Monthly Archives June 2013

We’ve been working very hard on new album Raven’s Croft. So far we have 11 tracks written and partially recorded. All tracks have been recorded at Abbey View (my back bedroom studio) and we’ve had one session so far at Little Monkey Studios in Cheltenham (pictured), where the drum recording, mixing and mastering will take place.

Adding the drums at the end of the recording process is, as my old Nana might have said, completely a**e about face (we often had to add asterisks to her utterances) but we’re having to make the best of it. Drummer Dave did a spectacular job on Saturday but there’s a lot more work to do. Adding real drums to tracks I’ve already smoothed together is fraught with danger – it’s just too easy to destabilise the whole song...

Raven’s Croft. Raven’scroft. Ravenscroft.

It’s the name of the album we’re working on. It’s a make of crystal glassware. It’s also a place, so I’ve discovered, a “deleted” village in Cheshire. And it’s the real surname of the late John Peel, father of indie, Champion the Underdog, hippy, punk, BBC DJ, the Blank Generation’s funny uncle. Eschewing pomp and pretension, he nonetheless affected a Liverpudlian accent in the 60s to wow a beatle-obsessed America. He also turned up for presenting duties on Top Of The Pops but, as far as I know, avoided joining the caravan of rain-sodden fun that was the Radio One Roadshow.

On his nightly radio show, John Peel introduced a lot of people to a lot of music they wouldn’t normally hear...