Mixing at "State Of The Ark"

We're sitting here in the beautiful "State Of The Ark" studios in Richmond....Alan, John and myself, listening to a near-finished mix of a song co-written with Terry Britten called "Hold On". We're hoping to come out of these two days with 4 or 5 songs mixed. The guy on the desk (a vintage EMI board that's older than me) is Chris West, an all round good guy with great ears and astonishing good humour AND patience. This place has a great pedigree. That EMI desk is the very same one used by The Rolling Stones on many of their major recordings. It was rescued from scrap by Terry Britten, and lovingly restored to its present pristine state. We have elbowed ourselves a tiny slot between Noel Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft, who love working here.

Let's talk about who played on this song:

On the drums we have Tim Bye, who I've known for several years, and used on nearly everything I've recorded. He's a really song-driven player, which makes him really easy to work with. He's on the whole album.

On bass, this is the one track NOT played on by my good friend Phil Williams....I'll give you the lowdown on him later. The bass on "Hold On" was played by Andy Carr, another guy I have played with on and off for several years. Andy has been a session player here in the UK for 20 years, and currently tours with ABC. He used his new (vintage) jazz bass on this.

Guitar: I know Phil Williams through our many many years in Tony Hadley's band, and the guitar player on the majority of the album, Richard Barrett is from that band too. Richard is a very fine musician who is a real perfectionist and student of his instrument. This album isn't about flash playing...solos are few and far between, but what he has done is provide a solid backbone to the songs with the occasional flourish.

John suggested we contact British Jazz guitarist Jim Mullen about guesting on some tracks last Summer, which resulted in him coming up to my studio and spending a very fruitful morning.

Having said there are very few solos, "Hold On" did end up needing one, so when you get to hear the track, that's Jim playing the solo. I used to go and see his band "Morrissey Mullen" down at the Half Moon in Putney in the early 80's, way before I was even on the first rung of the music business, and it was pretty cool sitting there recording him at my place.

This song has a lot of backing vocals...it's kind of somewhere between Womack & Womack and Steve Winwood if that helps. John's old friend Mae McKenna, who has sung on absolutely MASSES of hit records (and some that weren't hits too) offered to help out, and after a couple of trips down to her house with my laptop and lot's of other bits, we had all the BVs sorted.

Along with Mae, Terry Britten sings on this, as do I myself.

What else do we have? The brass.....that's my brother Simon playing Alto and Tenor along with some flugel/ soft brass I played in.

All the keyboards were done at my place using Logic, but trying to sound like I wasn't.

Look out for the snippet of the final mix I'm going to post.

John O' KANE'S ALBUM...chapter 2

I met John in my role as a keyboard player, sometime in 1990. His management put a band together to rehearse down at the Ritz studios in Putney, London, in preparation for a back to back tour....firstly supporting Beverley Craven, and then going on to support Sting all around Europe on the "Soul Cages" tour. That was a pivotal experience for me as a musician, and it was also the beginning of a strong friendship, and creative association.

When the touring / solo career stopped I carried on working with John in the studio...his shed in the garden....working up arrangements of the songs he was bringing back from his writing trips. In the absence of any professional framework...budget...anything, it is remarkable how much effort we put into creating the best arrangements we could for those songs.

After having not been in touch much, save the occasional small recording project, since 2000, John called me in January 2007, to come to a meeting with him and his old friend Alan Campbell. He'd known Alan since he was this high, and the two friends had met up again at a time when each was dealing with big challenges. Alan had played in bands in Scotland, but did not follow John to into the professional world, and was now working as a director of a small company. Always a great supporter and admirer of John's talent, Alan resolved to do everything he could to bring it to the wider public again, after too many years in the background, and for both of them it represented a new positive focus.

Trawling through years of demos, they came up with a shortlist which featured my name as arranger quite heavily, which in turn added weight to the instinct John probably already had to ask me to play on, and produce the album. In the absence of a record company, there was a corresponding absence of budget, so it was nice and easy to deal with...no complex drawn out negotiations, and because of the schedule...i.e. "whenever you've got time Phil" it meant nothing else had to be worked out around it. I said yes, thinking it might take a year at the most, but like I said, that was Jan 2007.

Of course that is not three years of solid work...it sometimes involved months off as I went on tour with my long term band (Tony Hadley) or produced other artists, but it took on the relentless quality of an Olympic Torch, always there, burning...sometimes not so brightly, but then back to white hot. Every place I went in the last three years, every musical situation I was in threw up some contribution to the John O' Kane album. As well as using some of my favourite musicians here in the UK on the recordings, I have used amusicians from Norway, Germany , and the USA, all via the internet.

JOHN O' KANE'S ALBUM...chapter 1

Hello, and welcome....put your feet up....

This is not only the first post related to this project, it is also my first blog. Perhaps it does not matter that my entry point into blog-world is at a very late stage in the progress of this album...three years in to be exact, having started in January 2007. We've all seen films where we join the story "five years later" and are then taken back to the beginning...well, that's how this is going to be.

Here's a little background first.

John O' Kane is a Scottish singer and songwriter who started his career with "Millions Like Us" in 1987, then went on to record a critically acclaimed solo album, "Solid" in 1990. Around this time Nirvana and their ilk arrived on the scene, changing everything, and the John O Kane solo career took a big diversion, in reaction to the fact that the record company were not pushing things as he would have hoped. John has always made timeless music, but you have to pick the right time to be timeless...you can't do it at any old time....that would be bad timing. Now seems like the right time. So, from solo artist, John stepped back into songwriting, which led to numerous collaborations over the years with world famous songwriters both in the UK and the USA, such as Will Jennings, Terry Britten and Paul Brady.