A different kind of acoustic experience, welcome to my bravest album yet! This release is dedicated to Granny (1921-2017).

THOUGHTS OF ADVENTURE

If I was going to choose a track to introduce the album in a rather forward, but perfectly friendly fashion, it would have to be this one. First impressions would suggest that 'Thoughts of Adventure' is an enthusiastic, energetic tune, but it also has a sense of calm and even a slight edge of anticipation at times. Knowing this was going to be an honest acoustic album, I made sure I spent time getting the guitar sound right at source, in other words, the raw character of the tone was decided before I started the album, and not influenced by studio trickery. Ideally, the compression and reverb added afterwards should serve only to even out the volume and add a small amount of ambient space to the recording.

A MOMENT ALONE

For an electric player like myself, the thought of growing up and making an acoustic album is intimidating enough, but things get even braver on tracks like this. Gordon Giltrap was the first solo acoustic guy I heard. I've seen him live a couple of times and it was always impressive how players like that carry a show on their own. Many years later I stumbled across the YouTube channel for the unfortunately named 'CandyRat Records.' They had a lot of modern acoustic players, slapping and banging their guitars as if they were percussion instruments. The tipping point for me came a few years later, with the discovery of Tommy Emmanuel. An hour watching him was enough for me to realise it was time for me to look into this. I was never going to approach it in the style of the chaps I just mentioned... I'm just not wired to compose that way, but I knew if I could relearn how to play guitar in open tunings, I might be on to something. I'm new to this approach, but I was well aware of one thing; if the writing is strong enough, that should be more than enough to overtake my lack of technical experience as a solo player. Hopefully I succeeded, but you can be the judge of that. I love a bit of nostalgia, and this song helps me imagine someone having a quiet reminisce all to themselves.

THE HAND THAT FEEDS

I've spent most of my life living by the old maxim: 'don't bite the hand that feeds' and it's always made perfect sense to me because it's disrespectful to behave in any other way. Unfortunately, we tend to use the expression in a somewhat negative way, hence why I chose a fairly dramatic tune to attach the name to. I'm happy with the way the guitars mesh with each other here; the verse melody seems to cut through so well this time around, thus giving me the rare chance to have it further back in the mix. One of the questions you have to ask yourself during composing is “how many times should I repeat the chorus?” There is often a fine line between too little and plain boring, but this time I had the good fortune of a melody that was so long it almost takes up the whole sequence by itself. In fact, I only get a chance to repeat the very beginning again before the verse shows up. It's nice when this kind of opportunity comes around; they are difficult to write but add so much more depth at the same time.

ONE FOR THE FEARLESS

If memory serves, this was the last track to be recorded for 'Picture of Intrigue.' It was a tricky one to name; the verse sounds like a driving song, the chorus is more adrenal and exciting, helped by that beautiful lydian melody, and the solo has a sense of jeopardy running through it. In the end I finally found a title that struck the right balance for all these different things. The drums are gloriously straight ahead when they need to be; there's something about those heavy hitting rock grooves that is tricky to upstage in the right environment. There are some exciting flourishes to balance things out though. I managed to further enhance that lydian melody I was talking about earlier with some octave double tracking, which was a lot more effective than I was expecting. It really saved a good melody from getting boring through repetition (the opposite problem to the previous song). It was one of those situations when you know it needs to repeat a certain number of times, but a helping hand is required in the process. Luckily it did the trick and actually made the whole sequence that much more interesting.

SWINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS

The title for this one has been kicking around for years; it's been waiting for its moment and I'm glad it's finally found the right home on the second solo track of the album. Rather than lean on an open tuning, I thought it would be more of a challenge to stick with standard tuning this time. Technically speaking, my playing here is still just as simple as 'A Moment Alone,' but the risk of hitting an inappropriate string was much higher this time, and I had the additional complication of trying to pull a chorus melody out of a simple set of chord strums. I'll admit that it was annoyingly difficult to record, but if it works out in the end, who cares? Insanity was only temporary in this case. The general mood here is pretty upbeat, especially that sliding break riff, but the chorus goes somewhere deeper, really taking advantage of the harmony hiding inside those chords. It's strange that a sequence you could easily use to back up a singer can work just as well in its own right as a strong instrumental melody.

A THORNY SUBJECT

Strap yourself in and get ready for that bass drum, because it's something else! This one, as the title suggests, is an edgy little monster from start to finish. Listen closer though and you'll hear an element of thrill seeking in there too, so perhaps when you are done playing this song after an awkward conversation around the dinner table, play it again and imagine yourself flying a fighter jet or a rocket... Or Concorde, why not? Never say I don't give you value! The guitar sounds strike me as particularly special this time, the same applies to the bass too, which also gets its own little spot with the hi hats keeping the groove in check. The chorus has an interesting darkness to it, almost sci-fi in character. The whole track also sounds a little bit deeper than usual, as the guitar and bass tuning is dropped a semitone. This might not sound like much, but it has quite an effect on the sound and feel of the instruments. The drum recording also has a completely different timbre to any other track on the album, allowing the guitars a chance to have their own space without losing the power of the drums.

LAY BACK

To the trained ear, this one probably sounds pretty easy, but factor in the solo nature of the track and a big dose of red light syndrome, and you've got yourself a headache. I'm in standard tuning again, which adds a compositional challenge of its own, but I'm happy I managed to make it sound big without the help of open tunings. Music of this type is often arpeggio based (in other words, take a chord, separate the individual notes and make a melody out of it). My favourite one here is found in the bridge just after the strummed chord, but the track is full of different arpeggios. The chorus provided the same challenge faced in 'Swings and Roundabouts;’ finding the melody inside a set of strummed chords and spelling it out for the listener. If you get it wrong, it sounds like you are just playing chords with nothing else on top to provide extra substance. This is one of my favourites in the quartet of solo pieces, although the thought of playing it live makes me uncomfortable! Structurally, it sounds like there is more going on than there actually is. I think it originally had a break section, but it's one of those songs that needed to be simplified to flow properly.

DANCERS IN FLIGHT

I love the drum track here, even the bass drum introduction is perfect. This tune took it's time to develop, I'd recorded two or three other complete tracks in between working on 'Dancers in Flight.' You'll notice almost straight away that the bass has a lot to say here and the guitar tones sound incredible this time. Unusually, the chorus melody isn't double tracked. This is out of necessity more than anything as I wanted to improvise the second half of it on every repeat. That way you get a nice written melody, followed by an off the cuff response. It's an interesting method of keeping things surprising until you get to know all the variations over time. The break and solo parts are probably my favourite moments on the whole album, mostly because of the chords rather than the solo itself. Just when you are expecting the verse part to return, it changes to a dark, minor key while keeping hold of the original rhythmic pattern. It's a really effective transition and I'm glad it worked!

(NOT SO) HIDDEN AGENDA

I've noticed an interesting change in recent years. In the past, when somebody wanted something from you, they would work up to it very slowly and carefully; maybe hours or days would pass before they finally admitted it. These days things are very different; many people will get to the point in a matter of minutes, while others have their agenda almost written on their face from the start. Being an old-fashioned type, I find this approach pretty irritating. As soon as I came up with the title, I knew I had an almost perfect soundtrack; the guitars are suitably moody and anxious and the bass has a bit of an atmosphere too; tuning it down to drop D helps more than you'd think, especially on the lead up to the chorus where you hear the effect at its fullest. The riff at the end is pretty interesting too, and completely out of my usual style. Mind you, that could be said of this entire album!

LIGHTS COME OUT AT NIGHT

The shortest track on the album is going to need the longest explanation. In an era of instant gratification, concept albums are understandably few and far between. During the writing of this song, I set myself a brand-new challenge “what about a concept song?” The original plan was to write a four-minute piece with two distinct halves (one solo acoustic and one improvisation with drums, bass and rhythm guitar). I've heard a few bands try this kind of thing. It can work, but not all the time; every now and again I'll listen to a song and think “I really like it... Until it changes personality and goes somewhere else entirely.” So, my mission was to find the best of both worlds. I decided to record the song as two separate tracks, with no pause in between and no cross fading. That way, if you want to listen to the whole thing, it meshes perfectly side by side... But the individual tracks can also work as two separate songs if you wish. I've done my best to cover every possible angle, so I hope you approve. 'Lights Come Out at Night' was actually due to be the album title, but I quickly realised I needed to change it. Keen to use the name somehow, this was the perfect place for it. This first half of the concept song was also my first experience using a tuning called 'double drop D.' I thought it sounded pretty interesting, so I played around with it for a while and wrote the final solo track on the album. I really like the chorus melody on this one; I wrote it years ago, but the song it was originally attached to wasn't good enough. Thankfully the melody flashed up in my mind when experimenting with this new tuning and it was an obvious fit straight away.

MORE TO SAY

Because I'd avoided calling these concept tracks part one and two, I needed to make it a bit obvious that they are one long song, So I took the chorus arpeggio from 'Lights Come Out at Night' turned it into a strummed chord sequence and used that as my basis to improvise over. As ever, the lead guitar and bass sound great. It's quite cool to close an album with a brand-new approach. My first attempt at linking them together didn't really work as planned and I was pretty worried that I'd wasted a week or more of writing, recording and mixing. Thankfully, with a bit of panic and experimentation, my original idea eventually came to light and the result was a positive one.