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Richard O'Brien kicks Derek's lazy ass

2/5/2022

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I was inordinately pleased with myself after writing Born To Bad Luck, until Richard O'Brien buggered it up.

The song, as first written, was a crack at one of those classic blues structures, a structure that has one line repeated three times and then a rhyming line at the end. It's one line longer than yer typical 12-bar blues and the first example that pops into my mind is Leadbelly's take on See See Rider. There are hundreds of others.

The blues is like that with structures - there are common ones that crop up over and over. Like many songwriters I have a "bucket list" of styles I'd like to write songs in and this was a good chance to knock that one off!

Since we were planning an album of blues songs - as much as we plan anything - this seemed like a real winner, since it required very few words, which suited me fine. I have always been a sucker for songs with a lot of words but after all these years I know just how much work that takes (or at least takes me). I am a very lazy writer. That made the idea of an "quick" song without a lot of words very appealing... each verse would effectively be only two lines (one repeated three times then the rhyme) – easy!

And, actually, it was. Of course when you're working in such minimalist territory you want to make sure all the lines are good ones but, hey, that's just basic quality control, par for the course.

So not long afterwards I happened to be out at Richard O'Brien's place of an afternoon. Richard is a friend; we often try out new songs on each other.
And of course Richard likes his rhymes. Fair enough too. Without exaggeration I regard him as one of this planet's most agile and imaginative rhymers when it comes to poetry or song. So when he offers opinions I tend to listen.

Long story short, Richard was unimpressed. He pooh-poohed all those repeated lines as being, well, what they were really - laziness. In the nicest possible way of course. And deep down I knew it too but I hoped I could get away with it.

So I asked him to help. After writing it one way the last thing I wanted to do was start again.

“C'mon Richard” I said, “You could whip out a few fun rhymes and clever lines.”

He declined.

I had another crack at it, but I really couldn't think of anything interesting so I asked him again. No dice. So I did what I knew (and he knew) I needed to: knuckled down and spent a couple of weeks actually doing the work. 

And, as he usually is, Richard was right. It's much better now. Nothing lazy or throwaway left - I reckon it's a fine lyric and I'd be happy to take it anywhere.

I sang it originally, in that first version, way back during lockdown in 2020 – here's a verse from that, with the simple lyric, and the same verse, rewritten, from the new recording due to be released on May 14th.

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Grant Winterburn in the house!

29/4/2022

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Grant Winterburn? We've known Grant since before the band even got together. He played on the Kokomo Blues album To Be Or What nearly 30 years ago, and I've felt bad about it ever since. Let me tell you why...

Grant was the most amazing keyboard player we knew. Probably still is. When I first started playing solo in the mid-eighties at Tauranga's Saint Amand Hotel Grant, who I think was still at school at the time, played with the band in the upstairs bar, Hit And Run. Along with a guitarist who set fire to his axe, Grant, who regularly threw his keyboard around the stage like his heroes, was the talk of the town.

(Just as an aside, it was John Terry, frontman of that band, who wrote and donated us the song Freight Train – it has been a fan favourite now for 30 years, thanks John!)

Grant was also winning awards at the National Youth Jazz Band Competitions at Tauranga's annual jazz festival and a couple of years later headed down to the music school in Wellington.

It was down there that we recorded To Be Or What (1996) in the famous Studio 2 at Radio New Zealand's headquarters. And since we could bring in musicians of our choice we asked Grant to play on the very first recording of Rainy Night In Taupo.

The only problem was that we hadn't properly thought it through and although what we wanted was for Grant to show off his amazing keyboard chops, we hadn't really arranged the song that way and hadn't really left any space for him to play anything particularly exciting. So Grant played a completely unobtrusive backing part. To this day I don't think anyone has even noticed it!

Thus when it turned out that Grant was living in Tauranga during the Covid crisis we dragged him down the road to The Boatshed studio and set him up to play on two songs slated for the new album, Workhorse...

And this time we were ready. One of the central songs on the album is Something Funny Going On, a funky Covid-flecked groove, and for the recording we played the whole song and added a “false ending” - after the end the entire band started up again and played instrumentally for another couple of minutes.

And that was what we gave Grant. First he played piano on another song then we set him up with his organ and let him loose. I actually had a video camera there to capture the moment for a video. What hadn't occurred to me was that Grant would nail the song in a single take. I hadn't even turned the camera on. He just blazed through it, it was staggering.

Here's the solo. Have a listen...

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Workhorses... recording stories pt.1

20/4/2022

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Exciting news - a new album is almost ready!
And it seems like a long time ago we started on it. If I didn't hate the word with a vengeance I'd probably call it a journey. If I do that just shoot me now.

But back at the tail end of 2020 when we released the first song - I'm Going Fishing - from an intended acoustic blues album, we really hadn't grasped quite what the scale and length of the pandemic would mean to music-making.

As gigs and proposed tours were successively cancelled we continually postponed: there seemed little point in releasing an album when you couldn't get out and play people the songs. That was partly why we diverted in 2021 and instead released the retrospective collection A Little Something From The Attic.

But now we're back and rolling. The album that started life in October 2020 is finally coming to fruition. We are in the final stages of mixing the final songs. The first release for this year will be the song Born To Bad Luck, due on May 14, followed by the full album timed for a physical release at the Port of Tauranga National Jazz Festival over Matariki weekend at the end of June.

I'm going to write regular blogs about the recording process and more over the next few weeks. In the meantime let me fill you in on some of the basics...

  • The album is called Workhorse
  • It contains 10 songs, including I'm Going Fishing, Highway 29 Blues and SunDog
  • 9 of the songs are mine, one is Nigel's
  • It was recorded entirely at The Boatshed Studio, Whakamarama, New Zealand
  • Sonia is currently taking a break and doesn't feature on Workhorse
  • The only musicians from outside the band are two keyboard players, Alan Norman,  who played accordion throughout, and Grant Winterburn, who contributed  piano and Hammond organ, one song of each
  • The cover art is from a painting by Edvard Munch
OK. I'll be back with further updates in a few day's time.

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    April 2022 - with a new album on the way it seemed like a possibly good idea to let Derek delve into it a little bit on this blog. We'll see how it goes...


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Much of the photography by Colin Lunt www.clc-photographic.com