It was the summer of 2003 and I was living in Stirling, Scotland but was about to immigrate to Australia in a couple of months, I wasn't working and happened to have some spare cash and so decided that I may never have this time again to spend on my music. I had played guitar and wrote songs for years but never to anyone but myself! I remember going to a local studio and speaking to the producer there, he was a nice guy who basically told me it would be impossible to find musicians in my time span and even if I did they might not agree on the music and so on, needless to say I ignored him and put a sign up in the local university for musicians.
My ad said MUSICIANS WANTED - I?ve got two months to cut a couple of albums. I need musicians open to interpreting guitar and piano based tracks for live band and studio work. Playing an instrument won?t be enough, I?m talking expression. Bring every style you have as you?ll need it.
Two weeks went by and I had nearly forgotten the whole thing when I had my first phone call, it was from a girl who said her boyfriend might be interested as he was coming up for the summer from Bristol, I asked if she had spoken to him about it and she hadn't but she said she would. I personally thought she was mad and nothing would come of it. The next day I spoke to the Gareth who turned out to be well up for it and advised to put ads in the local music shops also.
This is how I met Pete who responded to the music shop ad, Pete was laid back and cool which later gained him the nickname semi-pulse and even had a barn we could practice in!
I gave Gareth a list of about thirty songs to help narrow down to an album that we eventually decided on, I even managed to book us a week at Cava which was considered the best studio in Glasgow, all was going well except for the fact that we didn't have a bass player or had even one practice yet.
So I decided to change my sign to bass player instead of musicians and as I was walking to the music shop to replace the ad I got a call from Mike who said he played bass, it turned out he was in the same music shop I was walking to! Mike was upfront and talked as if he had lived a few lives already at only twenty.
All that was left to do was practice, Cava was only a month away. What was weird was that Gareth, Pete and Mike were pretty much the only people who had responded to the ad, I had imagined holding musical interviews and saying no, no, yes!
It was then I found out Gareth was on a two week holiday and with Pete constantly visiting his girlfriend who was miles away we only ended up getting together about four or five times.
The first rehearsal for me was do or die, I had never sung to anyone or even showed my songs to anyone and now we were in a barn about to play them live, it was awesome! The guys got on great and we all contributed to the songs, it was cool. I was more than lucky to find these guys! It was a bloody miracle!
The studio was an awesome experience, our producer was Dave Patterson who was like lightning on the decks, while we were there The Darkness had recorded a session for the BBC and Belle and Sebastian were mixing there latest album, but for us it was tricky as Gareth had to lay his guitar the day after driving back from France. ?Pete also missed a couple of days at the end because of Uni, so we all had basically one day to do our thing, so it was Pete on drums then Mike on bass then Gareth's guitar and then my vocals, which only left two days for mixing.
I never slept the night before my vocals, it wasn't so much because of nerves but because of Dave's coffee, I was wired for hours as he always warned us not to drink it in the afternoon!
Well the album was recorded and we all split in different directions, I went to Oz, Gareth back to Bristol, Pete's in Glasgow and I have no idea where Mike is! We still keep in touch and Pete has even re-mixed some of the tracks!
