Month: May 2019

We were welcomed at the lovely home of Hendriks friends Caroline and the other Brian somewhere west of Dublin. Their living room was occupied and prepared by us for the magical moment, the first musical gathering of the whole band. Percussion and Fiddle have never seen each other before. And magical it was. Denise’s soft and fragile violin tones danced around Brian’s ecstatic Bodhrán rhythms and for a short moment there was harmony and world peace in this living room. I was amazed and you will be too, when you listen to that future album. But first, there was still much work to be done, the material had to be worked out by everybody, we needed to practise a lot.
For example in Denise’s garden, the neighbours seemed to be okay with that. We also used some live sessions at different venues to massage the new songs into our minds. Some of you may remember Lahinch, the surfer village on the west coast, where we played on every available stage two years ago. Brian lives not far from there and we made good on our promise of the German invasion. We took over his house and rearranged the complete interior into a perfectly improvised studio. Including special sound features like the dripping of a leaking cistern, the occasional barking of Molly and Silo and the rattling engines of passing tractors.
Pietro, the godfather of sound, arrived a day later with some neat microphones with the worth more than a used sports car in his backpack. From now on we had four days to record 10 tracks. Let me explain how such a recording day looked like (warning, change of time form ahead): When the first birds begin to sing, Benny opens his eyes, welcomes the beautiful day, smears a wee bit of earwax on his shoes and goes for a morning stroll. Since everybody is still asleep as he returns an hour later, he begins baking bread for the breakfast.
By now the first of his band members may have awoken and is starting his morning routine to get rid of his hangover. Benny just keeps on killing time by fixing stuff in the household until everybody is sitting at the breakfast table, the last piece of furniture we allowed in Brians house. By now it is usually around 12. After the feast everybody takes their position in the “studio” and the recording begins.
All the songs are being recorded live, which means every instrument plays at the same time, if somebody screws up, the whole take is for the trash can, like a business adminsitration degree. This puts quite a bit of pressure on the musicians. As soon as the recording starts, you can see the sweat running. And when the last tone is dying away, everybody is nervously checking the faces of the others for signs of guilt.
When nobody declares him or herself guilty of screwing up the take, the headphones are put on and the material is checked in detail for traces of screwups until the culprit is exposed. This procedure is repeated until the sun and the mood go down. A few beers and a cigarette for dinner and the day is called a day.

I do not want to hide, that there have been many difficulties in the process, but due to Brian’s immense project management skills, Hendrik’s persuasiveness and Tim’s outstanding cooking abilities, we had a full album recorded, before the week had passed. We returned to the beautiful Egan’s Bar to celebrate the outcome and have a little farewell concert. The pub was packed and even the nobility showed up, King Sean honored us with his presence. It was a wonderful night, now we had everything we wished for. 

It began on a cold Thursday evening. Somewhere in Western Germany, we waited at a parking lot in the shadow of an ancient monastery. It was our meeting point and we were on time. Nobody said a word, we were nervous, we were not used to the Prophet being late. Did he have an epiphany that made him  change his plans? It wouldn’t surprise me, “the one who shines upon all”, as his cult following call him, always forged his own destiny. But suddenly he stepped out of the shadows. His ibex wool hat and his sturdy jacket inspired awe and deep admiration and his face was smiling warmly. He said “It is time, my friends. Let us begin our journey.” And so we did.

We were back on track again and here are the naked facts: Hendrik had reactivated all his contacts to Ireland to organize a new album recording with local musicians. The congenial percussionist Brian Fleming was willing to add his magical Bodhrán beats to our tracks. And we were elated to hear, that the lovely Denise Boyle and her fiddle were there to support us. To make everything perfect from the technical perspective, our dear friend Pietro Rossi from Redstone Productions got appointed the responsible audio engineer. The gear for the recording was professionally prepared by him, whoever is interested in technical details of his preparations can check out his vlog he did for this project:

https://www.youtube.com/redstoneproductions

We stopped over in Amsterdam to pick up the gear. And nothing else, Amsterdam is boring and not worth a visit, we spent two days there and we did absolutely nothing worth mentioning so lets skip this topic.
The old route to Ireland via Great Britain was blocked due to the dawning Brexit like the road to Fuchsia City by a sleeping Snorlax. So we decided to bypass this erratic country by ferry from Cherbourg. We weren’t able to cross France without filling up our cheese supplies. We annihilated the supplies of Neuf-Chatelle in a little French countryside supermarket. From now on, everytime the car was opened, people around randomly passed out. Hmmm, I love the smell of moldy cheese stored in a car parked in the sun.

We spent our ferry ride to Dublin rehearsing at one of the ships public areas. People seemed to like it, we were bought enough beer to have problems distinguishing between the strong swell and alcohol induced balance problems. To be honest, the swell was quite heavy, Hendrik was amazed (and I was shocked) how deep red the area of our ferry route was on his wind speed app. Even though I had cause for thought during the night, we survived the trip and reached Dublin the next morning. A few neglected rights of way later we adapted to the left-hand traffic and headed to our first gig in Newbridge. The McDonnells bar is one of the most visited bars in the area. Even on a Monday evening, there were way too many people in the audience for our small sound system. After some complaints that the loudly chatting folks on the other side of the bar couldn’t understand Benny’s poetic lyrics and we should pump up the volume, we danced on the thin line between feedback problems and unsatisfied listeners. The concert was still good and our struggle was forgotten after the show, our beloved midland friends from the last tour showed up and we got invited to an after show party in a tiny micro kitchen. People got wasted, unpacked instruments and started to sing, it was the most compressed form of Irish lifestyle I ever witnessed. Unfortunately it also led to us heading for the first rehearsal with Denise and Brian, the event we all were going nuts about for the whole week, pretty hangover.

 

Will we make it? Will this album ever be recorded? Why does Benny smell so good? Stay tuned and you’ll find out.