Well, that was a pretty awesome weekend - in fact a pretty awesome few weeks! Since the summer holidays I've been rehearsing with the amazing Hugh Carter & Pippa Reid-Foster weekly on the Glen Brielle project. Huge mileage on the car as I trekked from Dunfermline to Glasgow & Paisley to work on material. Boy did it work out!
The ultimate goal was to have 2 of Hugh's new tracks (Leaving Woodside & Slumber Sweetly) along with the Carter penned "Gullible's Travels" reworked for the launch of the brand new Abel Ganz album at the Centre For Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow on Friday 15th August 2014. Glen Brielle opened the show to a very welcome and actually very appreciative audience! With Hugh on guitar, vocals and flute and Pippa doing a gorgeous job on harp it was left to me to produce various non-guitar sounds from an electric guitar! The Roland GR-20 really has now earned it's corn!
Whilst normally I'm power chording to oblivion with The Shine, Glen Brielle gave me the chance to explore the softer and more melodic side - and I have to say it's a side I like! I sincerely hope Hugh continues with the Glen Brielle project and that I can continue as his left hand hired gun (or preferably part of the Glen Brielle nucleus....)
So, following on from this, I was inspired to revisit and complete a couple of my own demos this weekend - on the basis that the guitar synth was still out. The momentum continued through Sunday and I managed to complete both tracks which had been written and were gathering a wee bit of dust - "Where Is The Laughter" and "Invisible". Again harking back to "Gullible's Travels", Invisible is now almost like Dreamaway revisited - all moody fretless bass, nylon acoustic guitar, Hammond organ and even the radio news announcer.
So, following on from this, I was inspired to revisit and complete a couple of my own demos this weekend - on the basis that the guitar synth was still out. The momentum continued through Sunday and I managed to complete both tracks which had been written and were gathering a wee bit of dust - "Where Is The Laughter" and "Invisible". Again harking back to "Gullible's Travels", Invisible is now almost like Dreamaway revisited - all moody fretless bass, nylon acoustic guitar, Hammond organ and even the radio news announcer.
A successful weekend all in all and here's to, hopefully, a continuation of Glen Brielle! Back to work tomorrow with a spring in my step - OK, that's maybe pushing it a bit....
Finally, huge thanks to Nigel & Helen Reid-Foster for the stunning photos from Friday night both on this page and on my Facebook. The video of the set is my own recorded from the gantry. Equally, to Hugh & Pippa for being stunning musicians and making me very happy with the creation of something really quite special!
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