October 2015: Recording a Christmas Song and gigging with The Miner Birds

I always like to talk about how I develop as a musician on my blog. Thankfully, the opportunities to do so just keep on coming:

October heralded my first recording project for a long time, and it was a Christmas song of all things! The song was written by Mark Hunter and is called See His Light Is Shining. There’s been a lot of Christmas songs over the years, some good, some bad, some of which I wrote, and I have to say that this one’s actually quite good. It’s very much ‘worship music,’ but there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s nice to hear a Christmas song about Christmas!

So what am I doing on the record? Backing vocals on the chorus, as it happens. As far as I can tell, the idea was to have a ‘choir’-like harmony section on the chorus sections, and so my singing teacher Vie who is in contact with Mark got a few people together, (there were about 9 of us in the end,) and I did the lower part with two other ladies, though we recorded our parts separately. This was an experience for me, because it’s the first time I’ve recorded my vocals since I’ve really been able to sing. I was therefore a lot more disciplined about it than I have been in the past. When I’ve recorded things with Sam Draisey, for example, I’d do one take of the vocals, think that it was probably as good as it was going to get and leave it at that. But with more at stake this time than just my pride, and with a relatively unknown (to me!) producer and engineer at the helm who probably take themselves quite seriously, I had to be ready to say: “No, I can do that better, can we go for another take?” I haven’t heard the result yet, but I’m told Mark is pleased and there’s talk of getting this on a compilation album to be sold in America.

I hope they forgive my cynicism when I say that I’ll believe that when I see it. I’m not being funny but I’ve heard of a lot of musicians being burned by over-promises. If nothing else, it was a great experience for me, and I really enjoyed doing it. So thanks to Vie, Mark and Chris for involving me in that, and also well done to the other ladies singing on it as well (I was the only male voice.)

My #viewfromthestage at the Miner Birds gig.

The other significant development for this month is that I have started playing in a trio called The Miner Birds. The name of the group refers specifically to the two decidedly ‘Black Country’ girls who sing, Nicole and Roz; if you’re reading this from overseas and don’t know the connotations, ‘Bird’ is a colloquial and rather crude word for ‘girl’ or ‘woman,’ and the Black Country area of the UK that we grew up in was so named for its industry and mines, now a forgotten past. As far as I know, neither Nic nor Roz have worked down a mine!

What kind of music is it? Well, it’s somewhere in the middle of Country, Folk and Pop with me doing the guitars and the girls doing vocal harmonies together. They’ve already sang at the wedding of one of their friends, and they appreciate having a live guitarist with them. I’m much easier to work with than backing tracks, apparently! We did one gig at the Newhampton Inn on the last full weekend of October, and I’d love to take it in to the mid-long term. While some acoustic artists and groups are very good indeed, doing a group based on vocal harmonies is not something I see too often these days and I think that’s a great angle to come from.

We haven’t done anything since, but The Miner Birds is something I hope I can take in to the future, so I should probably get in touch with them quite soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing open mics and writing when it’s convenient; there’s also the possibility of another full band on the horizon so I’ll let you know about that. Take care!