David Foster & David Longdon

DF. :  Last year, as COVID hit us all, I started writing for what will be the next Dave Foster Band album and as any song writer does, I wrote and prepared much more material than was expected to be used. I wrote roughly thirty different pieces of music and in amongst them was a demo I really liked called ‘Blood Moon’ (random working title for the track). However, it didn’t fit with the overall sound I had in mind for the DFB album, as, given the nature of the track, it would need a brass band which at the time, I didn’t have access to. 

A few months later I found myself at Real World with Big Big Train, meeting most of the band for the first time as well as doing some recording. The weekend went really well, the guys were all great and very welcoming to both Carly and I, so much so that I felt like I’d known everyone for a lot longer than I had done. It was during Carly’s recording of vocals for either ‘Dandelion Clock’ or ‘Atlantic Cable’ in the Wood Room that I was chatting to David Longdon about songwriting.  He asked if I had any material that we could use to write together – I immediately thought of Blood Moon.

DL. :  A beaming Dave Foster entered the Wood Room at Real World Recording Studios in the early afternoon of Saturday the 28th of Nov 2020. I was struck by his immediate friendliness and warmth. It felt as if we had known him for a long time. Big BIg Train’s manager Nick Shilton has indeed known Dave for years and when the time came for us to audition for a guitarist, Dave was high on our list. 

It is a big deal walking in to meet a band in a professional capacity, on their home turf, but Dave looked confident and assured. We recorded a stripped back version of Common Ground live in The Wood Room that afternoon with Dave and Greg on acoustic guitars, Carly Bryant on piano and vocals (it was the first time that we’d met Carly too) and me on vocals and acoustic guitar. By the end of the session, it was clear that what we had together worked well. I happened to mention to Dave about how I liked his friendly enthusiastic demeanour and he said that his parents would say that he is “Made From Sunshine”. My inner song writer made a note of this as a possible song line for later use.

Dave said that he had written a piece of music that he would like me to work on with him. Once we’d returned home from Real World he sent me the audio files. The song had a working title of ‘Blood Moon’. When I listened to it for the first time, I expected the song to be a proggy sort of thing with plenty of full frontal guitar playing opportunities. But what I heard was really pleasing. I liked the directness and brevity of the song. It was well written and well structured and it reminded me of something akin to the sort of thing that Johnny Marr might come out with.

DF. :  David and I were both wrapped up in different things for a while and it was a couple of months later that NDV recorded the drums for the new tracks including ‘Made From Sunshine’ and sent them to the band members. I was spellbound by the video, his playing was typically ace and the sound of the kit was fabulous too. A week later Dave Desmond expanded my original brass parts significantly, scored out the parts and then recorded them with Rob. Dave wrote the perfect part and it was as if we were all in the same room discussing it.

DL. :  I set about writing a vocal melody. The unusual rhythm of the piece dictated where certain aspects of the melody needed to fall. The song is upbeat and bursting with life. It sounded nothing like the moody brooding song that I envisaged from it’s working title. I called Dave and said that I liked the music but I wasn’t sure that the music sounded like ‘Blood Moon’ and how did he feel about calling it ‘Made From Sunshine’? He said okay and so I then began writing the lyrics.

I like it when songs celebrate events in peoples lives. Ray Davies is a master at writing about this type of thing. I thought that the song could be about parents bringing home a newborn child for the first time. I drew upon my own feelings when my daughters were born and I brought them home. It is a magical time. I ran this idea past Dave and he approved.

DF. :   David then called to discuss the track which he now had a melody for and sent it over to me. It worked really well, so, given a big thumbs up from me, he started working on the lyrics. During a brief call a week later David read the lyrics to me, which I instantly loved. He is a great lyricist and had put together the perfect theme to the track. The next time I heard anything about the song was when Rob Aubrey sent me the track with my original demo parts, plus NDV’s drums and David’s vocals. It gave me goosebumps as soon as I heard it, it all worked together so gorgeously. 

DL. :  I thought about the song being a duet. I have sang on two songs by DBA (Downes Braide Association) where Chris Braide and I sing close harmonies in a Simon and Garfunkel/Finn Brothers kind of way. For MFS I wrote it from the parents point of view and I demo’ed two vocal lines. Clare Lindley had joined BBT as a violinist and vocalist and I liked her voice and thought that we should sing the duet together. Clare came on board by the time the Common Ground album was made. I see ‘Made From Sunshine’ as welcoming Clare into the fold and it showcases her vocal abilities very nicely.

DF. :  I was very keen to have every member of the band on this track, so one by one each of them recorded their parts and over a few days it became what you hear now. Clare’s vocals work amazingly well with David’s, Greg’s bass playing is awesome, as is his tone, Carly and Rikard were equally brilliant and both their parts hit the nail on the head with what the song needed. I think I was last to put my guitars on as up to now, it was still my demo part.

I can honestly say that this is one of the few recordings I’ve been a part of, where everybody has recorded the perfect parts for the song.

This song came about because of an unexpected journey in Italy. I was on holiday in Milan with my wife, Kathy, and we had travelled to the airport to fly back home. The plane from the UK that was due to land at Milan was diverted to Venice due to bad weather. Rather than hang around at the airport for a day or two, we rebooked our flight so that we could return from Genoa a few days’ later. With some time on our hands to explore the city, we ended up walking out to the beautiful lighthouse which is called the Lanterna di Genova. The Lanterna was built in the 16^th century but there has been a lighthouse on the site since 1128. I liked the thought of mankind building these tall towers of light to extend our reach into the sea and to help bring sailors safely home.

Musically, one section of the song shares a theme with Atlantic Cable and, at one stage, I was considering Lanterna and Atlantic Cable as parts of a single long track. However, in the end, I felt they worked better as separate songs.

Lanterna features powerful guitar work from Rikard and lovely piano playing from Carly who sought to conjure up the stormy seas.  

GMS

This song is based around some memories of my childhood. I lived in a road called Moss Drive which was a quiet cul-de-sac in Sutton Coldfield, a small town in the Midlands. Moss Drive was built on the site of an old quarry and the houses on our side of the road had long back gardens with a hill at the end (which we called ‘the bank’). These seemingly endless back gardens and the 2,400 acres of Sutton Park which was just a bike ride away were excellent playgrounds. I had really good friends in the road (including a childhood sweetheart) and I was blissfully happy. 

Back in the 70’s in the Midlands, it was very cold and we would have deep snow two or three times a year. The house would be so cold there would be ice inside the windows (my Mum would say that Jack Frost had called during the night). I didn’t mind though as I’d get to go sledging with my friends.

Unfortunately, my happy childhood had a sad ending. My parents went through a very difficult divorce and my childhood sweetheart moved away. In the end we had to leave the house I grew up in and we went to live in a small flat in a different part of town. I had no friends there and was very miserable for a while. Proper Jack Froster is a song about those childhood experiences. 

I wanted the early parts of the song to feel jaunty and full of the high-spirits of childhood and so the verses are built around Dave Foster’s electric 12-string guitar, with Rikard on acoustic 12-string in the choruses. The violin is by BBT’s new violin player Clare Lindley and I am so pleased that Clare joined us in time to feature on this album. I wrote the lyrics mostly in the first person, but, in the middle 8, Carly takes the lead vocal as an observer watching the boy’s world fall apart:

‘But home does not feel like a home anymore

The monsters are waiting outside an open door

The places you ran to are further away

The friends that you ran with have all gone astray’

There was a happy ending though. In real-life, my Mum met my lovely Step-Dad and they have been happily married for many decades. I went off to university and ended up with a beautiful wife and two lovely children. But, as I have got older, I do think often of those early years and, in the closing section of the song (which features Dave Desmond’s beautiful brass arrangement) I imagine returning to the Midlands for one last run on our old sledge.

The single release of Proper Jack Froster will be  accompanied by an animated film made by the extraordinary Love Andreas Gson Fagerstedt. Love has worked with us previously on a film for Brew and Burgh. This will released in due course.

GMS

I don’t write many love songs, something which has caused the odd wry comment from my wife, Kathy! So, this one is for her. Like Lanterna, it is set in Italy. We were visiting the Capitoline museums in Rome and I saw Kathy looking up at a statue of Venus. I thought to myself that when I met Kathy, I had found my own Capitoline Venus.  

This is an unusually stripped-back song for BBT, featuring only David on vocals and Mellotron and me on 12-string guitar. It is always tempting to orchestrate songs and bring in lots of different parts, but sometimes a direct and simple arrangement is the best way forward. 

GMS

We live in such a strange time. So much division and anger thrown in our faces from the news and social media every day. Boy does it get old. As much as I try to stay away from the noise it still seeps in. I’ve been on this planet for a while now (53 years to be exact) and when I was young there was still division of course. People have always disagreed on politics, religion, and other things but I think the immediate access of everything makes it so we can never escape. It’s thrown in our faces constantly and that is why I wrote this song. Connection Plan is a song about connecting with others despite our differences. I don’t think it is a naïve concept.

OK, that’s the reason for the lyric behind the song. Now onto the music. 

I love writing for my band because there are so many sounds, textures, and grooves, to play with. It is almost endless and so much fun. It is also amazing how a song can make itself known from a random place. I was learning a new DAW (digital audio workstation) called LUNA by the company Universal Audio. I pulled up a cello sound in one of the virtual instruments that come with the program and started fooling around. After a while jamming the main line that starts the song took shape. I immediately went to the drums and started grooving with just the cello line and from there I was off to the races. When inspiration hits, I really try to run with it. From there the bass part took shape along with the initial melody for the chorus. I didn’t have any concept for the lyrics at that point. I messed around with the main groove for a few days and was sort of stuck until I came up with the violin line that happens at about 2:30 into the song. It is where Rikard plays his killer guitar solo. From there I worked backwards and came up with what I call the “B” section. That part is at 1:26 into the song where the lyric says to count your blessings. Once that part was there, I worked on the arrangement, lyrics, and overall vibe of the song. If you are interested, you can check out my original demo I sent to the band here. 

           Once the band agreed on recording the track, I asked a friend of mine here in Fort Wayne if he would take a stab at the string part. His name is Derek Reeves. Derek is a fantastic musician that plays for our local philharmonic as well as many different bands in town. I met Derek not to long after I moved to Fort Wayne at a jam session. We hit it off and have been friends ever since. I don’t get a chance to play with Derek as much as I would like but I knew he would be able to play the string part for this song and give it great life and energy. Here are a couple of links to learn more about Derek:

https://fwphil.org/about-the-phil/meet-the-musicians/derek-reeves-1

https://www.facebook.com/derek.reeves

  One thing I didn’t know while playing the line on keyboard was how hard it would be to play on violin. Once the line was set up like I liked it I tried to play it on guitar to see how the fingering was and it was not very easy. Violin is of course very different than guitar so I crossed my fingers that it would work. Thankfully it did. Derek agreed to come to Sweetwater Studios to lay down the part. It was a fun and easy session. 

Here are a few other highlights in the song that I’d like to point out:

             • Rikard’s guitar part in the 2^nd verse. The way he played the chords on his Strat and used the tremolo arm to make the chords sounds weird (in a great way!) I absolutely love!

• David’s voice on the bridge. Where the lyric is “count your blessings”. His voice is very powerful and just sends the song into another level for those 16 bars.

             • The bass pedals in the “2^nd bridge” at 2:50 into the song. Greg bass playing is fantastic, but he is also great at knowing where to change sounds like playing the bass pedals in that section. They add so much weight and I feel they really make the lyric have more meaning and punch.

I did take a little bit of Iphone video from the session with Derek. You’ll be able to tell quickly that I didn’t give him the easiest string part to tackle, and you will also be able to quickly see the level of musician Derek is.

Cheers everyone! NDV

Another song set in Italy, this one about an attempt to find an answer to something I have long wondered about. I am currently learning to speak Italian but it’s a bit of a struggle at my age and I have had to rely on the advice and assistance of dear friends in Italy, especially Emile Martin and Massimo Memè. Boys, I owe you both several beers!

Oak and Stone features beautiful performances from David, Nick and Rikard. The bass on the song is by Riaan Vosloo (I don’t play upright bass and I felt this song needed that distinctive sound) and the violin is by Aidan O’Rourke. My only role, apart from as songwriter, was to play the Mellotron and bass pedals.

Nick and Rikard added the lovely coda late on in the song’s development. 

GMS

I forget the date when Greg and I spoke, but it was when we for sure knew that we were going to release some of the extra songs we had after the Common Ground record came out. For instance, and if I remember correctly, the song Connection Plan was still around and a few other things. We were originally going to release an EP. Not a full record. Greg said something to me like “you should write a tune where you go absolutely nuts on the drums.” Like I haven’t done that already on some BBT songs! Ha!!! I knew what he meant, and I set out to do just that.

I make a lot of drum gear demo videos for my “day job” at Sweetwater. That’s the giant online gear retailer in the US. I like to show drums of in the context of music. I think it is better than just hearing them on their own, so I write music for them. Sometime the music is heavy, bluesy, jazzy, funky, and I may even go down a country road if it is called for. The great thing about it is that I am free to create. Pretty cool, huh?! 

It was from one of those pieces that the music for Bats In the Belfry came to be. I always wanted to turn the short bit that I had into a full song. Once Greg gave me the green light, that was all the inspiration I needed. I had a rough version of the first two sections, but they needed to be refreshed and built upon. I came home to my music room and got to work. 

The first thing I did was to re-learn how to play the drum part and I played the first two sections over and over. Then I got the idea to add our fantastic brass ensemble to this song. Over the years I have had a great time writing for those horns. I am by no means an expert, but I played a bit of trumpet and French horn when I was younger. Since I started coming up with parts on my songs for the horn players, I’ve studied up on them so I could write parts that are in the correct ranges of each horn. If I get off the tracks our resident expert Dave Desmond gets me back on the rails. I must say, hearing the horn section play something I’ve come up with is exhilarating! I added horns to the A section when it repeated, and it gave a nice lift to the song. 

From there the song sat dormant for a little while. I could figure where to go next. Then, as many things do, came the guitar riff that is in the fast middle section of the tune. As you can hear, I played it pretty straight and added the horns in to give the section a sort of “car chase” vibe you might hear in a movie. When I heard the guitar parts that Rikard added to this section for the first time I burst out in laughter. Laughter caused by pure musical joy! That is why this band is so great! Everyone has a huge and different musical vocabulary. The surf “Dick Dale” sounding guitar fits that section perfectly.

At this point I had the idea for the end “drum solo” section. There has been a popular thing amongst drummers online lately where they play a song and as the play the turn he beat around. All the while staying perfectly in time. It is a great rhythmic exercise you can do on any instrument and really helps your internal clock. For the end section I didn’t want it to be very long. We all know what most people think of drum solos, so I tried to be flashy and then get to the part where I play with the rhythm. The sequence that runs underneath the whole end section is what keeps everything tide together. When I start turning the beat around, if you listen closely, you can hear the accents in the sequence show up in different places. 

The last thing I needed was something to get me from the fast “surf” middle section to the drum solo. I randomly put up a church organ sound on my keyboard one day and the light bulb in my head turned on. I am amazed how fast it came together. Church organ, Mellotron choir (always a good thing), guitar, and the BBT brass. YES! What a combo! I still can’t believe I actually came up with all those parts. 

I guess the very last thing was the name. I called the song Drum Crazy for the longest time because I didn’t know what else to call it. Then, as you do, I Googled the word crazy to see what would pop up. As you can imagine, all kinds of things came up. One of those was Bats In the Belfry. A phrase the means someone has gone a bit mad, and this song is a bit mad. Perfect. 

Cheers, NDV

I wrote this song jet lagged in the middle of the night playing a grand piano with the Una Corda pedal on so as not to wake anybody. It was one of those songs that ‘wrote itself’ in one sitting. At the time I found the political situation unfathomable. I had also got locked into some optimistic (not) late night reading about extreme weather patterns, global warming and overpopulation. My close friend sent me a photo from hospital moments before I went to the piano: she had just given birth. In that way that the night time has, I felt full of worry. What does it mean to be born now? What would I say to this child….welcome to the planet? It sounded semi sarcastic and as a fan of dark humour, Cohen Brothers especially, I liked it. The image of a dystopian planet grew in my mind. The memory of starting school, and that terrifying paradox of being told to not talk to strangers but also not to be afraid came back to me. But I wanted the song to be positive and reassuring, ‘Grow your hair long, babe, you can’t go wrong’, is a T-Rex reference (every good song needs one?!): “be peaceful with your fellows”. The big chorus of voices are supposed to be the ‘goodies’ among us, appearing in the rivers and emerging from the trees…hidden voices under stones and on the clouds making newborns feel welcome and hopefully comforted..

The song was shelved until I met David and Greg at Real World Studios in 2020. David was from the same school as me, which is to say that we both felt giddy in agreement that encouragement can lead to great things. We really hit it off and then he encouraged me to share any song ideas I had with him and Greg; quite unexpectedly this song came back to me. I said to him something like, “It’s kind of murky, weird and changes genres a lot,” and he replied something like, “Christ, you sound like you’re giving a masterclass in prog!”. My nerves settled and I showed them the song. Greg was keen for me to get it demoed up and I felt a real sense of being respected by two people whose talents and gentlemanliness shine with radiance. There are lots of details I could go on about in this song, each instrument and voice is a character in the story; there’s a part that puts us in the womb, there’s a birth and there’s the world through the eyes of carefree children, but that’s enough background. I’ll now just tell you about the recording process.

First up I recorded piano, organ, some synths, a bit of mellotron and a Moog sample together with my lead vocal, five harmony lines for the choir, a comedy whistle and some recording I had on my phone of a primary school playground. Rob Aubrey did a mini mix of this and sent it to NDV. I emailed NDV some info on the song asking for the opening to be filled with the unexpected, and for the ending to reference David Bowie’s “Oh You Pretty Things”. About 3 weeks later he sent me this, to which I replied, “You are a genius”. Because he really is!!

Next I met the brilliant Dave Desmond on Zoom. I asked him for a fanfare. He was brimming with ideas and we discussed an atonal carousel for the opening and a New Orleans street band for the kids section. He sent me his arrangements and I just loved them. I don’t like using instruments for the sake of it so I was excited that it made sense for the brass ensemble to be in this song. I was gagging to work with them and recognise that they are a key feature of the BBT sound. Here is the notated brass fanfare.

Then the guitars. Dave Foster put the slide guitar lines in to weave through and swell with the choir voices, and Rikard put the playful guitars in the ending party section on the instruction to bring Keith Richards to the party! Both guys ‘got’ the song and delivered exactly what I wanted. It was magic!

Next came Greg’s bass and bass pedals. He and Rob sent me his parts when they had just finished recording them at Aubitt studios to check that I approved. I told them both in an email that this bass had transformed the song and that it was perfect, to which Rob replied, “You have made two old men very happy!”. By this time all the singers had layered up the 5 vocal lines multiple times and I really wanted Greg’s voice to feature, so I asked him to do the spoken word line. Perhaps one day he will share the first recording he did of this in jest because it’s bloody funny.

Next was my new friend, Clare, on violin. She recorded a beautiful passage that entwines itself with the Moog line, but also left space for the flute that was to come. What a joy it was to work with all these incredible talents, which leads me to the last piece of the puzzle – beloved David Longdon. Unlike some lead singers, David had absolutely no ego or need to be the centre of attention. He cared about the song, and wanted me to sing it because that made the most sense. I asked him to sing the opening lines as these are the ones that set the scene before we meet ‘Aunty Carly’. Then off he went on his flute, which he saw as an extension of his voice. David called to congratulate me after we were all emailed Rob’s final mixes. He knew I was nervous that fans or critics might think I was presumptuous in contributing a song and singing the lead vocal so early on in my BBT journey. He gave me some advice that I will always carry in my heart. Thank you David.

Coming soon.