This time last year I was unpacking my annual Spotify most-played list and found that my three top artists were Tony James Shevlin, Tony Winn, and Steven Turnbull. Having been co-opted into various line ups in order to perform the music of these esteemed artistes, it was no great surprise to find that my evenings of practice at home prior to joining up with the band(s) had elevated their rotation numbers to a position above those of (say) Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which is the only other thing I can remember trying to find online in 2023.
To my great pleasure I found myself in the same room as two of those same people at an undisclosed location in darkest Essex, gathered with what we calculated to be five sixths of a remarinated Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs in order to strip down the back catalogue down to its bare bones and reassemble it with, say, a three ninety-six, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. To this end we have transported Steven off the internet and into the room and invited him to express himself through the media of synthesized piano, organ presets and swell pedals over the sweet, sweet candy malarkey that is our back catalogue.
Far from simply trying to remember the chords at rehearsals, we now are indulging ourselves in reforming the malleable bits and forging on with – if not reinventing the wheel, then certainly asking what colour we think it should be. Everything has a bit more room to breathe, we’re stripping things out rather than loading them in, and the vibe is very much those collaborative conversations you see on the Celtic Connections series, or during episodes of Live at Daryl’s House. It’s quite the fillip to realise that it’ll be a decade next year since we started fooling around with this in Helen’s Snug, and as a result we are determined to celebrate our tinth anniversary in style.
Hope you like our new direction.
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