Recording Johnny Blue’s Well at Chem19

Christmas came a week early for me when, on the 18th and 19th December 2023, I got to spend a couple of days at Chem19 recording the forthcoming ‘Johnny Blue’s Well’ EP. With Jamie Savage at the desk in the control room, assisted by Ivor Woodward, I was joined in the studio by Louis Abbott (percussion and Mellotron) Les Back (Dobro guitar), Graeme Smillie (bass and piano) and Alison Urie (backing vocals).

If you’re the kind of listener who doesn’t like to peek behind the curtain of how the music is made, then maybe stop reading now. But if you are curious, read on…

At the start of the first day, we agreed to set up the studio to record ‘in the round’. In other words, rather than building the songs instrument track by instrument track, we recorded five or six live takes of each of the songs as we played them altogether. This felt like a much more sociable and enjoyable way to go about it; much preferable to the isolation and pressure of the vocal booth!

It had taken me quite some time to settle on the 5 songs that made into the studio. Since, over the last 10 years, I’ve written a lot and recorded very little, there were many songs to choose from. Over the course of a few weeks, the short-list shrank gradually to the final five so that, by the end, I think the only difficult decision related to my last release, ‘Sandstone and Lime’. In the end, I reasoned that since that song had already had its day in another studio and with another talented line-up, I’d leave it as it is.

Thematically (but also coincidentally), the EP songs all focus on particular places, journeys or characters – and sometimes on the relationships between them. In no particular order (as yet), Ishihara is a song named after the Japanese professor who invented the test for red/green colour-blindness, and whose surname translates as ‘stone meadow’ (which, weirdly, fits the song very well). In Wild Angelica, the most recently written of the songs on the EP, there is the story of a family trip to South Uist (where Wild Angelica proliferates), and of unexpected healing. In The Swell and the Sway, a retired ferryman tries to adjust to his new life on land. In Joensuu, a stranger’s morning walk through the Finnish town of that name (which translates as ‘River’s Mouth’) provokes an appreciation of the people who have lived there – as well as a longing for home. And in the EP’s title track (which is also the oldest of the songs), Johnny Blue’s Well, two boys run away from home, but soon think better of it.

In terms of how I wanted the EP to sound, I tried to think about variety (and commonality) in terms of song style, key, rhythm, tempo and so on. With the track listing decided, I came up with sonic reference points to guide the arrangement and production. Most of this playlist featured in the notes I wrote for the team (though I totally forgot to mention the Jason Isbell track, and the Adem track was added later, in the studio, by Graeme): I really hope you’ll be able to hear something from each of these artists’ sounds in the results…

If the gap between Christmas and New Year, has left you feeling lost in limbo, then we’re feeling the same way. For me, there is the added edge of waiting for Jamie’s initial mixes of the songs. When we have those, we’ll add one or two overdubs (i.e. additional elements); hopefully, some violin from Jill O’Sullivan on Wild Angelica, and some additional backing vocals to finish off Ishihara and Joensuu.

The plan is to have the mixed and mastered tracks ready for production by the end of February, with release scheduled for some time in March 2024. I’ll write more about that, and about launch gig plans, in due course.

In the meantime, thanks as always for your support.

Wishing for a peaceful New Year.

Fx