My new single is called Reach & Grasp. It is a track that has taken some time to put together.
At the tail end of 2023 I was about halfway through making a new album. It was to be called The Village Dreams, a very English, rural kind of an album. It was coming together nicely, I even released the track English Weather (an early out-take from those sessions) and Benita (another from Village Dreams) went out as a freebie.
These were enjoyable sessions, I worked day and night until disaster struck…
I suffered a cluster of heart attacks and found myself in hospital.
Spool forward a month or two and I am back home in recovery mode. I kept thinking ’as soon as I feel ready I am going out into my studio and continue work on the album’. This had also been the mantra going around my head as I lay on that hospital bed.
Eventually, I made my way out to the studio and powered up the machines. The control room felt cold and a little damp as it had sat dormant for sometime.
I tried returning to the songs that I had started but it was no good, I felt like an outsider. This is someone else singing, pre heart attack me, I couldn’t relate.
Every song that I tried to work on made me feel the same.
There was only one thing for it…Put those tracks on ice and start something new, from scratch.
I had the lyrics for Reach and Grasp but no ‘song’.
At first I tried it as a bluesy ballad but that never really worked.
Then I hit upon a kind of Deep Southern Country Funk groove.
The bottle neck guitars are parts constructed rather than played, little segments edited together, a painstaking and laborious task.
Slowly I built up a wall of guitars over my bass and drum tracks and added some vocals and organ.
There were times I thought I would be working on this song forever but now that it’s done I feel spurred on and ready for another challenge.
I hope that you enjoy the record.