hi,

as some of you are aware, the band have started recording an album and i just wanted to let you all know how it is coming along.

we have a loose schedule to adhere to if we want to get everything done in the time we have, and despite the odd frustrating hour or two, we’ve managed on the whole to keep the thing on track. generally speaking, we are recording basic backing tracks over the first ten days (drums/bass/rhythm guitar), and tarting songs up whenever the fancy takes us. davie hughes and grant wilson are sharing the bass playing burden, and as both have other lives, we sometimes have found it more convenient to work on the backing tracks already recorded until such times as d or g can come in to start on a new song. this is mostly because stephen douglas prefers to record his drums along with the bass, and we all want stephen happy, don’t we? stephen is learning to speak french, incidentally.

so, we’ve managed to record the basics (and more) to 7 songs so far: ‘usually’ ,’got carried away’, ‘country air’, ‘trouble sleeping’, ‘it’s a miracle’, ‘welcome back’, and ‘obscurity knocks’ – only kidding – and ‘i got soul’. today is tuesday and that can only mean the return of davie hughes to the studio and a bash at recording the backing track to ‘freetime’. so far, paul and john have played some cracking guitar – for me, especially on ‘got carried away’ and ‘welcome back’, but on the rest too, they’re “pickin’ good” – just what willie nelson told them to do.

meanwhile, a string quartet from scottish opera is busy on arrangements for three songs, and we hope to have them down in the studio sometime next week to see what they’ve come up with. we met before the recording commenced, and they have a good idea of what we want, so i hope everything turns out really pretty likes in the end.

a word about the studio and its staff. it’s called riverside, and it’s in a place called busby, in south glasgow. the place is run by two brothers – johnny cameron runs one studio whilst duncan is recording ourselves in another part of the building. each brother has a grown-up son working with them, so there’s a familial atmosphere about the joint. they are all a really friendly, chatty bunch; duncan is an excellent engineer and calming presence, and i just found out today that he and his brother are married to two sisters.

so i’m not very good at this diary stuff. i’ll pass the job over to paul or john next week, and speak to you all again soon after that. thanks for all the good luck and cheer – it won’t be long before we play live again, i hope, and see some of you again.

lots of love,

frankie