The False Poets - Strange Season NICE021

 

Released Friday July 2nd, it's the second album by The False Poets. Strange Season was largely written, wholly recorded and partially mixed under various stages and tiers of the lockdown of 2020-21. Here be the blog on it giving away all its secrets on how this fairly surprisingly release was put together without being able to get out and about, no gigs, recording studios closed and with a bass player on the other side of the Atlantic. I'll try to keep the blog interesting. There are absolutely no tales of rock n roll excess or gig mishaps cos they were strictly verboten!

The Tascam Model 12 & getting the drums down

Bought with label funds in August 2020, largely funded by a few Dicey Rileys gigs and some much appreciated online label sales in the summer of 2020, the desk was first utilised for my solo single In the Haze. So, how it works, how we're using it, can you see those 8 columns of brightly coloured knobs? When you insert a microphone or guitar lead at the top of the column, each one makes a separate high audio quality WAV track when recording something. Once recorded the Model 12 is connected to my laptop and I upload those separate WAV files to a shared folder for the label to get its hands on and mix accordingly. I was really pleased with how In the Haze turned out and was keen to see if the same results could be achieved with The False Poets as we had a few unrecorded songs and there wasn't much else going on at the time. Dinny is currently overseas, so I got in touch with Ian for me and him to book a rehearsal room and give it a go ourselves, taking the desk with me. Getting the drums down would be the first step with all the rest being added on top later on.

The first of three drum recording sessions occurred early September 2020. I took an acoustic bass to the rooms in Newcastle to quietly play as backing to Ian's drums. Here's the selection of mics used for the album, 4 of the 5 being used on the kit:

The fat one at the top, the Electro PL 33 goes on the kick drum, the two Shure SM57s below go over the snare and toms respectively with either of the other two mics hanging above the kit for a sort of atmospheric drum track. I was quite a novice with the desk and it was the first time I've ever tried to record some drums. I must have done something not quite right as the four microphones all condensed onto one track on the desk for the label to mix whereas in the following two sessions recording the drums each microphone had its own separate track which would have made the mixing a lot easier. 

The first session spawned four songs. Three previously unrecorded Poets songs, In the Air, Tillie's Blues, Moonstruck and an idea I had on the bass which became Drama Queen. 

Ian later told me that he didn't hold out much hope for how it would turn out, but I embellished Moonstruck and Tillie's Blues at home and WhatsApped a couple of short video clips of early mixes of those songs to him and Dinny. Ian pushed the idea of Dinny recording his parts whilst overseas, which I didn't really consider. He had to buy some gear to do that; a DI box, an interface (Focusrite Scarlett Solo, not too sure what that does, exactly) and most importantly a bass guitar as his Rickenbacker is in storage. He got himself a Sterling Sting Ray Music Man in anticipation of getting his parts down.

After that first session, I was really pleased with how Tillie's and Moonstruck turned out in particular and played the mixes I'd done to label compadre Simon on my birthday. He didn't think an EP would be good enough and asked for an album, saying EPs are neither here no there, so I got writing.

Ian and me had a further two sessions. I'll try and remember which songs came out of session 2. Most of them were just the flesh and bones. I'd yet to come up with a lot of words, but went to the following two sessions with the shape of them in mind at least. Read the Sky, Glissando, How Many Days, Stupid Thing and From the Past, I think were from Session 2. Stupid Thing and How Many Days were the only ones to have a name, I think. 

Session 3 spawned Sunburst, A Winter Rose, Bo Diddley Is A Poet and Dead Man's Shoes. Session 3 featured some lost recordings where I didn't set the desk up properly. There were attempts at a song called Show Me The Way, a krautrock version of Don't Cry and another song now lost in the ether. There were a couple of other ideas, too. One ended up on the Nice Minds Christmas album as Rudolph Where's Your Santa Gone? and there's the bare bones of another garagey song somewhere from there, too.

So, that's kind of how it happened. It did feel like there was a race against time to get the drums down as here in North East England in Autumn of 2020 we were climbing up the tiers where before too long the rehearsal rooms would be closed and any momentum lost. I've never written so many songs in such a short space of time. The 13 songs were all written and put together in about a 3 month window. Probably the pressure of it all. I think it helps give the album as a whole a cohesiveness it may not otherwise have had.

Gear

For some reason I used this guitar the most on Strange Season. On the debut I only used it on Set It Free and When the Morning Comes, although Oli used it plenty on many of the other songs on that album. I bought this second hand from a work colleague. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but it is a very good guitar. A lot of the ideas for Strange Season were borne on the Sheraton. As a semi acoustic, there's no need to plug in when looking for ideas.

Fender Deluxe. The same amp I used on the debut. As it was recorded at home aka White Gables Recording Studios, the volume was kept low, but it still performed well and the guitar tones are a lot more satisfying on Strange Season than on the debut. I think I got it for £150 from a Gumtree seller from Consett when I was living in Gateshead in 2014.

My Japanese Squier Strat. I love this guitar. It plays second fiddle to the Sheraton on this album, but steps up when needed.

The Fender DG21s features a few times on the debut to flesh out a few songs; A Girl I Know, Set It Free, Stomper, but plays a greater role in Strange Season as I was looking to fill out the sound further. Someone was selling one of these for £100 on Gumtree recently. Bargain!

The Pulsar played more of a role than whatever type of Flanger that is. I was mostly switching from the clean and drive channels on the Fender amp. I've never been much of a one for pedals, but the Pulsar did us well here.

Ok, so if you're still reading, I'll talk us through the songs!

Read the Sky

If I remember right, there was an attempt in recording this in the first of the three sessions with Ian, but it didn't quite work, so we gave it another go in session 2 by which time it's structure was more certain. That's the Pulsar you can hear in effect on the opening chord. Two other guitar parts, one capoed 5th fret, which I do often, playing the same chord. It fills the sound out. It might be something the godfather of folk and indie rock The Byrds did. Playing in The Dicey Rileys helped develop my ability to do that. The lyrics were written in The Avenue at High Shincliffe when we were in Tier 2 in Durham. Not the strongest song on the album and maybe the key doesn't fit my voice so well, but I think it makes for a good, positive album opener.

Glissando

The album's opening single. I came up with the chords after session 1, thrashing them out at home on the Sheraton. Musically there are a couple of influences in there. The slide guitar from Happy Mondays' Bummed and the chord changes remind me of early L7. The song title is a wordplay on sliding. I think I was finishing the lyrics as I put the vocal down, tho the let it slide idea was there from the off. When playing a blues harmonica part I'd read that you should use a mouth organ one string higher than the key the song is in. Stomper is in the key of A, so on that song I used a D mouth organ. I presumed the same would apply to guitars so, as Glissando is in B, I tuned the slide guitar into an open E chord and it seems to work. A slightly different mix to the single version.

Drama Queen

This was the b-side to Glissando and wasn't intended for the album, but after a consultation with the band prior to the release of Strange Season it was agreed to include it. A nod back to our garage roots, the bass riff which defines the song is pretty much lifted from the Stones' take on Everybody Needs Somebody to Love. Cracking work from Dinny going into the final chorus. The acoustic makes its first appearance. The Rocking Magpie picked this as his favourite from the album. This is a different mix to the one that backs Glissando on that single release. 

Sunburst

From the third session with Ian, Sunburst was originally intended as a b side for Glissando, however the label mixed it so well it was held back as an album track. It's an old song. I think I wrote it in 2002. It's the only song from Strange season to have been played live, by myself and with previous band Justroy although it never had a lead guitar part as I couldn't think of how one would fit onto it. Some tasteful organ added by WVP. I imagine it sounds fine when blasting out of an open topped convertible, for some reason.

Tillie's Blues

This was one of the older, unrecorded Poets songs written towards the end of Tristan's tenure, possibly. It's our ode to psychotic killer whale Tillikum as documented on the film Blackfish which I saw on BBC4 around that time. I think it's on Netflix now. Only took 8 years to record it. When Oli played it, he played the opening riff high up, so I stole that. It is probably the first vocal take on the album, so perhaps not the strongest, but I do like the lyrics. Some nice, tasteful mixing from the label, on the solo and fade-out in particular. I was meant to spell the title in the same way as Tilleys in Newcastle, but forgot about that, so it's Tillie's forever more now. 

Stupid Thing

Another garagey throwback. It sounds like it's about to fall apart at the seams at times, but manages to just about keep itself together. One thing I learnt from Tristan when writing was just to pick up the guitar and play something rather than just fanny around, so this song makes me think of him. The main chord progression is the same as When the Morning Comes, only in a different key, so try singing those lyrics over it and see how that works. I think the slow breakdown that repeats before the fast part and at the end of the song sounds a bit like the Pixies, which is fitting cos Tristan once fell asleep at Frank Black's feet. He roused him and made sure he was ok, so he told me once, back in the day. 

Moonstruck

Closing out the virtual side 1 is Moonstruck, Dinny's favourite track from the album. From session 1 with Ian, that it turned out so well, really spurred the album on. The bass riff is lifted from garage classic I'm A Living Sickness by Calico Wall. Look it up! Strong song, this. We sound quite mature. Great mix. The Pulsar pedal really helps here. There is another guitar part adding atmospherics whose trick I repeat in A Winter Rose. 

From the Past

VH Monks, label scribe, picked this out as his album highlight. I had the title in my head for a while and wrote the words around that after the music had been recorded. The background, distorted guitar is fed through the flanger and tremolo, the only time the flanger was deployed. It was an after thought which I advised the label against using, but I was over ruled, rightly so. Thankfully the label listened to me when I said not to include the keyboard part I recorded for it.

How Many Days

This is a different version of the same song I backed my solo single In the Haze with. The alternative title was suggested by Monks. I changed the key to C, which is the same as Gazing from Love's debut album. That song seemed to make an impression on me. Nice and jangly with Dinny picking up the melody in the instrumental very well. A lot of these songs have a live feel despite the method of recording.

A Winter Rose

The closest thing the album has to a title track. We were stuck for an album title, so I did a search for a poem called A Winter Rose, cos I figured there must have been one with that title, and there was one by a former poet laureate called Alfred Austin who I had never heard of. One of the lines is What a strange, strange season to choose to come & it seemed to fit where we all were as winter approached and we weren't able to do so many things. When I was a child my parents had recorded Lord of the Rings off of the radio and there was an episode when Galadriel was speaking that must have made an impression. This floaty ethereal character appeared to poor beleagured Frodo. He was having a really hard time of it and she appeared as a vision and presented him with a vial of something magical. She said "It will shine brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you when all other lights go out."

Bo Diddley Is A Poet

Bit of a rip off, but great fun to play and a nod to one of the absolute masters. I possibly had been listening to the Pretty Things debut and they had a Bo Diddley rip off on side 2. At this point of recording the album, the Model 12 had a really old memory card in it. It was nearly full. It was the same memory card that was in the hand held Zoom recorder that Tristan bought in 2012 to record rehearsals. So, I was doing hot takes on the solos and the desk kept crashing. I must have done twenty odd takes of the solo until finally it saved properly. It was quite stressful. Look up some Bo Diddley stuff on the internet. He gives a cracking interview to some Christian cable station in the early 80s when he said about how he managed to get signed to Chess Records.  I should put the link in here, really. Might come back to that at some point.

In the Air

This song was from 2014 with the Poets about to disband. I think I was feeling a bit disheartened when I wrote it. The title was taken from Blake's Book of Thel when it mentions music bring in the air. Blake makes another appearance in Strange Season on the inner cover of the CD, but you'll have to obtain one of those to see what it is.

Dead Man's Shoes

A bluesy jam to see out the album, based round a simple bass chorus riff and verse progression. Kudos to Ian's playing here. Very expressive and made it so easy to play along with afterwards. The lead part is on the Squier, done in one take as I just reacted to Ian's momentum, really. There's an acoustic rhythm part which knacked my wrist by the end of the take and the Sheraton doing some more subtle rhythm thing. Again, quite impressive that it gets a jam vibe from the way in which it was recorded. 

Reviews

The ever dependable Rocking Magpie wrote this here review: Rocking Magpie Review

There's a charming review here by Rambling Man's Reviews.

Label scribe VH Monks gives a glowing report here:VH Monks Strange Season write up.

 

And the Narc review was pleasing, too: NARC write up.

So, it's out there for you. Give it a play, if you like. We've taken some tentative steps in getting something else together for you with a few new songs being demoed already for a potential album number three. It's difficult when we aren't regularly meeting and gigging, but we'll get there, hopefully. 

The False Poets EP

This blog covers what I consider to be the second part of The False Poets story from June 2013 when Tristan left to June 2014 when Dean stepped down, too. There were a further four rehearsals after that into the Autumn of that year, two with Tristan drumming and singing a bit, then a couple later with current drummer Ian Carroll stepping in, but no gigs or recordings. I had some things going on personally I had to take care of at that time & felt it was time for me to put things on hold. Take stock of things. The wheels for me quite literally came off when Dean decided that he didn't want to do it anymore. As smashing a drummer as he was, he was also pretty important cos he had the van!

(Look at them two daft lads, man. I think we were headed up to The Old Ship again for that one.)

After Tell Me When came out & we were reduced to a 3 piece, we started doing more pub gigs. There was a couple of gigs at The Lambton Arms in Chester le Street, The Wharton Arms in Dudley, The Railway Tavern Darlington, The Old Ship, The Britannia in Chester again, a few appearances at The Northumberland Arms. Attendances could be pretty dreadful. A Northumberland Arms one comes to mind. We opened with a cracking version of I Can Only Give You Everything to hardly anyone. 3 blokes who normally drank in The Star came to see us tho cos the gig was listed in The Crack with us described as a garage band and they stayed for the two sets, which was kind of them. We kept at it tho. Dinny taking photos of empty rooms as we weren't long off starting became a bit of a thing. Most of the gigs were ok tho and, although the material we were doing wasn't what you could call very well known there weren't any complaints. The songs were invariably short and fairly catchy. The first Lambton Arms one was good. A few people came to see us there. A personal favourite night was The Sun Inn in Swalwell. I sometimes drank in there and the landlord there was a music fan. He said he used to put bands on, but it wasn't worth the outlay, so knocked it on the head. We were never really bothered about the money, so I said we'd play for 70 quid. The pub has 3 rooms. We were to play in a small room looking down the bar, the other rooms were fairly busy, watching England beat Moldova 4 nil in a World Cup Qualifier. When we were setting up there was a local talking to us rather happily, telling us how stingey Alan Shearer was in buying fish and chips for some lads who had been doing for some work for him on his house, only for him to ask for the money off them when he brought their scran back from the chippy. He also had a story about Jimmy Nail having a revenge shit on somebody's table, but the exact details of that tale elude me. He wished us well for the evening with a cheery farewell after that anecdote. 9 o'clock came and there was still no one else in the room to see us. About ten past I said we might as well start and after You're Gonna Miss Me I was saying thanks very much, only for Dinny to ask who I was talking to and I said that fella on the other side of the pub who was looking across the length of the bar. Once the England match finished the room started filling up and they were into it, so it was all very positive. In the intermission, on a tab break outside, there were a few young Polish lads necking a bottle of whiskey. We started the second set with Gloria much to the delight of one of the Polish lads who made his way up to Dean's cymbals and started merrily hitting them before trying to singalong on a mic. He had to be ushered out. When introducing the Nightcrawlers' Little Black Egg there was a bit of crack with one of the crowd about the fella who parks his car in the Lidl car park at Swalwell to sell eggs out of his boot. It was satisfying tho, winning people over & giving them a good time. Slow Down was a fun one to play. Here's a version from The Old England:

Possibly our highest profile gig, if you could call it that, was a support slot in October '13 at Cluny 2 for The Wicked Whispers who were on the fringes of the Liverpool psychedelic scene. As it was shorter than our usual sets we did mostly our own stuff: Call the Doctor, Tell Me When, Girl I Know, early versions of Mad Machine and What It's All About, Stomper, You Are The Way, Stick or Twist, Did It Feel Real? and a couple of covers in the middle somewhere The Remains' Why Do I Cry? and The Bad Seeds' All Night Long. Again tho, not that many there, really. Never mind, it was a Sunday evening. We had a rider & a dressing room for the only time ever. That was quite amusing.

The only other gig we did which heavily featured our own stuff was at The Three Tuns in the February. It must have been a showcase of local bands on a Tuesday. I remember being dissatisfied with it at the time. I thought my amp was misfiring, but I've listened back to it today and it wasn't a bad set, really. Possibly it might have been a confidence thing about playing people our own stuff. The set-list that night was Call the Doctor, Girl I Know, Tell Me When, Set It Free, Like a Rolling Stone, The Mad Machine, Did It Feel Real?, You Are The Way, Hey Joe, Stick or Twist. Looking back, it couldn't have harmed to push our own stuff a bit more with such gigs when we had the chance. We did slip plenty of them into the pub gig sets when we were doing the garage covers.

The False Poets EP

I think this was recorded, mixed and mastered Saturday 13th February 2014 at the First Avenue Studios, Heaton where we had regularly been rehearsing in the red room downstairs. A the desk was Dave 'The Wizard' Curle who had recorded my debut EP Cloudwalking in the Concreteworld back in 2004. Sound bloke. The studio had amassed some cool gear during that time. He and the studio are highly recommended for your recording needs. The price was the same as it was in April 2004. £160 for 8 hours. The Old England gig a few weeks before helped pay for that. I think I remember him saying that since the banks crashed in 2008, not so many people were wanting to record, so they had to keep prices competitive. 

Going in to record, I'm pretty sure we were telling ourselves that if we got anymore done than You Are The Way and Did It Feel real? then that would be a bonus. They were what we felt were our biggest numbers at the time and a bit more time was spent on them with a few overdubs and what have you. Call the Doctor and A Girl I Know were one or two takes using what was effectively the guide guitar. Quite punk, really. As it transpired, we may have been able to have a stab at another song or two, but 4 was fine & dandy.

The rhythm section take a break here, as Mr Curle twiddles with his nobs offscreen.

Call the Doctor

One of Tristan's trilogy of 12 bar blues songs. The fuzz pedal was from the studio. No idea what it was, but it looked expensive. Dave just turned all the nobs up on it full whack as it went into a smallish vintage valve amp. I just went along with the guitar sound. Dave didn't look like he was ready to be argued with. Tristan liked it. He listened to the EP once with his mate Bush. He said that the recording made the Broadwater session sound quite tame in comparison. He was pleased we were still playing his songs. The rhythm guitar and the solo are the same part. On the Tuesday, when we were at The Tuns, Dinny was asking me to go back and do a second guitar part to give it something extra, but I quite liked it as is. Plus, there would have been the effort of having to go back to the studio. It reminded me a bit of Nirvana's Stain. 

You Are The Way

A little bit more time spent on this one, although it was written fairly quickly. Based around the quizzical A7 chord a la Love's She Comes In Colors. It's a chord with a raised eyebrow, is A7.

This next clip might be interesting, although it is pretty nerdy. It's from the rehearsal which I took to the band when Tristan was in and I was showing it to the rest of the band. It's a good illustration of a song coming together in rehearsals. 

You can hear following that, that I'm pretty much playing the instrumental lead that Tristan heard for that on the first rehearsal. There's a distorted tremolo open chord guitar somewhere in the background. It features Dean's sole tambourine recording during the instrumental break. The harmonised vocal in the third verse was an impromptu thing and worked well. I think of the four EP songs, this is the one which I prefer to the one that ended up on the album. Might be the vocal. The title is a bit hippie-ish. Possibly comes from the none-more-hippy Incredible String Band and their far out magnum opus When You Find Out Who You Are.

A Girl I Know 

A G, C, D surf rock thing. I think it got a play on this Garage Punk podcast from Moab, Utah. One of my friends at work said recently that she had been on holiday to Moab. And I said Moab, Utah? Ah yeah, population 5,000? She said how do you know that? And I said I looked it up cos we got played on a garage punk podcast broadcast from there years ago. I like the bendy note at the end and how we all know it's going to end at the exact same time. I can't bend my notes so well on the Strat presently, The nuts have gone rusty, so my wang bar don't wang no more. I really must see someone about that.

Did It Feel Real?

A pretty wild, in your face version. Maybe some of the clean guitars in between the verses could have been brought out a little more. I said it could do with a 12 string guitar and Dave had a guitar which had strings an octave higher than a standard guitar, so that also plays the intro and mid verse motif. It's the most recorded of The False Poets' songs. There's the two studio versions by us, the live one and Tristan did one of his own, possibly in answer to this which is perhaps more textured than this one. There was this review below in local mag The Crack. You might have to zoom in to read the review. I think the comments about him wigging out to the EP must relate to Did It Feel Real? It's a good one to let loose to.

So, that's a wrap on Year 2 of The False Poets. I had a feeling when things stopped at the end of 2014 that that would not be the end of it cos we've always been and always will be great mates and we can make a canny racket when we put our minds to it. When we got back together in 2018 it was with a view to play those songs we'd written rather than more cover stuff. They're maturing quite nicely.

The False Poets Early Daze, Tell Me When in the Red Room. Happenings 10 Years Time Ago

I spoke a bit about the origins of The False Poets in this here blog about the debut album that you might have checked out already.

I thought I'd spend a little while going over that first year from June 2012 to June 2013 when Tristan was fronting the group leading up to the recording and release of the debut single, Tell Me When. 

The first rehearsal was held at First Avenue Studios, Heaton on Saturday 16th June 2012. I don't think Tristan had met Dinny or Dean before. Everyone always got on champion. Just mates getting together to play some music, really. I was in a band with Dinny and Dean when we were 16. Psychlone, Chester-le-Street's fastest thrash metal band. Well, in 1993, anyways. I don't think Dean had been in a band since Psychlone disbanded in 1995 (I left in 1994), but he'd kept his hand in by playing occasionally at home on an electronic drumkit. I'd been in a couple of other bands with Dinny. The short lived Mandalas in 2004 which morphed into the disappointingly named Justroy in 2005 for a year or so. I can't remember what Tristan's band or bands were called in the early 90s. They never played live tho. They did briefly feature Raoul Moat's brother & he thinks they were once offered a support slot for Napalm Death, but they declined. By the sounds of it they hung out, drank something quite rough and made some shoegazey noises. Could have been interesting!

Tristan and me were quite well versed in garage rock stuff. We never talked about writing our own stuff at first. Leading up to the first rehearsal the group were communicating via email sending mp3s of songs to learn. For the first rehearsal we decided to spend two hours knocking about with the Elevators' You're Gonna Miss Me, The Haunted's 1-2-5, Shadows of Knight's Gonna Make You Mine and The Groupies' Primitive. Considering we'd never all played together they all sounded pretty tight & really we could have tried more out in the end. I recorded the rehearsal on my Zoom MRS-4 track. I'm not sure where the mp3s for the other 3 songs are, but here's what is likely to be the final take of Primitive from that first day's session:

That's not too shabby, is it? For a first day, I mean, although I suppose we could lay ourselves open to accusations of not evolving our sound too much, but I digress! We rehearsed a couple of times a month. We soon increased to 3 hour sessions & there wasn't much mucking about during rehearsal time. Tristan bought a handheld Zoom recorder from Maplins. He was far more tech savvy than me. It could record in mp3 or WAV and was far more user friendly than my 4 track which was soon ditched. Tristan loved rehearsing, although was rather hesitant when it came to seeking gigs and playing live. Or rather, I should say he was very hesitant. Rehearsals were another matter tho and he was very inventive on the guitar. Something we could have explored a little more, like in this thing which he called Instrumental Thyme, although I'd go with the name Sloppy John B, personally. This from 27th January '13 which got played this once then never again:

By this time we had amassed enough material to easy play a couple of pub sets. I kind of forced his hand by buying a PA and The False Poets played their first set at The Old Ship, Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, February 2013.

Quite a racket, there! Dean updated his drumkit after that one. There was 20 odd people there, I think. Mostly friends and family, you know, but they mostly seemed to enjoy it and were paying attention, which helps. In the Mandalas and Justroy, typical gigs would be with a couple of other bands doing 25 minutes or so. This time around with The False Poets I figured if we had our own gear we could play longer and give us a chance to improve, although I suppose it's just doing the pub circuit, so perhaps I shouldn't big it up too much. It did give us autonomy tho, having our own PA. Tristan was intrigued by the desk and was saying that we could record ourselves through it. I was a bit dismissive of that, to be honest, but that's what we've done with Strange Season and Tristan's album False Poetry which he recorded himself is absolutely fine, so he was right again, really.

It was during February 2012 that we had the rehearsal session which lead to the 2020 lockdown release The Red Rooms EP. There's actually 45 songs we rehearsed that day, which is kind of ridiculous, although we did top that with 50 odd once. The Red Room EP is a good snapshot of the band at the time. Tell Me When took a bit longer than the other original songs to develop & would go on to be the first single. I wrote some chorus chords to go along with the idea for the verse that Tristan sent me and we worked on the different rhythm parts together as a band. 

After Newbiggin, Tristan missed a couple of gigs. Prior to his final live appearance in June he tweeted that he couldn't stress enough how much he didn't like playing live, so I had to fill in a couple of times, at The Cluny 2 and Lumley at The Old England. He was never going to get to Lumley. He developed some pain in his wrist in the lead up to a pretty big gig at The Central in Gateshead. It could have been psychosomatic. I suggested, maybe he could take some cocodamol to help settle his nerves whilst also treating his wrist pain and in the end that's what he done. I was on the door taking money on the till & when he arrived he asked if we could start soon before the codeine wore off, looking a bit spaced. There was 50 odd at that show, tho pretty much everyone went to the back of the room. We opened with You're Gonna Miss Me and a big cheer went up after it which made him chuckle. That was our best night live as that 4 piece. Here's 3 marvelous posters he put together for the Get Primitive night at The Central:

There's a few videos on YouTube from that night. Gloria, The Count Five's Pretty Big Mouth and The Remains' Why Do I Cry?

We never really spoke too much about the live issue. I wanted to play as much as possible, Dinny and Dean were keen. The fact was he just didn't like doing it. We did play a set of purely original songs in early June with a band from Washington called The Kaleidoscopes opening, then us, then Ten Ton Friday, heavy Southern rockers featuring Mick Dixon also of previous Psychlone fame and more.

I'm pretty sure we played all of what became the debut album that night. 7th June, that was. Tristan really didn't enjoy himself. He stayed in the group for one more show back at the Old Ship as advertised in the prestigious New Post Leader rather erroneously here:

I've got a recording of that last gig. It's not the best recording. I over sing at times, but the whole band play well and, when I get round to it, I might cut out a couple of songs from that to put exclusively on this here blog for all your kind souls who have taken the time to read these witterings!

That was Tristan's swansong with the band. Live, at least, anyway. He agreed to do it after his post Northumberland Arms gig which he called a Shambles in the Cellar, or something. He wanted to record, you see, which we did do in a studio for the first time on 15th June 2013, a year to the day since that first rehearsal.

The False Poets' debut single Tell Me When

Broadwater Studios in Gateshead, in retrospect, may not have been the best choice I made. I did a search for analogue studios in the North East and their website mentioned they had the ability to do analogue recording, but we didn't get that. We got closer to that with the debut album at Northside in Chester-le-Street. Maybe we would have been better off at First Avenue.

The production by Paul Worthington was quite good, tho maybe a bit too clean for us compared to next years EP. If I remember right, three of us were playing in different rooms to Dean who was out of sight. Tell Me When seemed to be done in a couple of goes, to get the very ending near enough right. I think we did maybe 5 takes of Stick or Twist and went with the fastest and loudest take of that one, which Dean was never really happy with, but I think it had the best feel. It maybe took an hour or so for Paul to mix in another room, maybe a bit longer. We went for a pint at The Three Tuns across the road I think.

We were all accepting of the Tell Me When mix straightaway. Before playing us back Stick or Twist he told us he had done something to Stick or Twist which he thought had a very Live sound. There was chatter at the start to give the impression of the club, but I winced a bit, thinking it sounded like rhubarb rhubarb, rather than building any excitement, so that got binned off.  I can't remember if I was in the Vox amp and Tristan in the Orange one or not.  He since said that his fuzz guitar on Stick or Twist sounded like an angry wasp. It got a good review on a blog called Sound of Confusion & Jon Kelly of an indie show called the Orange Flavoured Pipe Machine just about raved about it when he picked it up from that blog, I presume. It did feel like an achievement, tho. Tell Me When sounded like something from 1964. It was a buzz to record it and hear it get played on Kick Out the Jams on Koast Radio. Tristan had the cover ready the next day. I was a berk. I would put things straight on soundcloud and post it on Facebook and think stardom would come when people heard the sound of our little band which we all thought had something from the off. He was ahead of the game with bandcamp tho and we still use the account he set up alongside the Nice Mind Records one.

Following that, the 3 of us Durham lot continued to rehearse and look for gigs. The band had got me writing songs again for the first time in years, as did Tristan who was writing and recording what Nice Mind Records put out as a solo album for him called False Poetry. All in all, it was a pretty fruitful year, whichever way you look at it.

2020 Singles, Syracuse, When The Roses Are In Bloom, In The Haze

 

I made something of a New Year's Resolution at the start of the year that in 2020 I would put something out in my own name. Up to that point I'd put out Cloudwalking in the Concreteworld back in 2004 and a second EP, Moments Stolen Back in 2009, so it had been quite some time.

The unexpected lockdown has largely been a massive pain in the backside, but it seems to have aided me in fulfilling this resolution at least!

I've already blogged about the album that was put together, Cestrian, but I've not done a piece on the three singles that have also been put out there.

First up was Syracuse

I'd not written a full song with lyrics and everything for almost two years. This emerged out of a couple of chords that I'd been playing around with for a while. It didn't take too long to get into shape, once I put my mind to it. It will be difficult to play live on my own, maybe the Dicey Rileys could try. The few solos are a key part of the song, really. It was the first song mixed by the label with separate tracks and it's a lovely mix. It would go well with some joss-sticks, I reckon.

The b-sides Psycho Baby and Shake My Tree were False Poets demos that went unused, one of them getting the Support Band treatment.

Fast forward about six weeks to the summer and the second single from Cestrian was released. NICE016 When the Roses Are In Bloom

It's a more sombre affair than Syracuse, probably a stronger song. I think Lockdown was starting to take a toll. You can hear that also in one of the b-sides, another original Away from my Door. It's pretty miserable, really! I did a lively trad song The Millers Three Sons to perk this particular release up, but I do like Roses. I probably prefer it to Syracuse, really. It's got one or two chords borrowed from Forever Changes which helped set it on its way.

The Support Band did a meditative mix of Syracuse to round things off and set up the album release nicely for July.

It was the last release to be recorded on my trusty old Zoom MRS-4 recorder. Maybe if I did it today, there would be more guitar parts on it, rather than the 4 tracks of acoustic, bass, solo and vocal, but the arrangement quite suits as is.

NICE017 In The Haze

b/w (There'll Never Be) Another You.

Both songs were written, well finished on the same day, I think. I had a week off work in September. Tiers were announced. Trips to the pub were to be put on hold. Both songs informed by the sense of missing people. The b-side came first. With the a-side, I recorded the main part in the morning, just some chords I liked the sound of. When I came back to it in the evening, it already seems to be in some sort of song shape. It's the first release to be recorded on the Tascam Model 12. It's an improvement on the MRS-4. Again, only four tracks used, but there's a lot of depth there. I set up a small vox amp to play some grungey open chords on, possibly with some flange on and the label obliged with another very tasteful mix. It was released digitally less than a fortnight after being written and recorded, so it didn't really get any promotion, but that's ok. 

All artwork above by sydelic.

I've not done any livestreaming during the lockdown, but I made a video of me playing the two singles that I can get away with playing on me own. Maybe I should be playing my own things more regularly?

Who knows, but I do hope that inspiration, isn't too far away cos I did have a lot of fun putting these. together.

NICE017 Cestrian

 

As I write, it's been a couple of months since my debut album Cestrian was released, so after the initial rush of interest has dimmed it's a good time for me to blather on about it and dispel any air of mystery which may have built up around this, the 17th Nice Mind Records release and the 4th to make it to CD.

Lockdown 2020 played a part in compiling and composing Cestrian. Obviously, I couldn't do much at all with The Dicey Rileys or The False Poets. Taking inspiration from Kevin Phillipson's marvellous The Fool and the Moon my soundcloud recordings going back almost 10 years were plundered and I found a little inspiration on the way with the essential help of the label to get it all together. 

The songs were recorded by myself on my trusty Zoom MRS 4. I think I bought that in 2001, possibly from Sounds Live in Newcastle (RIP, Sounds Live). I was actually talking to the lad who used to work in there the other day. His dad was one of the owners and he said rumour had it that they went bust, so if anyone thinks that, Sounds Live didn't go bust, the business was wound down and the owners are enjoying as pleasant a retirement as you can do in a Corona infected country, I guess. Also, heavily featured, the ever trusty Fender DG21S acoustic guitar that I got from Windows in, 1998 I think for about £225 which was pretty much that semester's student grant, which I quite luckily caught the tail end of before they were banned for good. Ok, that's enough of that. I'll waffle on about the songs now...

Syracuse

I think I put this together not long after discussing an album with the label, or maybe just before as I was contemplating it. It was the first song I'd written since Ghost Ship nearly two years before. I put the main body of the acoustic down first, filled it out with the bass then added 2 or 3 solos, leaving spaces for verses. Lyrically, I don't like to say too much without spoiling other people's meanings that they may attach to it. There's a myth attached to a river in Syracuse, which I just like the sound of, really. I sort of used that to come up with some lines and images for the lyrics. I think there is some label influence on the song here. I know whitevanperil and Support Band like to stretch some music out and I've kind of done that here with repeating two chords for longer than may seem necessary. I think I did alright in putting the solos down and being able to remember when the thing changed!

Syracuse was my own and the label's first single. The link above on the song title takes you there. 2 b sides which were False Poets intended songs acoustically demo-ed but never used by the band. One of the songs stretched out psychotically by the Support Band. As it's a single the download is only a quid. I mean, come on! Also, and this is rather technical, Syracuse was the first song on the album that the label could get it's hands on individual tracks of the songs as I could transfer the files of the individual tracks separately whereas, with the older songs the label had to do its best with my mixed of the whole song, if that makes sense. 

Pockets Full of Rime

This is the oldest song on the album. Written and recorded in 2011, so the only pre-Poets song here. The tune I wrote on a break in the Lakes. Do you know, I can't remember how to play the bloody thing! I get the main part, but there's some manoeuvre I do leading into the end of the verse which I remember thinking at the time "Ooh, that's clever!" well, I've outwitted my future self there. I think I was getting to know Tristan quite well then. The lines were kind of inspired by reading the wikipedia entry on Tristan and Isolde after he'd been talking about his name, just to set me off, really and get some images to play with. The internet age sort of dumbing me down by googling things instead of actually reading a book. It works well on the headphones this one and it's pleasing to go from one of the new songs, the opener, to the oldest of the selection.

Kirsten's Song

This is one of the few songs I've written the lyrics first for. I think I wrote them pretty quickly at work for one of my delightful colleagues who said that nobody has written a song for Kirsten. Regarding, the squeezing in the lyrics, when having a cup of tea made, I don't like my tea bag squeezed. I'm a stirrer not a squeezer, you see. She was putting algae in her smoothies, I think, which seems quite unconventional and we find out that giraffes and mooses moo. I'm sure you would get along with Kirsten if you met her. I miss working with her.

The only appearance of mandolin on the album, a cheap one at that. It doesn't half rattle along. I was a bit embarrassed about it, really, thinking it was just a laugh, but there's nothing wrong with that and it rightly claims its place on the album. I quite liked that the NARC article refers to it as vaudevillian. 

Charlotte's Tune

This tune came to me at the end of the fancy cheese and pork pie section of Morrison's in Chester-le-Street. That melody on the recorder was just playing in my head for some reason, so I let it play it and kept repeating it till I got home. The only words I could think of was "Charlotte at the window" to the start of the tune. Charlotte being my Uncle Dave's white long-haired cat I'd met during a recent visit. I couldn't think of any more words than that, but it's still dedicated to her. It went down quite well on soundcloud and got called a sweet tune. It's not a fancy recorder. I would've liked a wooden one. There's a couple of slightly raspy notes in there, but just about getaway with it. It's funny when tunes come to you like that. It doesn't happen very often. I think it might happen more when not stressed!

Gaia's Answer

The album changes tone a little here. I'll not say a great deal about it lyrically other than I don't think I would have written it if I hadn't on a whim went to the Great Gas Gala in Balcombe one weekend in August 2013. I met some pretty amazing people there. I didn't get in any bother. Musically the riff seems to have been informed by my guitar part on Tristan's Did It Feel Real? I was writing songs quite a lot then. The Poets were over a year old. I guess it's like a muscle, songwriting or music making, the more you do it, the more comes through.

Fortune All Around

Topographically linked to Chester le Street market. I was back living at my home town after some years in Gateshead and living in a flat on the Front Street for a few fairly happy years, I'd say. It was good to be back in Chester. I picked up a strange book from the market one day by Dion Fortune. I'd not read anything like it. I've some more of her books to read. The only other one was a book of short stories, The Secrets of Dr Taverner. One story, A Daughter of Pan, was great. I don't think I've any songs dedicated to any authors. Dion must've made an impression.

Mad Machine

There's a few words about this on The False Poets blog. This was the original, semi-drunken recording which the label gave a lo-fi sheen to. I don't think I had recorded it brilliantly, maybe cos I was half cut. So, remotely, during lockdown label business discussions, why not have it wrapped up as some sort of answerphone message? I'm trying to get a message to you! It's so important I have to ring you up and tell you about it. The "End of messages" bit at the end makes me chuckle. Is there a scene in Phoenix Nights when Brian checks his voicemail and he gets told he's got no messages? It's quite fun to play with songs in this way. The label encourages and facilitates this sort of thing. Give the label a follow on various social media platforms! I can't on Facebook presently. Some git hacked me account and was trying to fleece friends and family in my name, godammit!

Mad Machine was to be the last song on Side A, but I went and wrote another lockdown song...

When The Roses Are In Bloom

The first music I've written in my garden. The lyrics written a few days later on one of my daily permitted exercise walks in the local countryside I can get to from my door. This was the second single, released a month before the album. In terms of online plays, it didn't do as well as Syracuse, which was a little disappointing. It's not the happiest listen, to be fair. In fact, it's possibly one of the saddest things I've written. Maybe. It could be lockdown was getting to me. I tried to perk it up with the b-sides of The Miller's Three Sons which I think might be the only time I've recorded tenor banjo. I also sort of wrote another song Away From My Door. I say, sort of wrote, it was more mucking about in open G tuning and then playing it back and thinking I could fit a few lines in here and there. There's a bit of self referencing to older songs I've written. I'm so self obsessed it's ridiculous! I should probably see someone, really. Thank you for reading this! 

The Support Band reference the previous single with this meditative remix making the Roses release an EP with 4 tracks. So, again, as with Syracuse, the label had split tracks to work with here, so there is lovely touches of reverb to different instruments that was more easily done when there was just my whole mix of the songs to work with.

That's side A brought to a close in rather sombre fashion, I think. I like the title. It sounds like what song titles used to be with crackly 78s when there weren't too many motor cars on the road.

A Fistful of Quavers

I'm pretty sure I recorded this the same day I did Cestrian. This was early afternoon tho. The False Poets had disbanded very recently. My creative train was about to crash off the tracks. The rate of songs from 2012 through to 2014 was about to hit the buffers, just like how I'm running out of train analogies now.

This is quite good fun. Pretty much an improvised piece. It's heavily informed by Side B of Love's debut album, maybe Mushroom Clouds, more specifically. Here's an acoustic guitar, dick around with a chord or 3 and see what comes out. Don't ask about the title. Maybe there's a play on words with the musical note and the curly crisp thing, but then the quavers are doing that anyway by being shaped a bit like quavers, or something. It's getting late. I should get to bed!

Autumn Colours

Written quite quickly whilst in the Poets in 2013, I think and living in Gateshead at the time. Some nice big trees outside the tower block. There wasn't much else to look at. Musically, kind of informed by some of the stripped down Blood on the Tracks recordings, just get a relatively simple chord change and put on repeat. Maybe it could be arranged to work with a band at some point? Autumn is starting to come on now. Half of California is on fire presently. Not sure if that is autumnal or not...

Apple of Your Eye

Topographically linked to Chester Moor as I wrote the second verse on the way up to see Chester Town play Alnwick at Moor Park. First game of the season and the Cestrians keeper got sent off after ten minutes. I think it was a draw in the end. If I remember right, Chester went a goal up just before the break only for Alnwick to equalize directly from the kick off. Quite amazing, really. 
The Poets have rehearsed this a couple of times and it sounds good in a band setting, but we haven't persisted with it. It's one of my favourites. Some tasteful mixing done by the clever bastards at the label. It's not a very long song, but it has some lines in that I am most pleased with out of my collection of scribblings.

The Dirge

Possibly the piece de resistance, the centrepoint of Cestrian. The Dirge. Discussions with the label at the beginning of lockdown on what tunes to take from my soundcloud had Dirge in E Minor on the back hob. An instrumental yang to Charlotte's Tune's yin, The Dirge was one of those tunes which came to me whilst I was going about my business. As with Charlotte's, it was a case of letting it play out, this time whilst walking down the Front Street on a grey day, past the empty shops and down by the daytime drinkers of G.W. Horners before getting home to transcribe the bloody thing on the guitar. Compare the soundcloud recording to the album Dirge tho. I was aware that the title track of the album is an instrumental and Chester deserved having a few words said about it, so I suggested to the label adding some verses I had written about the town into the Dirge and see if that works. It's the NARC guy's favourite track of the album. Stellar work in the mix by the label. The full verses to The Dirge are here. Written in a creative writing workshop in the much missed Willy Nilly which I sang about here. The work shop was delivered by a writer lady, I forget her first name. Robinson. I used to work with her mother in Peterlee. It's a Smalls World!

Cestrian

This was written and recorded in one go I'm pretty sure on the night of having recorded Quavers. I thought it would be interesting to play some sort of electric guitar over some DADGAD tuning. DADGAD does have a Celtic feel to it, which for some obscure, possibly misguided reason I associated with Chester-le-Street. My electric guitar part is played on my Sheraton, rather than my Squier Strat which was injured at the time. It's played through a small Vox amp in one of its pre programmed settings, so no pedal used. WVP added some touches to the final mix, too. I didn't really know what I was playing musically. I might have had a can or two. I think there might be some frustration coming out there as the Poets were going into hiatus and I was losing the opportunity to let rip on the guitar in a band for a little while and there I was back in Chester, but it was alright. I met up with old friends I hadn't seen for years. I was back on the Front Street, not far from Spoons and The Bridge at the bottom was good for a laugh and within a year or two I'd play a St Patrick's Day set in there and then the Dicey Rileys would get going and just along the way from the flat was the studio the False Poets would record their album in. I could just about see it from the windowsill I was sat on making the Cestrian noise for the hell of it. It all worked out in the end.

Reviews:

Well, NARC did the piece above I linked to in Kirsten's Song. Label scribe VH Monks did a cracking press release. When I get back on Facebook, I'll take it from there and update this. 

The ever dependable and true Mr Rocking Magpie did this review here.

I sent it off to a couple of other places, but overlooked for now.

Tremendous artwork on the CD by sydelic. There's still a few available, you know!

The label has a new desk now, so you might be getting some other things soon, but for now, that's yer blog for Cestrian. Thanks for taking time to read about it and see you further down the log.

NICE011 The False Poets & The Support Band - The Daily Permitted Exercise LP

Strange times call for strange measures and so I find myself saying a few words about NICE011 in which a hitherto snappy garage band finds itself desperately releasing krautrock in an attempt to ease the Nation's anxiety at the loss of liberties imposed upon the populace to stave off the threat of that malign entity the Corona Virus. Benign nebulous entity The Support Band did not have to be asked to provide assistance in creating something to compliment the Poets' work to provide the label with it's first split lp offering.

Let's rewind a little first, tho to October / November 2019. We'd just recorded The False Poets' album in a few days. We did this slightly earlier than planned as Dinny got himself a job overseas, so briefly we were down to a 3 piece with Oli shifting to bass. I think we had a couple of rehearsals like that before Oli called on his mate James Grice. The two of them play great together. Rehearsals were quite amusing. Oli would often be the last to arrive, and rather than say anything would introduce himself by plugging in and us all just playing something random along with it. I'm not sure if any off those things got recorded, but we did make some interesting sounds. We did our first gig at Bubbles in a first round heat of Battle of the Bands in the February. It was apt that it was there as it's where me and Tristan saw the Whodlums back in 2012 and decided that night to give the whole band thing a go. Tristan used to be a judge there, too. I think Bubbles used to be known as The Cellar Club in the 60s? Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac played there, as did Davey Graham and more recently Dave Grohl played there before he joined Nirvana when he was in a band called Scream. Despite the name of the place, it's actually a really good little venue for live bands. We went on after Kitchy Retro and before Not Now Norman and had a great time. Unlike when Tristan was a judge, the winner of the heat was decided by votes. The guy on the mic announcing the winner had us thinking we hadn't got through, but apparently we did. By one vote. Big cheer. Hugs. Still waiting on restrictions to lift for Round 2 16 months on....

That's A Girl I Know taken from that show.

The False Poets rehearsal which spawned Daily Permitted Exercise occurred at noon on Sunday 15th March 2020 at Nemix Rehearsal rooms in Newcastle. All the news and media was about the virus and its implications for the UK which, with a Liverpool v Atletico Madrid match taking place just a few days before us convening, was soon portrayed as a reckless super spreader event. You could feel the stress, that something significant, if wasn't coming, was already here. The guy working on reception was in gloves for the first time and was cleaning vocal mics after every rehearsal to prevent the spread of infection. I had to ask where the mics were as for the first time they were in a small drawer under the vocal pa, sparkling like new. They'd normally just be left in a stand. Everything was neurotically, terrifyingly clean.

As I did with pretty much every rehearsal I brought the Zoom H1 to record proceedings to have a listen back to. It's been a godsend that device. Tristan looked into them and picked one up from Maplins on Grainger Street in the early days. A recommended piece of kit! The rehearsal was split into two parts. What became the Daily Permitted Exercise presented itself quite spontaneously after a break halfway through the rehearsal session. I might have been the last of the four to join in. I couldn't tell you what key it's in. I'd guess F#m. James seemed to lead the way with whatever he was playing to Oli. Sounded pretty good, just go with it. It was probably the most sombre sounding thing the band had created. Maybe that's to do with the collective strain of what everyone was going through and worrying about at the time. The hook turned out to be a 14 note motif that repeats itself endlessly. The final mix is more or less the same length as that improvised live jam with some added atmospherics and fractured guitar from Mr Whitevanperil, an honorary False Poet. After the rehearsal I headed off to The Culture Bunker to drop off the Zoom H1 as I knew there was something there with that one piece. It turns out, for whatever reason, that that particular piece of music was the only thing to have recorded satisfactorily that session as I'd coyly shoved the H1 down the side of a couch in the Nemix room.
The album was released 12 days later, by which time the country was in lockdown and only allowed out once a day for work, essentials, medical help or one session of daily permitted exercise.

For me, the Daily Permitted Exercise (Outdoors) is one of the band's most interesting tracks and is testament to the talents of Oli and James. They've not been involved in the recording of Strange Season, but the door's always open. Well, government restrictions and circumstances permitting.

Going back to the split lp, as I mentioned in the blog on NICE004, The Support Band are often to be relied upon in times of crises. They injested The Poets' tense, incessant groove and dissolved the bones of it to issue a much clearer exercise of one's inner whateverness on The Poets' straining motifs.
Guillotine was something dropped off at White Gables Recording Studio on a previous visit and was just waiting for some companion pieces to go with, which, with these tracks, it seems to have found to round off the album.
I was present at the session when Guillotine came to be. Much like broth and cob, The Support Band presented it as is telepathically. They created two other incredible pieces the same day as Guillotine, however those two pieces of music remain lost in our space time dimensions. The music of those two tracks hang suspended in the November air of White Gables where part of The Support Band are able to go back to and visit and rest upon their gently frozen auras, much like a hammock. The label has a better recording desk now, so that we can capture future Support Band effusions more successfully. Actually, there's already some new Support Band stuff in the pipeline. With Guillotine there are plenty of inputs going into the desk, but the output from the desk goes onto the 1 track Zoom H1, so if the output levels from a recorded performance are no good the recordings get lost, if that makes sense.

Going back on myself yet again to Track 2, The False Poets' first Nice Minds live release is the closing track from our set at Bubbles on 13th February. Here is the setlist which Oli drew up for the night, by the way:

For the track on the album, the intro jam, which was also happily in the key of E, was welded onto the set closer. For us to open our first gig in 6 years with something none of us had an idea what we were doing with is fair enough, I suppose! I think we've done better improvised things in rehearsal, but not bad for a first time live effort. It actually reminds me a bit of some of the music found on this here release, which is no bad thing. That version of Did It Feel Real? features the only vocals on the album, so maybe it's more irksome, or funny, to me that I get the lyrics quite a bit wrong in the first verse. It's all good fun and shows where the band was at before live grassroots music was banned.

So, that's NICE011. Rehearsal rooms were closed for a few months, live performances, at our level, anyway, completely impractical and likely to get you arrested, so the band was derailed. When rehearsal rooms became available again, Oli was due to go to college. Dinny was overseas. The label had splashed out on a new desk tho, so me and Ian got together in the Autumn to record some of his drums and to help keep me out of a strait jacket.