“…The Phone Call”.

The Dogs try as best we can not to become encumbered by the possibility of us becoming a dead shark*. We also try not to jump the shark. The music business is, of course, a shark-eat-shark multiverse. If we were to gather together all the shark-based metaphors regarding our progress ever-forward, we’d need a bigger boat.

Endeavouring to keep the set list continually freshened up during the course of our relentless touring schedule means that we’re in no postion to let the alismatales grow under our feet. It only takes a couple of festival crowds to spot that you’re playing the same songs in the same order as you did last time and you’re bundled off the circuit quicker than you can say ‘SetlistFM’. With this in mind we hold regular song-wrangling workshops wherein tiny kernels of ideas are carefully fed and watered until they bloom (hopefully) into glorious panoplies of colour with which we adorn our set. That’s the idea. 

In reality Turny Winn, our banjo-frotting multi-instrumentalist, usually strums something unobtrusive at the end of a rehearsal which we all leap upon, divvy up the vocals and launch on an unsuspecting Fiddly Richard at the next gig. Meanwhile, carefully-manicured groupthink demo recordings continue to build up in our inboxes, patiently awaiting the flash of inspiration from whoever has volunteered to flesh them out with a narrative which will convert them into fully-fledged songs.

With this in mind I realised that a forthcoming four hour train journey I had to undertake would be the perfect opportunity to devote myself to knuckling down and producing a finished piece of work to present to the collective** at our next get-together. There had been a couple of gigs where our carefully-curated set list had been subject to a skipping order part-way through, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to knuckle down and see if I could do that thing that I'd read that proper writers do - sit down and work at their craft. Or craft their work. Either way, it was going to be something to occupy me on the trans-Southern Express.

As it happened, I’d been knocking around an idea called The Misfits for a while, engaged but not necessarily inspired by the film of the same name. I was interested in the idea of a pair who ride off into the sunset at the end of the song, and aren’t necessarily the sort of people you’d be rooting for in the first place or throughout the middle eight. Not exactly anti-heroes, but you wouldn't necessarily invite them round for tea without first hiding the silverware. As a melodic placeholder I used Neil Young’s Unknown Legend to hook the format together until I was able to hum something bespoke when I got in. 

By the time I was home again I had a notebook full of couplets, a couple of melodies and enough time to bang down a quick demo in Garageband which I sent out to Mr. Wendell and La Mulley to critique. A week later we were in The Snug at Helen’s, contemplating capos and ruminating on rhythms. Mr. Wendell considered my tried and tested Neil Young plod. “What about trying seventies New York white funk?” he said. Considering our reputation as the country’s finest purveyors of roots-based East Angliacana there was only one sensible answer. “Why not?” we replied as one.

A couple of weeks after that and after an extensive Doodle Poll had procured one of the three dates between now and our next gig that everyone was available we assembled at Mr. Wendell’s on a balmy late Spring evening to knock this sucker into shape. In line with the recording preset I'd submitted my demo version in, we were in a Nice Room. A fairly standard moot, in that Turny had remembered he had a prior engagement and so wasn't going to be able to contribute at this stage, Mr. Wendell didn't read his emails and so hadn’t realised we were all coming round to his, La Mulley was on a deadline to get back for the kids (their imposition of a curfew, not hers, I believe), Gib hadn’t listened to the song and Fiddly was just getting over having his fingering hand drawn part way into a lathe whilst hand-fashioning a set of castanets. As I say, a fairly standard get-together.

Helen suggested that we eschew the usual forty minute tea and biscuit icebreaker before getting down to work, and we embarked on the usual deconstruction of the exegesis (“So, what’s this one about...”). I moved a capo, Helen bespake a harmony, Mr. Wendell tried to remember what it reminded him of***, Gibbon effected some ersatz 1970’s New York White Funk and Fiddly reflected that this was “…quite a good one. Y’know, when you get the demo it sounds like all the others, but this is working out well”. I silently quelled my rising inner Ike Turner as I pressed ‘record’ on the reliable old Sony CFS-W338 we use to tape all our rehearsals.

“Yes, but is it better than something we’ve already got?” asked Mr. Wendell, invoking the formal statement of our songwriting creed.

“Well, we’re about to find out”.

*A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.

**We take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of more...well, you get the idea.

***Luckily he doesn’t own Harvest Moon, so I’m pretty safe on that score.