From 2014:
This blog is about how the album got made, and why I've called it a 'grilly' album not a 'To The Boats..!' album.
When we recorded 'Bruised Pilgrim', we were called Bruised Pilgrim. The weekend of our recording session was Sam's last with the band so we took the opportunity to change the name to Corey's suggestion 'To The Boats..!', with a slightly different line-up (adding Alex for bass, and shifting Ian onto synthesis and samples as well as guitar).
We launched under the new mode with four new songs: the usually-untitled Ian's song, Fractal Universe, Theo, and Tofu (which we saved for our second gig). Also Pretty Girls Make Cakes was now officially a song, which hadn't been around long enough to record on BP. Later, when we needed to revamp the set a bit, we brought out Terry Waite, Coffee and Wi-fi, Intelligence, and Paradise Gas.
So that was nine songs right there. We had four gigs booked, and an inkling to do another quick-turn-around recording session, when Corey announced he didn't want to play drums anymore. By this time, I was with child, and really couldn't wait forever as shortly band things would not be a priority. So he played out his last gigs, received a trophy for services to rock, and we were all ready to capture a memento of our time together.
But trying to organise our final recording session, in any sort of capacity, proved futile. Eventually we realised we had two options: do it as a home-recorded project, with drum machines, or get a new drummer in to learn all the stuff. Several months and two drummers later, it was clear that the band couldn't go back to doing those songs. We had to go with the home recording route, and I had started putting place-holder drum tracks together in case of that eventuality.
As I was doing this, I was taking back more and more control of the songs. Here's the funny thing; Our first album had been band versions of songs I had written and already recorded what I considered the 'official' versions (and I nearly lamped Ian when he referred to them as 'demos'). I ended up doing home recordings of songs I had written for live performance, and had been changed by that. I had every intention of doing this as a band; but getting people round to record their instruments is not a happy bed-fellow with 'having a newborn baby'.
Then I got a synthesiser and decided it was more time-efficient to programme in the notes for it to play using MIDI, than to try to get Alex along to record his parts (I apologise for never telling him this). Which pared it down to Ian (due to go to South America for nine months) and I, and while I thought we could record the whole album through dropbox, Ian wasn't up for that; resulting in us managing one session where he recorded three of his guitar parts, two keyboard lines, and one backing vocal (Totalling four songs he plays on; I've put the same delay effect on all his parts so you might be able to pick them out).
Ian had contributed a few chord sequences and melodies to the songs (such as the 'sunset strip' intro to Coffee and Wifi which opens the album), as well as writing words to Double Anti-promise (aka ian's song), the music for Theo, and all of Terry Waite. Many of his parts I'd either played in myself (as a placeholder, initially) or replaced with something else for the time being, then gone and built more song around those parts instead. But he still gets the credits he deserves for the collaboration we went through.
The problems were on the songs he sung and words he wrote, for Double Anti-promise and Terry Waite. I'd put quite a lot of time into them, and these, most collaborative songs, were at risk of hitting the cutting room floor. I'd still like to finish the real versions, but what I ended up doing was paring them back and creating new works out of them. I'll talk about those versions in a future post. But these new works were a further step away from the band and into solo realms.
Regardless of who wrote what, I had ended up taking on this project, and had to see it through alone, with the exception of the single session of Ian's parts. Every little step in a grilly direction put more cold water on the band, and I shouldn't have been surprised when the others decided to split the remainder of the band kitty evenly between us, rather than fund a pressing of the album I was working on. That really made my mind up that I was in it alone, although that itself was a symptom of the wider pattern.
Andrew Gardiner said to me about my dilemma of who to credit the record to, "as long as everyone gets their credit, it doesn't matter what the name is on the sleeve." And I've followed that advice, citing all my references and collaborations. Except, ironically, Andrew's backing vocal on track 2. I totally forgot to write that one in.
I suppose my point is that there's a lot on this record that wasn't meant to be 'the final version'.
