Poison Pen - the journey...
Casimir Greenfield's forthcoming album 'Poison Pen' has been a long time coming.
We began work on the recordings for the new album at the beginning of February 2013 at Get It Together in Stroud with a core group of musicians; Richard Webb on drums, Chris Aylmer on bass, Chris Egan on sax, Mike Cooling on guitar and Rufus Fry playing harmonica . To complete the album, we took the basic tracks into Ragged Moon Studios at the beginning of 2014, working with Mike as my co-producer and engineer.
Some of the tracks were re-recorded, others were mixed down from their original recordings and the 1977 tracks were completed at Ragged Moon. (We think that our session is one of the longest ongoing recording projects in rock history...) The track list for Boy In The Attic is now complete, but I was on a creative high, and we ended up with twenty songs under consideration before paring the list down to twelve killer tracks.
The songs on the album are mostly newly written, but I had discovered those 1977 tracks from my first album on a couple of two inch master tapes that we never used at the time and had forgotten about... Many of the tracks still sounded fresh and current, so we have picked two to augment, one for a complete song re-write (but using the 1977 backing track) and one that has a string quartet added along with a couple of harmony vocals. So there I am, harmonising and performing with my younger self. Emotional stuff...
And so the excitement began. Alan Tocknell came in for three days to lay down new drum tracks. He builds his own kit, so the sound is unique and totally awesome. Mike and I have been laying down acoustic and electric guitar lines, plus my guide vocals and the first of the backing vocal tracks. We completed work with Chris Egan, Rufus Fry and Oogoo Maia and Andrew Butler on keyboards. Stephane Marlot has recorded some beautiful cello parts and Niks Patel added some groovy congas with partner Lara Conley singing harmony of one epic track.
And now, on October 29th 2014 at 17:00 hrs...we finally did it! All ten tracks for the new album have been mixed and signed off! Wow! Quite a session...
Small bottle of Moet opened and enjoyed with smoked oysters at Cosmic Acres...
Co-producer Mikey Cooling is off to France for a producers workshop, I'm finishing the last edits of the forthcoming book and when Mikey returns, we'll be rehearsing the band for the promo tour. Exciting times ahead.
ps - we recorded twennty songs in all, so expect bonus tracks and hidden gems...
