CBG With Billy Fury

We were all round at my place, theoretically to finish off the recording for the album.

Well, we did finish off the recording for the album but David had brought along a small bust statue of Billy Fury and as we are featured regularly on his tribute web site we thought we should try to have a photo of the band "with" Billy Fury.

We tried this a few ways but the statue was quite shiny (and we're not!) and the only way I could get it to look anywhere near right was to simulate the two photos as pencil drawings in Paint Shop Pro which produced this. I'm sure it would be easier using a photo of the real Billy, but we liked the effect which may be used for an album cover at some point, who knows?

Work on the 3rd album - now entitled Crossing Lines will continue with some mixing and production work before I can start to burn the CDs and we have decided on the image for the cover so we need a fine day to get the photos taken and then design the cover and label for the discs.

It's been a long time coming. But it does sound good...!

Golden Wedding Gig

Creeping Bentgrass were out at Garstang Golf Club last night, playing for a Golden Wedding party.

It all went down very well, though I had a couple of small mishaps - the keyboard refused to work at one point and it was one of those songs where I play a guitar intro first so we had to play the entire song without any help from the keyboard so no drums or backing fill, but no worries!

Thankfully the keyboard worked after pretending it was a Spectrum ZX and switching it off and on again! Then the guitar went silent until I fiddled with the cable at the guitar end. That cable has now been ditched!

And after all that I started to play the intro for I Will Love You on the keyboard and totally forgot the tune. The old befuddled mind went blank and I busked a fairly nondescript but compatable intro, trying to ignore David killing himself next to me whispering between the laughter "You've forgotten the tune haven't you?" I remembered it once he started singing the first verse...!

If we didn't make mistakes, how would you know it was live? Ha ha! Anyway I don't think anyone else noticed apart from us.

A Winter's Tale

Yes I know it's only September!

That's the title of the second Christmas song we are doing for the Billy Fury web site this December.

A Winter's Tale was a hit for David Essex in the days when he had hair on his shoulders. Well... so did I! None on my head, but there was some on my shoulders...

I've used the Korg keyboard on this one and it will be our first track using the Korg rather than the Yamaha. Very orchestral and quite different to our normal stuff. Moya! Have you got your Billy alerts tuned in? It will be BILLYant!!!

Christmas Comes Early

I've spent the best part of the day putting together a backing track for our contribution to the Billy Fury website's Christmas Sounds Special.

We are committed to do a couple of Christmas songs for December and today I've been putting together the song "I Believe In Father Christmas" which was a hit in the 1970s for Greg Lake.

It only sounds a little like the original because that's the way I like to do music. I would hate to be thought of as sounding "just like" anyone else!

Anyway it's been a full day. I did a full four tracks just doing the jingle bells! Then there was a backing track of drums, two of piano, two of accoustic guitar, one of glockenspiel, one of trumpets, one of french horns, one of a brass section, two electric guitars - sheesh, I'm getting sick of that song... ha ha!

It now needs one more accoustic guitar, David's singing which I'll double-track, then Bob to put bass and a bit of mandolin on it and hey presto - 4 minutes of Christmas!

A Billy Fury Tribute

We have a new song on the Billy Fury web site for the month of September.

Last Night Was Made For Love was one of Billy's best remembered hits and my personal favourite and it also happens to be the opening track from our soon-to-be released third album.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Billy Fury was billed as England's answer to Elvis. Born Ronald Wycherley on 17 April 1940 in Liverpool, he became one of the Larry Parnes stable of artists, appearing on TV shows such as "Oh Boy". During the 1960s he had 24 chart entries, clocking up an impressive 258 weeks on the Top 50.

The website keeps Billy's name and music alive through an excellent collection of sound and video resources, interactive forums and the monthly "Sounds Special" feature which contains an free album's worth of music recorded by artists from all around the world. A must for Billy Fury fans and we hope that our fans will have a listen to all the songs not just our own. There is a facility to comment on the "Sounds Special".