22:40pm Its been a wild day here. The storm winds picked up this-morning and by the time we were driving over to meet friends for a chilled-out trip to the ‘Mudgee Food And Wine Festival’ there were trees down on the roads, chaos beginning to brew. The car was blowing everywhere as we drove over Sydney Harbour Bridge. The sea was so beautiful though – like looking out over an ice-mottled stretch of the Antarctic Ocean. Spray was being blowing 50 feet off the crests of the waves, surfers getting completely mashed beyond belief.

I’m now pretty sure that I was a sea-going man in some past life. Maybe in the sixteenth century, some deckhand travelling the oceans on stormy nights, on a passage to some safe harbour and to sharp foreign rum.

1:48am Its late. As ever, I am playing catch-up with the journal. Its tough, trying to keep it together, especially since life is getting a bit insane at the moment. I’m flying back to London next week, to begin the next phase of life. Getting married! I can’t believe it. Its all change back in Ireland, with my grandparents moving out of the house they have lived in all my life, the last true anchor of unchangeability. Still, I supposed I am allowed to be a little bit sentimental about Old Cavehill Road – it was a great house, full of memories of warm Christmas Days and late afternoon whiskies chewing the cud with my grandfather, of long summer afternoons… I’ll miss the old place, but now they are installed near the sea, where they’ve wanted to be for so long. My grandfather was in the navy.

Anyway, I shan’t rave on. One more cup of tea should see me to bed.

12:50pm D. is making chips to accompany the nice flathead fillets we bought at Sydney Fish Market yesterday – perfect Saturday lunch or what? I love the fishmarkets, with the big strange pelicans waddling around. I amused myself with the thought of the moment when God created pelicans – “Here, bird, take THAT” as a stupidly long beak gets plastered on to what is already a fairly silly head. I can barely imagine what the bird was thinking as it stared at ME eating sushi on the other side of the glass.

Anyway, the teething troubles with the new site have begun, as I always knew they would. I promise I’ll iron everything out, but as ever, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I need a team of Flash whizzkids, a couple of database masters and a project manager so I can get on with the second album.

1:17am The rain is teeming down out there. Its like December in Donegal. Only there’s no fire burning in the hearth and I’m waiting for the sunshine to come back.

Its been a rainy kind of day too. Moving slowly, not much happening. I finally plugged my whole studio back in tonight and started messing with a few sounds. The website has been so all-consuming its been driving me mad. And still will for quite some time. There’s much left to do. But I miss playing my guitar on stage – can’t wait to get gigging again when the album comes out. I’m putting the lyrics together for an online feature too, so that should be a bit of fun. Reading all those words that spilled from/through me during the making of ‘Angels In Drag’ leaves me wondering what life is, where the line should be drawn between art and locking oneself away for a bit due to suspect sanity.

I read a little bit of Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men while having a leisurely bath this-morning. Scary stuff. Not that we didn’t know that those in charge of the US have, to say the least, suspect motivations and even more suspect abilities. I have all but given up hope of a sense of decency ruling the roost in world politics. I suppose that golden age of innocence is long gone… that doesn’t mean I am pessimistic about life, far from it. I just get mad at the domination of money, the fact that all things revolve around it, are swayed by it, blown out of all proportion by it. There has to be some avenue through the madness. Making a living from creating good music has become all but impossible… I will find a way, I can tell you that.

Maybe I should go to bed…

Its another stormy day here… beautiful, with flocks of seagulls drifting overhead, white horses all the way out to the horizon.

I dropped D. off to work, and got Triple-J on the radio again. WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING??!!?? There was a hilarious program on about Eminem back-masking (where you record lyrics backwards on a record so when you play the record backwards you hear a message) and the guys were suggesting that because Eminem’s music was so offensive going forwards there really was no need, but they had translated his tracks going backwards – very, very funny. Things like -“All the geese, serve us a duck, in the mirror of never-ending men’s heads the budgie wants the lot.”

The CDs are finished in Hong Kong. I’m just getting the packaging for the limited edition sorted at the moment.

Firstly – Massive congratulations to my beautiful cousin Emma who got married today to top bloke Jason… I do wish I was there, but instead I’m on the other side of the planet, having toasted her any number of times with the finest Shiraz Australia can offer…

So that brings me to the end of the ‘Angels co-conspirators’ series, for now.

I’m sorry about the lack of content today. I’ve been working so hard on a new version of the site with much improved content and functionality – sound, music, photos, all that shiny stuff that makes you smile. So in the meantime, I’ll sign off with the lyrics to a track off the album, called Cheapskate Rainbow. I’ve had a few too many glasses of wine and need my bed so badly….

She’s a cheapskate rainbow in a borrowed sky.
She’s lost her indigo and I think I know why
she’s a discount heatwave in a one-horse town…
When you get your shades on – that’s when the rain beats down.

She’s a beat-up record of beautiful songs,
jumping madly as you sing along.
She’s a killer whale in a pelican’s beak…
You won’t go hungry if you can take the heat

Chorus:
She’s everything you never ever needed
She’s everything you’ve never wanted more
She’s everything you never ever needed
She’s exactly what you weren’t praying for

She’s a millionaire but her life is cheap.
She’s terrified of water but she’s way in deep,
Over my head and under my skin…
I knock and knock and knock but she won’t let me in.

CHORUS

She’s a stained-glass window in the dead of night –
You can only see her beauty if the moon is right.
She’s an old forest fire in a window-box
She’s a skeleton key to Fort Knox.

CHORUS

What was I thinking of? Love and goodnight xS

Last and by all means leanest – Michael Wolff, drum engineers on all Thomas Lang’s tracks.

I love this man. He has become a good friend since the first meetings on the Angels In Drag sessions, and we have worked together on a lot of music since then. And we had an epic snowball fight in the heavy London snows of January 2003.

I met him through Thomas Lang – it was Michael’s studio down by the Thames, Star Tracks, that Thomas had booked for us to record the various drum tracks he was going to play on. I loved the studio. He’d converted it all himself over a period of years, after buying an old printing press at the end of the property crash in London in 1990, and he’s done an amazing job, it has to be said. It feels spacious, a great place to record, and he has a lovely old Studer 24-track machine that I hope to use on my next album, currently in the writing stage.

When Michael rolled up to answer the door, I found myself looking up at him – not something that happens very often as I am pretty tall… he was a smiley, open-faced person, someone immediately recognisable as genuine and kind. But down to work, after a couple of cups of tea.

Michael and Thomas were old pals by this time, so the chat was mostly in German, which was strange, but cool. Michael got a great sound up, and we just hit record. It was a simple as that. Thomas had booked 7 days to record my tracks, but we were done in 2, so Michael asked if I could record guitar parts for some stuff he had been recording of his own… what a singer!! I couldn’t believe it – the material I heard first was great. All three of us knuckled down to a couple of days on the first few songs. No-one has ever been quite so complimentary on my guitar playing and programming as Mr. Wolff. Its quite embarrassing actually, as I am really very ropey round the edges (but at least I know that and its one of my strengths!), but I can rarely do wrong in his eyes… how nice to have people like that around you when you’re recording. I love working with him and can’t wait to get back to London to continue where we left off – who knows what the fruits of future sessions will be, but I can tell you this – they will be fun, and the pizza will be delicious, as Il Bordello, an Italian restaurant that boasts the finest waiter in London, is just across the road…

Mudd engineered Liam Bradley’s drums on Coldwalking.

Where do I start?

Mudd is a local legend in Northern Ireland, to say the least… I met him for the first time on a session with Jules Maxwell, while recording Jules’s 1997 album, ‘Bolt’. From the stories I had heard, I was expecting a huge gruff guy with a beard like a rhododendron bush to thunder his way into the studio and pronunce himself to be the Mighty Mudd.

How wrong can you be – he was nothing of the sort, being as he is a tall slim chap with long grey hair, a bit of a baby face and a great Antrim accent. I took an instant liking to him. His reputation was fearsome – he would slaughter musicians and bands with one fell stroke of his sharp tongue… an example wouldn’t go amiss.

Soon after the first meeting, I found myself back in the studio as a young band came in for an overnight session. Mudd had been in hospital and wasn’t in great form, so I agreed to help out, for my sins. The band were keen, too keen, and Mudd noticed this with some dread. We got all the gear set up, and were getting ready for a first take. They bashed through the tune, bursting with enthusiasm at the expense of musicality and control, playing it a bit fast and messily. Needless to say, this did not go down at all well with Mudd. At this point the lead singer made the mistake I’m sure he’s never forgotten – he asked ‘What do you think… should we change anything or what?’…

… The finger of Mudd pressed down on the talk-back button slowly, as he prepared himself for the weighty advice which was to be dispensed to the would-be popstars…

CLICK – “Yeah, I’ve a couple of suggestions. If you got a new drummer, bass player, singer and guitar player and came back in about ten years, that might improve things.” – CLICK

I jumped in, dispatching Mudd off to bed with a cup of tea, and took over for a bit, pulling these shell-shocked rabbits out from the glaring headlights of Mudd Wallace. I couldn’t help laughing my ass off – those poor buggers. There are a number of other classics, but I’ll save them for later.

Regardless of this side of the man, I have always found him to be a complete star. He’s a fantastic engineer, and has a superb dry sense of humour. We always got on very well in the studio, and made a good production team, getting some great results with a couple of bands. He was always very supportive of my stuff, letting me run riot in the studio if I needed to, and when the time came to record Liam Bradley’s drums on ‘Coldwalking’, he was right there to help. He’s another one of those truly generous people who will give his time and effort without too much thought, if he likes you. Haven’t seen him for a while, but its only a matter of time until I roll up the M2 into Randalstown, past that beautiful viaduct and the slow river, up to the studio for a cup of tea at some ungodly hour and some good chat and laughs…

Steve is credited with chorus rescue on Diamond Princess.

Chorus Rescue?

Yes, well… a good while back I had an idea for a song, called Diamond Princess, one scruff’s protest against high-maintenance women, suggesting that instead of trying to live up to their expectations, they should ‘live down’ to his. I had a strange chord progression that seemed to work, but the melody was a bit repetitive. Cue Steve.

Its very simple. Steve Vincent writes great songs. Once he left a pile of his writings in an unmarked envelope in my mum’s house. She found it and asked if she could throw it out (mid-Spring Cleaning), and as I had no idea what it was, opened it to find about 200 sheets of A4 covered in superb funky lyrical ideas. She didn’t get to throw it out, and I hope to use some of them in future if Steve doesn’t.

I recorded some of his stuff back in 1997 and again, rough as a badger’s arse in 1999. Everyone loved both recordings, but he was too busy at university to really commit to music, which although a shame in a lot of ways, means that when he plays, he enjoys it, and lives every note, whether as himself or as one of his strange personas – such as the legendary ‘Professor Weirdnebeard’. I’m quite sure his musical exploits are far from over – maybe he’ll let me put up a track on this site… I’ll ask nicely. Its just unfair on the populus at large to deny them his music.

Anyway, I was struggling with ‘Diamond Princess’. He popped into my dad’s house down by the sea in my home town for a cup of tea, and I played him the idea. He liked it, and immediately came back with the second line of melody and another couple of lyrical ideas. From there, in much the same way as ‘Happytown’ after my dad had suggested a line, the rest flowed easily and the tea tasted all the better. The chorus now reads:

You’ve got to change your rules if you want to be with me
You’ve got to lose your cool if you want to be with me
You’ve got to trash all your jewels…
If you want to be with me, you’d be such a fool

So that’s what I mean by Chorus Rescue. Despite the fact that that is the only bit Steve contributed to, the song would never have existed without him, so I declare him co-writer extraordinaire. Sometimes the missing line is more important than the rest of the lyrics put together. I like the track a lot from a lyrical point of view and the storyboard for the video is fantastic!! So much to do, so much to do…

Paul played bass on the whole record.

Probably more than anyone, Paul is the soul of the album. I am biased beyond belief because he’s one of my best friends now, but I have to try and explain why…

We met on the Ronan gig. It turned out he lived just round the corner from me – literally a three minute walk. Any TV shows, we’d share cars, and the chat was great. He is an instantly loveable person, so very soon, I found myself hanging out with him, heading into London for nights out, listening to music, drinking cups of tea on the patio in summer. The tours were another great time of getting to know each other, and the opportunities for bigger and better expeditions of chaos and disorder came thick and fast…

His bass playing blew me to bits when I got on stage with him. Rock solid, never too fussy, planting the one with a seriously funky disposition. His CV speaks volumes about how good a player he is (George Michael, Annie Lennox, Kylie, and ahem Take That – D. hero-worships Paul for that very reason – and he’s even on a Bootsy Collins track!!) but until you are there feeling the low end as Paul plays bass, you can’t quite understand. Wicked.

When Angels In Drag was being recorded, I had thrown shapes at a few tracks on bass, as I’m not too bad, but Paul is in a different league. I didn’t even ask him if he’d play, thinking it was a bit presuming of me to assume he’d do it. But, totally in keeping with his personality, he jumped in and offered to play as much as I wanted, whatever… I couldn’t resist.

In all spare moments he’d be round with those lovely old basses, tearing each and every track to bits, giving every track a new vibe and bringing a slightly different perspective to the sound. Even on tracks where I had the whole bassline worked out, he just played them so fluidly and so ON IT that it just transformed the music. Every session was a joy, a true success, and my debt to him was enormous, getting bigger by the note. In the end, he played on every track that has bass on it!

We’ve been all over the world together at this point, had the best times, and his contribution to the album is the anchor to it all, something beyond value and way beyond the call, the true measure of his generosity of spirit.

He’s been out touring with Annie Lennox recently, having a ball… he is, as they say, the man. And who am I to disagree. Long live P*STAR.

Nervous as hell. Knee not in great shape, but my physio Moira has OK’ed me for the race. D. and I are heading off for our first stab at a big run, the ‘City2Surf’ race, 14km from Sydney city centre to Bondi Beach. It should be good, but I’ll reserve judgement until I get back in one piece.

Wish me luck…

WE DID IT!!

Yes, its true, we both managed the City2Surf. I had been so worried because of my knee injury picked up a couple of weeks ago, that I thought was going to mean I couldn’t run. Thanks to my physiotherapist Moira, I managed to get through everything pain-free, until the end. D. did it too, which is awesome… I’m so proud of her! Especially considering that when we landed her in February we couldn’t run to Coogee beach, just over the hill, without stopping once each way.

The training for hills was the best thing… everyone had been going on and on about ‘Heartbreak Hill’, a nightmare stretch on the way up to Vaucluse, 7km into the race, where the will to live is rumoured to be sapped away from any normal runner. I took it really easy at the start in preparation for Heartbreak Hill, after ditching a pair of Diesel StyleLab trousers as I’d just missed the personal belongings trucks. I didn’t really like them anyway. The vibe was superb down there – a real carnival atmosphere. When the gun went it was like a festival when the main act comes on, everyone was shouting and screaming… Along the route a band was ripping out ‘Walk This Way’ – such a great lift as they were totally on it. The rest is a blur of sunshine and the sounds of thousands of feet hitting the road, the huge surf at Bondi Beach and a painful walk home.

I’m off for a lie down now so later…

Juliet sang backing vocals on Coldwalking.

We met in 1997, upstairs in the YMCA building in Belfast. I had just finished rehearsing for the Belfast Carnival, and in walked this feisty redhead, about six feet tall, round glasses on, with a Lowden guitar case in her right hand… looking like a grumpy schoolgirl (as I told her much later as we laughed about the early days)… “You must be Juliet.”

Julie is something of a phenomenon in Ireland. Way back in the mists of the early to mid-90’s, she was just finishing university, playing some of her songs to small numbers of people. Someone realised that the songs were not the ramblings of a frustrated student, but truly great pieces of moving music, with lyrics way beyond the talents of your average bear. One thing led to another, and she got a small record deal with Scottish label Sticky Music, recording her first album, Let’s Hear It For Pizza in a couple of days in Glasgow. Despite the demo-ish quality of the album, the songs are awesome, quite raw and beautiful. People notice things like that, and it wasn’t long before she was getting quite a name for herself in Ireland and beyond. Word was out, it was just a matter of time…

When I started working with her, as a kind of multi-instrumental texture machine, with Harry Napier on cello, bass and (God help us) trumpet, I found myself being drawn slowly but inexorably into her world, amazed by her talent as a songwriter, and fascinated by her as a person, especially by her extraordinary intelligence. I left to live in New York in the winter of ’97, but when I got back in the spring of ’98, we began working together again, and this time the sparks started to fly. The trio of Julie with Harry and me behind her just felt great, and the new material she was writing was nothing short of brilliant.

We started to gig quite a lot, in Dublin, Galway, then later on, over to the Greenbelt and Glastonbury festivals, and spending so much time together, became close friends. There were some incredible shows, with audiences spellbound, absolutely silent, truly memorable and special gigs… I always enjoyed playing every note of every song, something that hasn’t happened since, if the truth be known. The secret was blown. she started to get asked to support all the big acts coming to Ireland – Bob Dylan, Sting – as well as pulling off some big gigs of her own.

Cut to 2002. Julie, now signed to EastWest records, thirty-something thousand copies of her second album ‘Burn The Black Suit’ sold, a goddess on stage, the funky Julie Turner pulls up to my grandparents house in Belfast for something of a reunion. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, as I was then living in London, her in Navan, Ireland, but almost always touring. I had asked her to sing BVs on my favourite track on the album, Coldwalking and she was totally up for it, so we decided to record it in John and Sophie’s house rather than a studio. I brought my gear, we set up and tracked it in the drawing room – she sang it really softly, beautifully… exactly what I’d imagined and hoped for, some magic. It really is magic.

There was just enough time for a cup of tea before she had to turn tail and drive back down that road we had travelled so many times together, the road from Belfast to Dublin. Only this time she would turn off before she got there…

There’s a snippet of one of her tracks in the EXTRAS box – one I love, called ‘Theatre For The Broken’ and a link to a page with more sound bites… enjoy it. You will.