30th July 2021 sees the release of Common Ground, the self-produced new album from Big Big Train released on CD via their own label, English Electric Recordings, and on double LP in a gatefold sleeve via Plane Groovy. The album will also be available as a Bandcamp download and on all major streaming platforms.
Recorded during the worldwide pandemic in 2020, Common Ground sees the band continue their tradition of dramatic narratives but also tackles issues much closer to home, such as the Covid lockdowns, the separation of loved ones, the passage of time, deaths of people close to the band and the hope that springs from a new love.
Common Ground finds the band taking in wider musical and lyrical inspiration from artists such as Elbow, Pete Townshend, Tears For Fears, Elton John and XTC, as well as acknowledging their more progressive roots. As ever, Big Big Train will take listeners on a journey, be it waiting for the 5pm pandemic UK press conferences (The Strangest Times) to the library of Alexandria (Black With Ink) to the bottom of the ocean (Atlantic Cable).
Big Big Train has taken lyrical and musical inspiration from periods of history that are recognised as great leaps forward. Now with Common Ground, they are making such a surge themselves.
‘Common Ground’ Unplugged at Real World studios
‘Common Ground’ release day video.
‘The Strangest Times’.
‘Apollo’ from ‘Common Ground’.
Endnotes is the closing track on Common Ground and, for this final blog in the series, I wanted to go a little deeper into the song-writing process to try to tell the story of how a song is made.
I have mentioned before that song-writing is not a neat undertaking. Songs rarely emerge fully formed and, whilst some tunes are written in the order the listener hears them (ie verse then chorus then middle eight and so on) it is more likely that the writing took place in a much less linear fashion, with ideas arriving in no particular order.
For Endnotes, it was an instrumental melody in the closing section of the song that presented itself first. When I say ‘presented itself’, that is exactly what happened. I was walking along a quiet high street in Ringwood, Hampshire (just outside this pub, in fact)
when a melody popped into my mind. The melody sounded a little poignant and I thought it might work as a theme on brass. I imagined the part being played on a single brass instrument before the whole band took up the theme. I sang the melody idea into my phone and it sounded like this:
I went home and spent some time on a chord sequence to support the melody.
I thought the melody had potential and I was pleased with the chords I had found to support it. I liked the way the harmony was working with a sustained D note in the bass and I realised that if we went around the chord sequence a few times, the sustained bass note would cause a build-up of tension. This tension could then be released by bringing in a subsequent succession of different low notes. I could ‘hear’ this movement of notes being played on the bass pedals and the tuba. It was all sounding to me like the closing section of something, so I gave it a working title of Endnotes and then tried to figure out what to do with it.
Initially, I wondered about crafting it into a ‘bookend’ piece of music (with an arrangement at the start of the album, and then a different arrangement at the end.) But, we’d done that with the opening and closing tracks on Grand Tour and so I abandoned that plan and set about writing a song that could sit at the front of the sequence of chords I had called Endnotes.
As I mentioned, song-writing is a messy business and writing a song back-to-front isn’t the easiest way to go about things. But I soon found a nice set of chords for the verse and then for the chorus (to my ears, the chorus sequence had a kind of Jacques Brel sound to it, which I liked very much). From the chorus, a bridging section then emerged that led me to the D major add 9 chord at the start of that closing section.
I found that the verse and chorus worked best in a 6/8 time and the closing section was in 4/4 and in a different tempo, but the bridging chords worked well as the ‘hinge’ between the two main parts of the song, delivering the necessary change in time signature and tempo but without it feeling awkward.
The vocal melody for the verse and chorus came quickly enough and so it was time to move onto the lyrics. I liked the working title of Endnotes and wrote some words around that theme. The song became the story of a man who found himself sleep-walking through life a bit. Then he met the right girl, and together they learned to try to make the most from every moment.
I handed a demo of the song over to the band who developed their parts. Most importantly, I sent my humble little closing melody and chord sequence over to Dave Desmond and asked him to arrange it for his brass band.
The brass section was recorded in October 2020 in The Wood Room at Real World. As you can see and hear from the video of the last few bars of the song, Dave took my simple melody and made a beautiful arrangement.
The drums, guitars, keyboards, bass and vocals were recorded in November 2020. The video below shows the bass pedals being tracked on the closing section. It was all sounding exactly as I had hoped it would when a melody popped into my mind during that walk along Ringwood high street and I began thinking about how it could be made into a song.
It was now over to Rob Aubrey for mixing. These days, I don’t normally sit with Rob when he mixes. He gets on with things and sends us work-in-progress. He knows how we like our music to sound and normally the early mixes are not far from where the song will end up. Sure enough, the Endnotes mix came together speedily and was soon signed off.
It is, I think, a good song and it had earned its place as the closing track on the forthcoming Big Big Train album, Common Ground.
This final blog in the series of posts about Common Ground has told the story of how a song came to be. The story may, in due course, be updated with a postscript as I hope that we will play Endnotes live someday. But, for now, all that remains is for the album to be released on July 30th and for us to hope that Endnotes and its companion songs find a home in people’s hearts.
Speaking of matters of the heart, I shall leave the last word to my dear wife, Kathryn. I mentioned to her that she features as a character in the last song on the album. She listened to it and read the lyrics. Then she looked up at me and she said:
‘Well, you finally wrote me a love song. And then you went and called it Endnotes…’
GMS July 2021
We are all aware of the impact that the pandemic has had upon the world since early 2020. Enforced lockdowns to try and restrict the spread of COVID-19. For a prolonged period we were living the stuff of nightmares.
It was also during this time that three members of the band had decided to leave. You can’t make people stay in a band if they decide that they no longer want to be part of it. Big Big Train became a four piece band consisting of Greg Spawton, Nick D’Virgilio, Rikard Sjöblom and myself.
Common Ground (the album) was recorded in most extraordinary times. We decided to make the album based principally around our new four piece status. The slimming down of the line up had presented us with an opportunity of trying out some different ideas and reinventing ourselves. Nick has written some music for the album and Rikard has taken on the lion’s share of keyboard and guitar duties throughout. I too have played acoustic guitars and keyboards on the album.
We had originally ear marked November 2020 for Big BIg Train to return once more to Real World and record the next studio album, live in the studio. All of us together in one place. But as the year unfolded, it was clear that international travel was going to be an impossibility and our idea of getting Rikard and Nick over to record at Real World was not going to be feasible.
Consequently the album was recorded largely on a remote basis. We are lucky to be alive during an age where technology enables music to be made and shared, even when the musicians are not in the same location as each other. Many aspects of BBT albums have been recorded remotely over the years and it is a process that we are entirely familiar and comfortable with.
Greg, Nick, Rikard and I have worked together lots over the years. As a result, we know what it takes to make a BBT record and we also know the qualities that each of us brings to the band.
Greg and I decided to go ahead with the Real World sessions that had originally been planned to include Rikard and Nick. Greg went down a day before me with Rob Aubrey and recorded his bass guitar, bass pedals and acoustic guitar parts. I arrived and recorded my lead vocal parts in two days.
The song Common Ground is about committing to beginning a new relationship and finding out the different things that we have in common with each other. It is also about realising the power and strength that love and support can give to us in life.
Common Ground is unashamedly a love song. When Sarah and I first became a couple, we were living not far from Avebury. If you had told me several years ago that I would meet someone with whom I would want to share my life and become engaged to, I’d have said that you were mad. If you had also told me that I had actually known and worked with this person since 2014, I would have been astonished.
The beautiful Marlborough Downs, the chalk hills and the ancient standing stones were a significant part of our life together for a while. This landscape was also a part of the imagery within the Folklore album.
In this song, I am writing literally about what was happening in my life and not about a historical figure or event as can sometimes be the case with BBT subject material. I recall the commitment that Sarah and I made to each other and I clearly I remember seeing my white chalk dust foot prints against the black of the car mats after we had been walking around Avebury one afternoon. It is an imposing place, imbued with history, and this feeling of walking in the ancient footprints of our ancestors is palpable.
One positive and heartwarming thing to emerge from the pandemic is the resilience of the human spirit. Seeing how people pull together in the face of adversity.
In addition to the four of us, Common Ground (the song) features vocal contributions from Carly Bryant and the violinist is Aidan O’Rourke from the excellent British folk band Lau.
The pandemic inevitably scuppered BBT plans for live work in 2020. We knew that as soon as we were able and it was deemed safe enough, we would be playing live concerts once again. We decided to recruit some new musicians to augment our live band. We auditioned guitarist Dave Foster, who also shares the same management as BBT. Rob Aubrey recommended Carly Bryant as a keyboardist, guitarist and vocalist.
We used the last day of our studio booking at Real World as an opportunity to get Carly and Dave down. This was the first time that we had properly met our new bandmates. We performed a live version of Common Ground in the Wood Room and the two new arrivals blended in perfectly with us. I’m really looking forward to developing our vocal harmonies. Both Carly and Dave have also contributed to our new album.
The new additions to BBT have brought fresh enthusiasm with them and this has made a really positive impact on the band. We are looking forward to bringing this line up out on tour and once again performing our music for you.
Take care, stay safe.
David
Nottingham, UK – May 2021
As the full effects of the global pandemic began to take effect last year and we were forced into abandoning our touring schedule, we decided to bring forward our writing and recording plans for what became the Common Ground album. So, rather than learning bass parts for concert set lists, I found myself scrolling through 50 or so basic song ideas recorded on my phone. I selected the ideas with the most potential and started working through them to see if any snippets of music might work as parts of the same song. I then began to give these groups of ideas working titles.
A few months earlier an email had arrived from a listener called Stephen Roberts. Stephen lives in my old hometown in the Midlands and his question, simply, was: ‘I used to know a Gregory Spawton who lived up the road from me in Sutton Coldfield. He had a brother called Nigel. It’s not the same Gregory Spawton who is in BBT is it?’
I replied in the affirmative, which resulted in a nostalgic conversation with Stephen about our mutual hometown and our old school, Bishop Vesey’s. Stephen mentioned in passing that he was a historian and had written a book called ‘Webster and Horsfall and the Atlantic Cable’. He felt that the Atlantic cable might make interesting subject matter for a song.
I ordered Stephen’s book and became smitten with the story of the laying of a 3,000 mile cable across an ocean, enabling people from different continents to communicate almost in real-time. This was great derring-do stuff and, more importantly, it fitted perfectly with our overall album theme, that we are stronger together. Even better, the story features an appearance from Brunel’s ship SS Great Eastern, thus providing a neat reference to our 2009 album, The Underfall Yard.
So, I now had a fair few musical ideas which I had grouped together as potential songs, and also had a title and a subject for one of those tracks: Atlantic Cable.
A name for a song and an idea for the subject matter is a real boon to the song-writing process. It helps to steer the writing and informs the end result. A song about laying a steel cable across the ocean floor was never going to be a pastoral piece of music. It needed some stormy moments, some grandeur. And it needed to be long enough to tell an epic tale.
With all of these things in mind, I got my head down and worked away on Atlantic Cable. After a few days, I had enough material to create a demo session in Pro-Tools (recording software) and that helped the song to take its final shape.
Atlantic Cable opens with a short piano passage, featuring a theme which crops up in one or two spots in songs recorded as part of the album sessions. After this quiet opening, I then planned a fast-paced overture (illustrating those stormy seas…) to take us to the first main musical motif of the song. This quick section was also going to be based around piano, but at a faster tempo.
By this stage, Rikard was involved in arranging the song and he came back to me and said: ‘do you mind if I try that overture bit on organ instead of piano?’
One of the things that we have tried to do on this album is to embrace change, to freshen things up and do things differently when the opportunity arises. So, of course, I said: ‘go for it’.
Rikard came back with this short film as a demo for the organ part, which immediately fired me up and helped me in developing the rest of the song.
Later on, when he recorded his parts for real, one of the things Rikard added to the overture section was some low synth notes which made me tear up my plans for the bass guitar part and move to bass pedals. More on that in a moment.
With the organ now becoming a key feature of the song, I turned my attention to the rest of the piece. I had written two vocal sections which followed on from the instrumental opening and I knew where I wanted to get to at the end of the track, but I was missing a bridging section to get me there. With Rikard’s organ playing in mind, I wrote a rollicking three-minute instrumental passage enabling a bit of a musical duel between Rikard on keyboards and Dave Foster on guitar. This led me nicely to the closing vocal section.
The demo for Atlantic Cable was now at about 15 minutes. I like this sort of length for a song. A quarter-of-an-hour allows time for a story to unfurl without it feeling either rushed or, on the other hand, padded-out. Nevertheless, 15 minutes is a lot of time to ask for from a listener and it is incumbent on the songwriter to make it a fulfilling listen and, most importantly, for everything to hang together. Long songs need a lot of careful love and attention to be successful.
With the music now taking shape, I turned my attention to the lyrics. Alongside Stephen Roberts’ excellent book, I bought a couple of others (The Cable: The Wire That Changed the World by Gillian Cookson is also recommended) and immersed myself in the world of 19th century engineering challenges. It is a great story, with lots of drama which I tried to capture in the words.
Armed with the finished lyrics, the final step in getting the demo ready for studio recording was for me to sing a guide vocal, primarily for David so he can work on the vocal arrangements, but also for the musicians who need to know what is happening with the melody.
We had planned to record the album all in the studio together but the pandemic once again, intervened, meaning that David, Carly, Dave and I headed to Real World to do vocals, guitars and bass whilst NDV and Rikard recorded their parts in the US and Sweden.
When I was thinking about content for this blog, I asked NDV if he had any video of the drum recording session for Atlantic Cable. He sent back a film which he has kindly given me permission to share in its entirety. It shows excerpts from when he was learning the overture section of Atlantic Cable through to when he was recording it for real (with his customary groove and flair). It is a fascinating insight into the process we all follow when getting to grips with some tricky prog-rock tunes. Learning these songs to the point when we can record and perform them confidently requires a considerable amount of work.
Meanwhile, whilst NDV was working up his drum parts in the States, I was on the other side of the Atlantic recording my bass parts.
Where I move from bass to the bass pedals was purely because of Rikard’s low synth note idea which I mentioned above. Even though we have had to make this album in different studios in different countries, we have still been able to influence each other’s writing.
With the bass done (and some acoustic guitar also in the bag) it was time to record the vocals. Recording again at our home-from-home, Real World, we worked quickly and productively so that we can make the best use of our recording budget.
After David had recorded his vocals, Carly recorded her parts and we were able to move on to Dave Foster’s guitar.
Like most lead guitarists, Dave likes to crank his amp up so we moved to the Big Room which has a nice little side space for amps.
Dave then worked with Rob at the control desk, bouncing ideas off each other and recording his lead guitar parts for Atlantic Cable.
The recordings we did with Carly and Dave in that week at Real World in November 2020 was the first time we had worked with either of them. We had a lot of fun and can’t wait to share a stage with them in the not-too-distant-future.
Atlantic Cable was mixed by Rob Aubrey in January of this year. We are looking forward to our own crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 2022 when we will be playing some shows in North America.
GMS
May 2021
It has been an extraordinary journey being part of Big Big Train for over a decade. At first, I was just laying down the drums (which was fantastic!). However, as time went on, I got the opportunity to write and also jumped at the chance to lend my voice to this amazing band.
All The Love We Can Give is about the power of love. Especially loving someone who may not love you back. I’m not necessarily talking about love in a relationship (boyfriend/girlfriend, man & wife, life partner, mom & dad, etc.) but the love for your fellow man.
It is so easy to hate but takes work to love and I truly believe – and I know this will sound sappy – that loving/treating your neighbour like you would want to be loved/treated is what everyone should strive to do. It would make life so much better. Too simple a thought? Maybe so, but it has worked for me in very profound ways. I’ve had incredible opportunities come my way just by treating people the way I would like to be treated. I’ve found that if you give love freely you will get it back tenfold in return. It really does work.
The song came to me pretty fast during the main lockdown due to the pandemic back in March 2020. I got the inspiration and ran with it. I love the way David’s voice sounds when he sings in a lower register. He doesn’t do it very often, but his voice is so full sounding. He is a big David Bowie fan, as am I, and that sound and vibe is what propelled me in the first section of the song. Once the melody and lyric direction took hold in the first verse and chorus, the rest of the song took shape. I got obsessed with finishing the song and worked on it every day until I had the first demo completed without working on anything else. It was invigorating to have the feeling that I had something special brewing.
I came up with the arpeggiated guitar part that plays during the first verses and hummed a melody along to it. That first building block led to the chorus chord progression and to finding the lyric and title of the song. Once there I felt the tune needed to have a few different sections (thank you progressive rock!) so I could get the point across which I was trying to make and that gave me a clearer picture of the song’s trajectory. The first section is showing our guy feeling good about giving, the second section shows he’s not afraid to give, the third section shows the blowback and hate he gets for giving, and the fourth section brings it full circle where “he” has turned to “we”. Showing the power of giving if we all do it.
Having these different sections made it so I could try to mould some musical parts to fit the story. The first and last sections were inspired by 80s era David Bowie, like something from the Let’s Dance album. The second section was inspired by my love for soul and R&B music. You might think it’s funny, but I was totally channeling The Temptations. That four on the floor beat that was all over soul music from the 1960’s. It gave that section energy and a happy feeling. Then I was able to channel my inner rocker for the third section. I was feeling a little Deep Purple inspiration when I came up with the guitar riff. After hearing my demo and deciding that the song would make the record the guys said the final version of the song should retain me singing that rocking section. I was excited because I got to sing hard and strong. Trying to get some grit and gruff into my voice.
Later on in the year the rest of the guys started recording the song and adding their flavours to it. It always amazes me what they come up with. Greg’s touch on the bass, David’s voice, and Rikard! What can I say….that dude ROCKS!!! He added so many fun textures to the song. He covered a lot of my original parts and then also gave the song a big lift with little touches of sound throughout. The icing on the cake was Rob’s mix. He was able to get everything to come across just like I had envisioned.
The video that accompanies this blog shows me creating some of the bass parts, singing the rock section, and a little bit of drums from the session at Sweetwater Studios. All in all, it was super fun ride creating this song and it made the time in lockdown go way better and a little faster.
The song started as a Sweetwater product video back in March 2019. One weekend I went through all of the little bits of music which I had previously written for product videos and realised that there were many great ideas just screaming to be turned into fully fledged songs.
For those of you that have no idea what Sweetwater is: I work for this giant online music gear retailer here in the USA. I am a content creator for Sweetwater, which basically means I make videos for all of the drum gear we sell. Sweetwater also has world class recording studios and I am the in-house drummer for anyone that comes in to record and needs a drummer. I do a lot of vocal sessions and produce/engineer once in a while when needed. I’ve recorded drums at Sweetwater for all of the Big Big Train albums from Folklore onwards.
When the time came to start coming up with ideas for the next BBT album I felt very strongly that we should include a quintessential instrumental track. I wanted to write the band’s Los Endos, if that makes sense. You long time progheads will know what I mean! Anyway, I wanted to make a track that really showed off the talent of all the amazing musicians in this band. I’ve written instrumentals for the band already like Pantheon on our Grand Tour album, so I knew that the team could totally play anything I threw at them. Boy, did they prove me right!
Once I committed myself to this task I started writing and looking for ideas. Then I remembered all of those little pieces of music I had written for product videos and started listening through them. Thankfully I had spent that time finding all of them and putting them into one folder, so I just listened to one after the other. When the piece came on that turned into Apollo I knew right away that it was the one I wanted to build upon. What that original piece had was the intro and the first verses. It was a good starting point and I dug the melody line of the verse. It is a very sing-able line – something that I think will get stuck in people’s brains after hearing it. That was an important piece to this puzzle because I set out to create an instrumental that was not just shedding on our instruments but something that would be accessible and fun to listen to whether you are a musician or not.
Next I thought about the unique instrumentation of BBT. We have so many wonderful ‘voices’ to play with and I wanted every one of them in this song. The first step was adding violin to the main verse melody. When I did that and heard it back for the first time it brought back all of my early years as a huge Jean-Luc Ponty fan. In my late teens I went through a big fusion jazz/Latin music phase. I still love all of that music to this day but back then I was DEEP into it. Jean-Luc Ponty always had the best musicians playing for him and I really enjoyed seeing him play live, which I did many times.
I then thought it would be great to have David play that line on flute as well. Guitar, flute, and violin gave that melody some real punch and all of those tones totally complement each other.
Once I felt good about the opening section I built the rest of the song from there. I knew I wanted some sort of solo section and a way to get the brass into the mix. So I came up with a simple progression to solo over and a transition piece that would bridge the two solos. Man oh man did Rikard rock my world with both solos! He has got all the chops in the world and also such great rhythmical sense. I was smiling from ear to ear when I first heard them.
The brass on the horn fanfare between and after the solos gave the song that BBT sound and once again, it is a sing-able melody line which helped get the song back to the main melody from the beginning section of the tune.
All of this was building towards the giant, huge, massive, prog ending I was hearing in my head. The trick was to find the way there. It needed to be exciting and build tension that could be released at the big end section. With that in mind I was able to create a little part for me to go crazy on the drums and a fun double time build into the end section.
In that big end bit, I can totally envisage the crowd with their hands in the air going back n forth, all of the lights and haze on the stage, the band just absolutely slamming, the crowd singing along with the melody the BBT brass ensemble are playing, until we reach a glorious end!
YEAH!! I love Apollo!
‘Let words make common ground
On which we all can tread’
With our music on the Common Ground album taking a more rocky direction than on recent releases, I began to think about a song I had sat on the shelf (or rather, on an old hard drive.) The song had been written back in 2013 just after the English Electric albums but was never released as it was always allocated to a project that was just over a seemingly ever-receding horizon (firstly a concept album which we abandoned and secondly a recording workshop in the United States which fell victim to the pandemic.)
We had plenty of new songs for the Common Ground album so there was no need to revisit an older track, but my instinct was that this song would fit nicely with the new material and so should be put forward as a possible contender for the album.
The only issue with the song was that the lyrics were specific to the abandoned concept, so they would need a re-write. But the music had stood the test of time and the band worked on it with some gusto. David also suggested that we deploy NDV’s, Rikard’s and Carly’s voices as lead vocalists on different verses (with David top-and-tailing the song on verses one and five). This turned out to be a terrific idea, showing off the strength-in-depth of the vocal side of the band and adding a considerable amount to the impact of the song.
Of course, singers need words to sing and that was where I was left scratching my head a bit as the song needed a completely new set of lyrics. In the end, the idea for the subject matter of the song came back to a visit I had made to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on the day after our show at the Town Hall in October 2019. One of the galleries had a small display on the history of the collections and featured a photograph of the aftermath of a bombing raid in November 1940. The collections of knowledge gathered together in libraries and museums are precious things and attempts at the ruin of these houses of wisdom are terrible events.
The physical destruction of objects which carry ideas (the burning of books, the smashing of monuments etc) may seem less of an issue today because of the ability to digitise and share information. Due to the advances of technology, knowledge is, of course, more widely available than ever before. But the mechanisms we use to distribute ideas are also enabling people to turn against each other with extraordinary ease. And as people retreat into their entrenched positions it seems that even established scientific knowledge is up for debate (witness the rise of the flat-Earthers and other such movements.) This all makes me wonder whether we are really that far removed from the irrational behaviours of people in earlier times, when book-burning and the smashing of artefacts was commonplace.
The opening sections of Black With Ink take the listener back to the city of Alexandria in Roman times. Alexandria was famous in Antiquity for its lighthouse (one of the Seven Wonders) and the song references the lighthouse as a beacon to call ships to safe harbour. Alongside the lighthouse, Alexandria was also notable for its great library. The library featured the greatest collection of scholarly works in the ancient world and was a centre of learning which Carl Sagan described as the point of origin of the intellectual adventure which eventually led us into space.
The Library suffered from fire damage during a period of conflict and then went into gradual decline in the later Roman period. In the end, as Sagan’s film shows, almost nothing of the Library remains. However, some copies of the scrolls and parchments survived elsewhere. That some of these remaining documents were passed down through the ages is due primarily to custodians in a handful of other cities including Constantinople, Córdoba and Baghdad.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, Baghdad was an extraordinary centre of intellect, with scholars based in the city carrying out their own research and also translating vast amounts of classical literature (helping to preserve many of those works). Sadly, Baghdad fell to Hulagu Khan in 1258. So many books were thrown into the Tigris it was said that the river ran black with ink. This is an extraordinary image of the physical destruction of ideas which I lifted for the title of the song.
Incidentally, there are a couple of terrific books which helped me when researching Black With Ink and are well worth checking out if the subject matter is of interest. The first of these is Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge which tells the story of how classical ideas were lost and found. The second is The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey which is a book about the difficult transition from Antiquity to the medieval world.
Back to the song: with the lyrics completed, we recorded Black With Ink in November last year.
I was very pleased that Black With Ink was selected for Common Ground and that the song will finally take its place in the band’s catalogue when the album is released in July. Those listeners who are members of the Passengers Club should also watch out for an update later in the year when we share a work-in-progress recording of the 2013 version of the song. The contrast between past and present is quite interesting.
GMS June 2021
I have just turned 56 years old. I have adult children and two young grandchildren. I am, as they say, no spring chicken.
I don’t particularly feel old, but I am increasingly aware that time is passing. So, I try to extract the most from the things that I experience (the spectacular displays of hawthorn blossom have particularly drawn my eye in recent weeks). I do this because I wonder, sometimes, how many more years I will be around to see that blossom, or the bluebells raising their beautiful heads from the undergrowth.
I became a full-time musician at the age of 52 (better late than never). I work hard at song-writing and playing bass and all of the things that musicians have to do to help their music be heard. I try to be productive and, I think, do a reasonable job of being so these days.
But it hasn’t always been this way. For most of my life I have been someone who coasts along, without worrying too much about making the most of things. This is probably what happens to many people when they are young and when time seems more bountiful. The danger is, you can end up treading water for too long and find that the tide has gone out.
Inevitably, I look back at my younger self and wonder why I didn’t work harder, write more songs, travel further. It’s an entirely fruitless exercise as it is what it is (or was what it was). But it is difficult not to be frustrated at my lack of drive in those earlier years.
When I was a kid, I used to love picking the seed-heads of dandelions. I’d blow on them as hard as I could to scatter the seeds. The number of puffs needed to clear the head would tell the approximate time. It didn’t of course, and I knew this even then, but it was the folklore, and to a young child, folklore is the law.
Looking back on that tradition (and teaching it on to my own grandchildren) made me think of the Dandelion Clock as a metaphor for the passing of time and so I decided to write a song. I came up with an introduction on 12-string guitar, and the makings of a verse and a chorus.
When I am at the early stages of writing a song, I normally just make an audio or a video recording of work-in-progress on my iPhone. I am terrible at remembering chords and this helps me get some of the right notes in more-or-less the right order.
Whilst writing this blog, I checked my phone and found a video of an early incarnation of Dandelion Clock. The video (shared below) was filmed on the 20th April 2020. You can tell from the video why I am rarely allowed to sing backing vocals.Anyway, from these humble little beginnings, songs are born.
I sent the 12-string ideas over to Rikard who developed the parts and then to David and NDV. David and his partner Sarah liked the tune and David ended up working on piano and vocal parts for Dandelion Clock in some downtime from his solo recording work at Playpen Studios in Bristol. Sarah went on to feature the windblown seeds in one of her paintings for the album.
Dandelion Clock is a gentle, ruminative song. It’s not grandiose or tricksy, it just chimes along.
It’s here, then it’s gone.
GMS June 2021.
When the first UK lockdown happened in March 2020, the world was in a state of shock. Something which could bring the world to its knees is the stuff of Science Fiction novels and nightmares. The phrase ‘unprecedented circumstances’ was often used in the press and government announcements to describe what was happening. We had ventured off the map and into the unknown.
Something which really helped me get my head around the events of 2020 was regularly walking in nature; through the woodland and down by the brook, where I live. Being outside and in the natural world was a comfort to me. The media bulletins were unsurprisingly doom laden. I deliberately made a point of reading the news only once a day, ignoring the frenzy and hysteria of the TV news. Getting outside, walking in nature, breathing the fresh air seemed to make me feel better.
The other thing that helped is an old familiar companion of mine: music. Listening and writing music is what I do. It is how I make sense of this world.
Since the completion of BBT’s UK Tour in November, I had gone straight into recording and producing the Between A Breath And A Breath album with Dyble Longdon.
Before the pandemic happened, I had three pieces of music ear-marked for the follow up album to Grand Tour. However once we’d been in lockdown for a period of time, I found that some of these ideas didn’t seem relevant anymore. My heart wasn’t in them. I didn’t feel as though I wanted to research historical events and figures as we (BBT) had often done in the past. I wanted to react to what was happening in the world at that time.
The music for The Strangest Times was originally something that I wrote for an abandoned BBT concept album called ‘Hope’. It was originally entitled ‘The Pagan Times’. I expanded upon the original musical arrangement and also wrote new lyrics about what was happening in the world during that time and how I felt about it. The music has a driving piano feel to it. I wanted it to sound like an Elton John rocker with that sort of pushing rhythm piano playing that he does. When Rikard Sjöblom and I spoke about this song and I referenced Elton John, he mentioned Grey Seal from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road as an external stimuli – which was an extremely good call. Rikard’s swift piano arpeggios were inspired from this track of Elton’s.
Dave Foster played electric guitar on this song and when we met at Real World in Nov 2020, I said that I wanted the electric part to be a “Pete Townshend-esque” sort of thing. Dave knew exactly what I meant.
Carly Bryant added her vocals along with Nick D’Virgilio and Rikard. I really like the fact that we have so many capable singers and I look forward to hearing where we go with this as we grow.
Steve Vantsis’ imaginative image for The Strangest Times single depicts a negative image of a tree and a swing. The dark skies are filled with images of doom laden tabloid headlines.
It has not been easy creating videos for singles when we can’t be together physically as a band. Hat’s off to Christian Rios for coming up with very creative solutions in unusual circumstances.
Q: Does this mean that you’re no longer writing songs based on historical figures and events?
A: No. I just like to be free to write about what I feel that I want to write about.
Q: Will writing about the UK lockdown make this song date?
A: Undoubtedly. I look forward to a time when these unprecedented strange days are well behind us, consigned to the pages of history.
Take care & stay safe
David Longdon
Nottingham, July 2021
