This is both the label's first and second re-issues, in a way. It is the first EP that I ever made, back in 2004. The label reissued the EP in November 2019 on Bandcamp & again in October 2021 when we prepared it for release on streaming platforms with an additional 7 bonus tracks of songs that I'd written and recorded either solo or in various bands from 2003 to 2005.
When I first recorded Cloudwalking I had been playing live quite a bit in the two years or so prior to putting it down. I was on quite good form before getting into a regular job and girlfriend and things.
I had been in a band in sixth form some years before, thrashing around in Psychlone but the acoustic guitar malarkey was a lot different. Open mic nights were a good place to start in the early noughties. The best I came across was at The Beamish Mary. The first couple of appearances were with my mate Iain Davidson. Here we are on our first time up there. You can just see Iain sat behind me there (Dean Lowery of Psychlone and False Poets fame is also in shot)....
I think Handle With Care we used to do. Iain's brother Stu might have had words when we did the Beatles I Should've Known Better for being too bleeding obvious a song choice. It was a good grounding in the Mary. Three songs you got and everyone listened and clapped. Fantastic acoustics in what used to be a chapel and great beer from the bar next door. The Lamplight is as fine a pint as I've ever enjoyed.
Kevin Phillipson used to open and close the nights. Good standard of playing and performing.
I soon started going up on my own and would've played most of these cloudwalking songs up there and they were well received. I used to get plenty of gigs via Insangel, a local promoter type. I think I remember opening for a band called The Avenues at Sgt Pepper's in Newcastle. I opened for Greenspace a couple of times at The Tanners. Their bass player was a fan of my stuff. He got the boot before they became Lanterns on the Lake and did alright for themselves. I think my best received gig was at Simma's Acoustic Circus in The Bridge Hotel. I didn't often get the chance to play to a room full of people who were there for the music. I was second on and went down a storm with my own stuff. Never got asked to play again, mind. Other players on the scene at the time Country Jim, Pete Hardaker, John Egdell. I remember Trev Gibb making an appearance at The Archer when I shared a bill with a couple of the Blackflower lads.
I needed a bit of prompting from my friend James Gawman to get a day booked in a studio to get some songs down being what you find here on the EP. I can't remember how First Avenue was the studio of choice, but it was a pretty good one and one that I've used since with The False Poets. David Curle did a fine job recording.
I've put a fair few of James Gawman's lyrics to chords. This seemed to fit to open the EP with. I recorded a home version years before on a mates 4 track. In the months before recording this I put a lot of effort into adding the chord progression which makes up the instrumental break. It's mostly intuitive guess work but eventually I found something to give it some musical diversity it was asking for previously.
Joining me on this and on The Fox and The Moon Tune there is the brotherly rhythm section of Adam and Graham Sinclair. Fine musicians from Waldridge who didn't need much instruction. I thought it would add an extra dimension to the EP than just me on the acoustic. Adam's girlfriend at the time, Sarah Williams, adds some tasteful colour with her fine flute playing on this and the instrumental breather.
An open G tune, second fret. I played it instrumental at Waldridge Fell Club in 2003 and then added some words before getting it recorded. I used to play around with my tunings more in those days. It could help suggest different melodies when playing if put in another tuning. I tend to just stick to standard tuning now tho I am partial to a dropped D for a bit of resonance. It's a lovely song this one although there's someone I know who's told me it was a bad choice of butterfly for the analogy cos they've got a green tinge, the Cabbage Whites, but I've chosen to ignore that and you should too if you want to get the most out of this track.
I think this was the first finger picking song I wrote. Plenty 7ths and the rhythm give it a jazzy kind of feel. The lyrics were written at a Creative Writing class at Park View I went to one evening. The exercise was to write a poem about being a fox during a hunt. I verbalised some percussion at the start of the instrumental break. David Curle recording said that bit was obscene.
Another open G tune. Capoed 6th fret, possibly. Not sure what key that makes it. The last thing to be written before this EP session but musically one of the most satisfying. I just called it breather as a gap in between three songs either side. Nice flute arrangement by Sarah and Adam and double tracked in places by Sarah. I just let them get on with it. It looked like they were having fun.
I wrote this in my year in Greece. A couple of lines are lifted from the Book of Ruth, I think. Me and Adam recorded a version a year or two before with the short lived scratch band Mock Fish which is included in the Again release as a bonus track. It's a short but sweet song with plenty going on but not too busy.
I'm possibly least happy with this one on the EP. Maybe it could do with some violin. The mouth organ is ok. I did a version at home that had a better feel to it that is included as the last bonus track on the Again re-issue. It felt like a little bit of a breakthrough when I wrote this one in being able to summon a feeling on a guitar and with my voice.
Another open G song, capoed 4th fret. I did a take of this which I thought was ok but David Curle suggested I do another and it was much improved. Maybe I was getting tired. The lyrics are ok. I wrote the tune not long after Monday's Song and the two tunes were an improvement on what I'd managed to come up with before.
Just a quick word on my trusty guitar, a Fender DG21S. Bought in the Spring of 1998, I think from Windows in the Central Arcade for about £225. Student grants were getting phased out in the UK at that point. I used that semester's grant to buy this which it just about covered. I knew very little about guitars. I just was told when I buy an acoustic to make sure it's a solid top because they get better with age.
The original cover for the EP was designed by the divine Teresa Puig who was lodging at my mam's at the time.
I managed to sell about 20 odd of these CDs, which is quite a lot, really. I got a local graphics firm to print some covers off for me and just used to burn the discs at home. There were a couple of reviews. Here's one from Ross Lewis who I had yet to meet...
One radio session followed the release of cloudwalking. A live one for Sunderland Uni. I drove Adam and Sarah through and we played breather and Positively Halcyon and possibly another. I think I recorded it later on the radio but the reception was really bad. I'd completely forgotten about that.
I wrote a couple of songs in the months after like Precious Touch, the demo of which is another Again bonus track, and Positively Halcyon but not too many for a while after that. It's a nice EP, if I do say so myself. I wasn't really paying too much attention to whatever was going on at the time. Maybe that's why at 16 years of age it seems to bear up ok.
Cloudwalking in the Concrete World (Again)
In the Autumn of 2021 when preparing to put Cloudwalking online across all the various streaming platforms, I took the opportunity to include some bonus tracks, demos of previously released songs and a few that have yet to have an official release. Both the label and myself had the idea of appending an Again to the end of the EP's title. It's just a digital release for now out on October 1st 2021. It may have a CD run if gigging regularly becomes a thing again.
So, a quick word on the additional 7 tracks....
Waiting On a Smile and Ode to Bill
As mentioned above, these two songs were recorded by Ross Lewis when in the band The Mandalas, two of four songs recorded that day, 10th April 2005, if I remember right at Paul Jeans' Tranwell studio somewhere up the A1 Northumberland way. Smile was probably the best recorded that day. That's Iain Davidson on electric guitar and me on acoustic. The song was originally called More to the Core, but I changed a couple of lines for something a bit more mainstream. The acoustic guitar is in open E tuning, learnt from The Stone Roses' Your Star Will Shine. Ode to Bill probably not as strong a song, but included here because why not? Some nice drum fills from Marty on Bill. Good drummer, Marty. The last gig the Mandalas played was at the Black Bull in Sunderland. A Battle of the Bands gig. We came second to a trio called Restaurant, Paul Liddell on the PA and judging. Restaurant were slicker than us and had some good, strong pop songs. Paul complimented us on our sound which reminded him of Neil Young, which may have come from Bill's Ode.
Show Me The Way
Following that gig, hopefully not caused by the devastation of losing out to Restaurant, Iain decided to step down and Mandalas became a 3 piece. It was at a Sons and Daughters gig at The Archer that the name Justroy was drunkenly chosen for the new line up. Someone from local band Minotaurs referred to it as the worst band name he'd ever heard on a local music forum. We did have a good email address tho: seekandjustroy@yahoo.co.uk
Justroy gigged pretty regularly in 2005 and into 2006, two or three times at The Cooperage, The Tanners, somewhere in Hartlepool, Sunderland pubs, The Derby at Bishop Auckland... We were quite tight for about a year or so. The promoter for The Tanners had an exotic sounding name on the local internet forum. Hermingita. I thought he might have been from the East or something. When I met him he was from Wallsend and he said it was pronounced Her-minge-eater...
Anyway, Show Me The Way! This, a song of mine from 1997, took us 50 minutes in all to record including setting up at The Cluny. We scraped onto the line up of a local music CD. Local bands had to apply and, if successful, you got two hours studio time to record a song. There might have been some funding available from North Tyneside Council to put this CD release together. A couple of months later local muso Paul Jeans started a thread on the local internet forum asking "Is this the worst local music compilation ever?" I'll dig out the copy of it I have somewhere....
Paul may have been a little harsh, although I've not given the disc a spin for so long. I'm going to put it on now. Opening up the CD is Ashington's h.e.d. with the very sexy Porn Kitchen. Opening up the inlay of the CD we see Neil Brannigan is on Vocals and Guitar for H.E.D. Bran used to run Bubbles, formerly The Cellar Club, and his catchphrase was saying Nice, Mind after things. This used to grate on my mate Tristan a bit, so kind of for a laugh it was suggested as a name for the record label you all know and love when we came to decide on a name for our label. Cut Glass Accent next up on the CD. Sounds good!
Anyway, Show Me The Way! It's a good song. Maybe there's a little bit of the La's in there. I didn't plug my Squier into an amp. The producer passed me this little red box called a Pod and said, "Here, plug into that". Hey, presto! instant amp sounds. Show Me The Way was one of the first songs I wrote. I spent a bit of time working out the solo. That's me, Peter Dinsdale on bass and Marty Wilkinson on drums. Justroy disbanded not too long after. Marty was playing with a punk band called Barse that used to get lots of Scandanavian gigs and dropped off radar. Dinny got the call years later for The False Poets and remains very much on radar.
Precious Touch (Demo)
Another open E tuning song. This recording seems to have more atmosphere than the studio version I put down for Moments Stolen Back in 2009. Some tasteful tambourine in there somewhere.
Moon Tune
This was recorded at Washington Arts Centre on 9th Feb 2003. The reason I know the date is because Laurent Robert got sent off not long after he put Arsenal on the ropes with a classy equalizer. The Short lived Mock Fish recorded four songs, two of mine and two by the other singer Martin, eeh I forget his surname. This was the last one we recorded. The producer was really struck by it. I was playing the bass initially and he said, No, you're playing the bass like a guitarist, the song needs a different bass part which he showed to me or Martin. I think Martin, cos I recorded the guitar tracks which I had all figured out. I thought the Cloudwalking version was better than this one til I went back to this version for the reissue. I think the producer did a good job with a nice warm mix. Mock Fish played one gig, I'm guessing in November 2002 at The Garden Farm supporting Newcastle based The Psychedelic Breakfast who I see have recently put their back catalogue on streaming services. Hangin' Outta Windows is a cracking tune, although there is some choice language in that one.
Summer Sun and Monday's Song (Demos)
Recorded at home not long after recording the Mock Fish 4 track EP. I stuck these two tracks on the end of a CD with the four Mock Fish tracks on before and my mate Gav said the best ones were these two home demos. Not massively different to the versions on the EP. Maybe a better vocal on Monday's Song on the demo and Summer Sun Demo included to show off my bongo skills.
And thus ends the blog on what I was up to cloudwalking musically between the early to mid noughties.
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