The False Poets
Beginnings
I've got a distinct memory of my mate Tristan Sturgeon throwing me the suggestion of starting a garage band called The False Poets in 2010. "That's a nice idea", I thought tho dismissing it as a pipe dream.
I met him through Ashington Folk Club which I had started going to a couple of years before then. He used to do the sound, a little begrudgingly sometimes cos he didn't really like folk music. We kind of struck up a bond of friendship which gelled further after I played the Elevators' I Had To Tell You one night at the club. It helped that he was a smashing bloke, too.
I don't know what had changed in 2012, but the idea was raised again one night in Bubbles watching The Whodlums, "Why don't we start a garage band and play some of those great songs that we love?". I used to be in a thrash band in sixth form with me mates from Chester-le-Street, Peter Dinsdale and Dean Lowery who play bass and drums nearly 20 years before. There's some dreadful footage of us playing at one of Dean's house parties at about this time that Tristan and me resolved to give this a go. Dinny and Dean were both up for the idea of starting a garage band. Stars seemed to align whereas two years prior they hadn't. I remember going for a pint in The Elephant with Tristan the weekend before the first rehearsal and him being very excited and saying it couldn't fail. We set ourselves the task of getting four songs to sound ok at the first rehearsal of 16th June 2012: The Haunted's 1-2-5, Primitive by I can't remember who, I'm Gonna Make You Mine by the Shadows of Knight and You're Gonna Miss Me. The recordings are somewhere. We were fine from the off. It really was no trouble at all.
I blogged after a fair few of those early productive rehearsals where you can see what songs we were playing. Rehearsal 6 our first original tune Stick or Twist came to be and that set Tristan off writing songs which then spurred me on. I've never written so many songs as during that two year period that the Poets were running for. I really thought I couldn't do it any more. I learnt a fair bit from him. We spurred each other on quite naturally.
After a couple of years and with life kind of getting in the way, the False Poets got knocked on the head more or less two years on from that first rehearsal.
Fast forward to Spring 2018 and we decided to see about getting the band up and running but fate was to deal the cruellest blow and take Tristan from us just when everything seemed good to go. He was telling me that his son Oliver is really good on the guitar and with a fine voice as something we could do in the future.
When we got together with Oli in the summer of 2019 it was with the intention of focusing on the original stuff. As great as those Nuggets songs are, ours aren't too shabby either.
12 songs, just over half an hour's worth of music. Money and time fairly tight. Dinny was about to take a job overseas for a couple of years. I was happy to go back to First Avenue where we recorded a False Poets EP in 2013 and I'd recorded an EP in 2004. It was Dinny who pushed for Northside Recordings, however, having been impressed with the relaxed nature of recording when he laid down the bass to Ghost Ship with the Dicey Rileys.
In the end Northside and Angelo Citrone did us a very good job of replicating a retro sound for the songs which all have a mid 60s flavour to them. Angelo uses a tape echo unit and a vintage sound desk which suited us. We had two days booked. In late September, early October, both Sundays. We pretty much recorded the songs instrumentally in an order I had drafted for the tracklisting, if I remember rightly. One or two runs through of each song, often with me mouthing the lyrics over the noise.
I called round the studio between those two sessions to lay a couple of acoustic tracks down (A Girl I Know, Set It Free, Stomper) as well as a few vocal tracks. The second full day was vocal tracks, a few overdubs and the mix.
The Cover
Tristan painted the image for the cover around the time he left in 2013. He told me it was intended for the cover.
I believe it was later displayed at a Pitmatics Painters exhibition. It's the third CD for Nice Mind Records and a fine work it is, too. The Deluxe Edition comes with a lyric booklet as well with exclusive artwork. We've still got a few available! Haha
The Songs
The first False Poets original. I was fooling around albeit quite purposefully with a chord progression which the rest joined in on, Tristan singing "The grass is always greener..." over the top of it as he fancied it sounding like the Jesus and Mary Chain's In a Hole. I used that green grass line to tag a load of blues clichés onto. Add on a couple of chords to a hooky tagline chorus and hey presto a False Poets original!
The song on the album for which there were two full recorded versions. It was the first one in the album sessions to be recorded. We had another go at it later in the session when we were warmed up and it is this version which Oli put his vocal to as it has a lot more energy.
Our surfiest number. Angelo suggested an acoustic guitar track to fill out the instrumental section. The opening riff bears a striking similarity to The Molochs' Get A Job Blues you can hear on their soundcloud. Ours pre-dates theirs tho and I doubt they heard ours.
A last minute decision to include this song in the album sessions. I had to meet up with Oli the night before to give him the chance to actually play the song before we went in to record it the next day. He did a great job on slide guitar. I wrote the tune on the bike into work one day and had to wait until I got home to find out what chords fit the few verses I'd written. Tristan thought it was like The La's. I'm not sure about that, but there's a definite early Beefheart vibe to its blues groove.
One of two songs on the album that I play on the Sheraton rather than the Strat. I capo on the 5th fret to give it a Byrds type folk rock feel to contrast with Oli's chords. Ian uses some tight brushes rather than sticks so as not to be too overpowering.
One of Tristan's trilogy of 12 bar blues garage rockers, the other two being Call the Doctor and Stomper. A good song but one that we seemed to have most difficulty in getting down tightly. I had to completely overdub my whole guitar track as there were far too many dreadful notes in my first take which is now thankfully deleted. It worked out well in the end. The production really suits She Was My Woman.
The last track recorded at the end of the first session. There was one abortive take before we managed to get this hot take down. Ian was praying whilst playing that we got to the end without cocking it up. We were all elated after this take and broke for lunch. That's me on Strat and Oli on Sheraton here as per Call the Doctor.
Subtle change in tone for the start of the slightly more progressive side 2. I wrote this song on my acoustic in about half an hour as part of a Facebook challenge to write a song from a list of random song titles. It was Tristan who convinced me that it was a good song and worth persevering with. We doubled the length of the instrumental ending a rehearsal or two before we went into record. Possibly starting to stray a little beyond our garage roots.
Tristan's very first song he wrote for The False Poets. He had a spurt of songs after I managed to finish Stick or Twist. This reminds me lyrically of You're Gonna Miss Me and always feels very comfortable to play. The second of the two songs I play on the album on the Sheraton for a slightly softer feel.
Sounds a bit glam rock here, in the mid paced passages, at least. Good fun to play, although I had to be convinced by the rest of the band to put the blues harp track down. It has a tendency to get stuck in your head, this one.
The second time we've recorded this song. There are some recordings somewhere of a 2013 rehearsal when I was showing the chords to the rest of the band. Tristan said that rehearsal recording would make a good release one day, to show how a song can come together. Here's the band playing it at The Cluny 2 when the song was only ten days old and didn't have an instrumental fill written for it.
The last song laid down on day one was always going to be this track earmarked for the album closer. We are just branching out with improvisations here. The repeated E and D chords a nice backdrop for Oli to make a racket over. Possibly Tristan's most psychedelic song, he was likely influenced by one of the Golden Dawn's Power Plant songs. He was a big fan of that record. Did it Feel Real? is it's own animal tho and that freedom to improvise and explore is something we have taken forward as can be heard on the live version found here.
Reviews
A couple of reviews so far. We were pleased to get a write up in Shindig! who had this to say about it:
We're still very much active, so keep an eye out for gigs and new releases in the months and years to come.
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