Nashville (and a 24hr stay in New York) - Week #1

Hey y'all!

I'm already getting in to the southern lingo here in Nashville and it's only been a week!
Time has flown since I arrived here a week or so ago, we've been working hard in the studio pretty much everyday and have recorded a lot of new material which I'm very excited to share with you soon!

I touched down a week last Sunday and headed straight to Downtown Broadway where all the Honky-Tonk Bars are situated and met up with Sarah (http://www.paperaeroplanesmusic.com/) who'd arrived a day earlier. We settled on Tootsie's and spent a good few hours there listening to some great live music before retiring to our hotel rooms excited to be starting work here the next day.

We got picked up by Producer extrodinaire Charlie Peacock in the morning and duly headed to his home/place of work the beautiful Art House (http://www.arthouseamerica.com/blog)

Having introduced ourselves to everyone in the team (Charlie, Andi, Sam, James and Richie) we went straight into our first writing session of the day with the talented Sam Ashworth. He eased us in gently by playing us a wonderful guitar line and vocal melody that fitted in perfectly with the style and method of myself and Sarah.

By the end of the day we had a completed song and decided to record it there and then / performing it as live with myself and Sarah singing full performances of the song together (though in seperate vocal booths!) It was amazing to think we'd only been here a day and already had a new song written/completed and recorded!!

Next day we had two further writing sessions booked in with the amazing Brooke Waggoner (http://www.brookewaggoner.com/) and Matthew Perryman-Jones (http://mpjmusic.com/)

Both sessions yielded songs we were extremly happy with / both different in their style and approach and yet somehow still in keeping with our 'sound' so to speak!

To celebrate Charlie took us all to the famous Loveless Cafe - Here we got to sample some proper good 'old fashioned 'Southern' food including Biscuits (which us Brits would call 'Scones'), Fried Okra, Fried Catfish, Fried Chicken.....do you see the common thread here!

Wednesday we went at it to record some more!
Charlie invited down three extremly talented musicians to play on the sessions - Mark Hill (http://markhillbass.com/) Steve Brewster (http://www.stevebrewsterdrums.com/) and Matt Slocum (of the band Sixpence None The Richer).

Together we laid down the foundations to 3 new songs including the two written only a day earlier. It was an honour to have such talented people performing and playing our songs and a very humbling experience.

The next day we shot a performance video of the song we wrote with Matthew Perryman-Jones with Sam Ashworth at the helm - directing us and capturing all the footage.

Then sadly it was time to say goodbye to Sarah as she had to go back home to Blighty to do some shows with her band 'Paper Aeroplanes' (see previous link).

This brings us to the weekend and our 24hr stay in New York City.

One of the bands Charlie's been working with recently are called 'Zach Williams and The Bellow' (http://www.zachwilliams.com/). He had recorded most of their latest record live at a small venue in Lower East Side Manhattan called 'Rockwood Music Hall' and last Saturday night they showcased a lot of that material. So Charlie, his wife Andi and I headed over to watch them play.

It was a brilliant show and I'm pleased to say I have seen them play in such an intimate setting as I'm sure the size and prestige of the places they are going to play in the future is only going to go up and up so check'em out!

Having touched back down in Nashville early on Sunday morning I decided to do the tourist thing on my day off and head to the Country Music Hall of Fame (http://countrymusichalloffame.org/ )

It's a facinating museum - one I recommend you visit- even if you're not a huge country fan. It's just interesting to see the development of the genre and how it influenced so much of popular American culture.

Then one of those nice surprises. I found out via the Civil Wars's Twitter feed (http://bit.ly/GRPO1L) that 'The Staves' (http://www.thestaves.com/) were in Nashville that night playing at the famout Basement venue - http://www.thebasementnashville.com/about

It was nice to hear some familiar accents eminating from the stage and I felt as if I was back home in London! If you're not familiar with their music check'em out too as they're brilliant.

Not only that but also on the bill was Ben Howard - someone who I had the honour of playing with at Swn Festival in Cardiff last October. There was a whole gang of them making their way back from SXSW in Texas to the East Coast of America in Campervans...what a great way to travel!

And that rounds off my first week in Nashville, Tennessee - stay tuned for part two

Al x

 

Civil Wars, Honky-Tonk's and Grand-Slams ....

In telling the story I'm about to tell I guess I should start this post on Christmas Day 2011.
That day I received a copy of 'Nashville Skyline' by Bob Dylan on Vinyl as a present from Sarah (Howells) who sings with me.

It was apt that she chose that one for it was one of the few albums of his I didn't have and little did I know at the time but it's title would come to shape my next couple of months...

A few weeks earlier I'd been watching Jools Holland and had enjoyed the following performance by a band I hadn't heard of namely 'The Civil Wars' - this is them performing the title track from their debut album 'Barton Hollow'

I'd really enjoyed the performance but hadn't followed it up with any research into who they were or where they were from. Then one day whilst on Twitter a friend of mine posted a video of them performing another of their songs and having watched that I decided to purchase their album.

It quickly became the flavour of the month on my iPod and throughout the Christmas period I was constantly listening to it.

Therefore when it came to the time to start thinking of people who I'd like to work with on the new album I thought I'd see where and with whom they'd made 'Barton Hollow'.
It turned out the man they made it with was a Mr Charlie Peacock based out in Nashville, Tennessee. I read his blog and found it refreshing the way he spoke about capturing the magic within a performance of a song. I thoroughly recommend you read it (if you're into that kind of thing) -

http://recordproducer.typepad.com/record-producer/2010/01/performance-product...

Feeling I had nothing to lose I decided to email him and sent him links to a few of my songs, not really expecting anything back....then something really unexpected happenned - A reply!

Following on from that initial email exchange we said we'd reconvene our conversation after the Grammys as unbeknown to me - Charlie and the Civil Wars were up for two this year. Sufficed to say - they won them both! http://www.grammy.com/news/and-the-grammy-went-to-the-civil-wars

Since then I've seen their name plastered almost everywhere here in London - they've cropped up on the Tube / in the papers / on the BBC Breakfast sofa even...!!

I was even fortunate enough to catch them perform a sold-out in-store gig at Rough Trade East last week. It was great to see something which clearly has grown organically without any forced-image led PR campaign - they are just really good live and sing/write great tunes! Simple!

So where does that leave me? 

Well I'm off this weekend to Nashville - home of Country music and the Honky-Tonk Bar.

I will be there for two weeks working with Mr Charlie Peacock and various other talented musicians on new material. Sarah Howells is also coming for a week, so I'll have another Welshie with me for the journey.

I'll be blogging about my experiences whilst I'm out there and sharing with you all that I get up-to.

Finally I couldn't leave you without wishing the Welsh Rugby Team the best of luck on Saturday afternoon in their pursuit of a third Grand-Slam in 8 years! What an achievement that would be..!!

I wonder if they play rugby in Nashville.....