Mr Bassman

This afternoon Bob came round to run through some of our newer stuff as a rehearsal and also to put a bass track on a couple of the album tracks.

We all find it difficult to earmark time to get together other than at weekends and at the moment even weekends are a bit busy!

Bob also introduced us to a couple of new jig instrumentals as we've been playing "Bluebell Polka" for our instrumental spot for the last few years and it's time for a change.

St Patrick's Night Gig

Last night's gig for Garstang Light Opera Group (GLOG) was a brilliant night! David and I are pictured in silly mode at the start of the night. David needed the huge Guinness as he had had to cope with a flat tyre on the way to Cabus Village Hall!

It was a night interspersed with many guest artists who either sang and played on their own or who joined us for a song or two.

We tried out a few of our new songs but the night went so quickly that we still had plenty of stuff left unplayed at midnight when my ballgown started to turn back into rags!

Thanks as always to the stalwarts of GLOG for helping make the night so memorable!

Preparation for a Gig

Tonight is a St Patrick's Night event as a fund-raiser for the Garstang Light Opera Group. Bob is busy playing a ceilidh somewhere with his other band, The Old School Band, so this one will be just David and myself.

However that's not the end of the story because as you can imagine, a light opera society will have its own fair share of talented people and many of them will "do a turn" tonight. Peter and Shelagh Cooney will join us on stage and perhaps do a couple of songs on their own. Shelagh features on our "Kites" album singing and playing penny whistle on "Fields of Athenry" and the harmonies always make the hairs on the back of my neck tingle even as I'm helping sing them!

Another close harmony group are "Cantabile", made up of four members of GLOG (as Garstang Light Opera Group call themselves).

David and I have a lot of new material that we are trying out tonight - I'm sure it will go down well and we have a full set of Irish music before the dance and rock and roll stuff inevitably takes over towards the end of the night!

I've spent the morning putting new strings on the guitars and breaking them in - brand new strings go out of tune for fun until they've been played for a bit. I've also finished off "Somebody Else's Girl" (see previous entry in the blog) and that's gone off to http://www.billyfury.com to be included (hopefully) in the April online album. You can play this month's album until the 31st and it includes one of my solo tracks, "Blue Bayou".

I'll post a report of the gig in a day or two!

Ten Tracks Ready

Yes it's been another day of singing to ourselves trying to get the album ready. We are about halfway there now - ten tracks waiting for Bob to put bass on.

We also had a bash at another Billy Fury track - Somebody Else's Girl has been done from start to finish this weekend! Well almost... The idiot producer failed to save the guitar track so now that's going to have to wait until next week. You can hear a 40 second sample of the results without guitar by clicking the link to the left. So who is this idiot producer with the slapdash method of recording music then? Er... that'd be me...