. When there is seemingly no time to get everything done is when I seem to get everything done and in a way that makes me feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment.

When I have lots of time on my hands it is much harder for me to hit my creative sweet spot and actually get anything done that is worth remembering.

So it is with great excitement that I am currently in a period that appears to be chaotically filled with things to do and the requirement for me to pull ideas out of the air and deliver! There’s no time for sleep and I’m loving it!

The last couple of weekends I have managed to track the vocals and the bass for the entire album. Standing in the Sky is well on it’s way now and with a fair amount of tracking still to do I aim to be ready to mix the album throughout August. August is going to be totally full up with activity as it is shaping up to be possibly the busiest month of the year for Karona projects , so I’d better be on top of my game to get the album ready by September 1st.

It will be ready!

I think it’s going to be the best produced album of mine that I have done.

No it Really is Massive News!

Hahahaha. Despite many distractions, lots of indeciciveness and several collaborative projects I have commited myself to a deadline for the next Boy@Heart album.

Standing in the Sky will be officially released on September 1st 2011 and will consist of 8 songs. I describe it as follows:

An Eight Track Album, reflecting a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular world. 
It’s a mood album – One that is designed to stir an emotion of some kind.

I still have a way to go to finish it. It’s all written, you may even have heard the demos of the songs already if you follow my FAWM output or notice what I put on my Reverb Nation player, but for now only two songs can be heard. They are pretty much finished tracks and will only change if I decide I want to re-record any parts (vocals to be specific).

If you buy the album now, you can download the two tracks right away.

Please enjoy.

It’s Running Out

This is the second (almost) finished song for the new album – possibly of the same name. Again the vocals are a bit unpolished and the jury is still out as to whether they get re-recorded or not.

I wrote this song in February during FAWM 2011 and as far as i recall the idea for the song came to me as I was thinking how I was going to have the time to complete the FAWM challenge of 14 songs by the ends of February.

I remember thinking that time was running out, I was very busy working at the studio on sessions and co-writing/recording loads of music for a client, but I still wanted to succeed at completing my fourth consecutive FAWM.

As is usual I normally go a bit deeper than the initial object/subject of my inspiration and try to give some insight somehow and so this turned out to be a reflective song about the how the past, future is totally out of our control and yet it is the thing that we spend most of our energy trying to control one way or another, even if you don’t think you do, you do – we all do!

Anyway. Time is running out for all of us, but that’s not a doom and gloom story. It’s a reminder to get up and make the most of right now. Everyone’s in the same boat – nobody has the luxury of infinite time, at least not on this earth anyway. Great moments come and go, sometimes so fast they are easy to miss, so I guess the message of this song is to make as many moments in your life as great as you can and to forget about how much time is left because that ‘aint up to you anyway!