So here we are with acoustic guitar, click tracks, dubious cold-ridden guide vocals and complete drum tracks...and then the magic begins again.
Green Fingers has a good old Stax soul feel about it. A racy little song about horticulture (in a very double entendre kind of way) that sounds like a track we may well send to Sir Tom.
We built up the track with some great acoustic riffs from Mike and me, adding bass and electric runs an a killer cowbell beat. Well...it would have a been a cowbell, but someone had borrowed the darn thing. A quick root around the Skyhook kitchen uncovered a bottle of red wine with a killer sound. So that's what I used! And boy, does it work...
Mayflies is one of my 1971 tracks, re-recorded last week. The original recording still sounded current. That acoustic stomp that the folk bands are using now. So I stripped it back and did a close mike vocal with Alan Tee's drum kit kicking along. I've added a chant to the major key body of the song, but I think I'll strip it back again and let the delicacy of the lyrics shine through. This was written in Kasteel Groeneveld and en-route to the CBS studios in the spring of '71. I remember driving with Joop and Sandra past the lakes and marinas outside of Hilversum watching hundreds of flamingoes take flight...
Mayflies is a love song. The song is about seizing the day. (and yes...that's us, then...)
Not Dead Yet is brand spanking new. A life-affirming song if ever I heard one! It rocks like crazy, has hooks all over it and when Lily and Prof. Green came into our vintage store last week...it was the one I wanted them to hear... (but to the world at large, I run a vintage store and this other side is just that - another side...wrong place, wrong time)
NDY is near completion - rock guitars all over it - but we need to do some clever mixing to get that now sound. But it sounds like a bit of an ear-worm. And it tells it like it is.
Rufus (harmonica, flat cap) and me proving the point.
Back into the studio next week for more layering, and then Oogoo Maia and Chris Egan will be in to add keyboards and sax. Everything is on track for end of March completion...
To hear some of my older material, click here: David on Reverbnation
