Jess Harlen was the
3rd vocalist to jump up to the mark, for the song 'City Lights' who was
in
Europe touring with 'Blue King Brown' at the time I asked her and sent
over beautiful demo with a by singing vocals into her laptop microphone.
When she came back I has organised a session but Jess missed due to
having to many fillings done at the dentist and was unable to talk
properly that day, and I had brought down my old bass teacher Wylie J
Miller, local busker and 'Grand Wazoo' singing sensation, which
unfortunately did work out as Wylie's and Jess's vocals didn't match.
The next session Jess, did make it down but was unable to record as
'City Lights' is a love song and had broken up with her partner the day
before, and was only able to record back up vocals, but did bring along
the recorded laptop stems and which worked perfectly, with a bit of
effect added to them so we used those. Jeremedy from the band Melodics,
came in next, this was a long time before he became Grey Ghost, and this
time I had barely made it to, as I was still recovering from sever
gastro,
or love from both ends as I like to call it, which Jeremedy and wife
Julia were amused with my analogy but no so with the demonstration. Once
we were all in the studio it didn't take very long at all to record
Jeremedy's 16 bars, which was a good thing but still managed to find
myself having beers in St Kilda after the session, and found out that
alcohol should be the last thing you drink, when recovering.
With Wylie's and Jess's vocals not
matching I decided to contact Sony
and Che-Fu's Manager at the time, and Sony gave me the go ahead and
Che-Fu's managers number so I called him and had discussion with him and
came to an agreement with the vocals and said it would be done within
the 3 months, the time went by and rang him and asked hows it all going
and said were still working on it, so I gave him a lot more time and
finally said 'look ill fly you guys over and will do it here and I said
ill book you a couple of shows one at Beach Rd in Bondi and the other at
'The Laundry' in Fitzroy, Melbourne which he cancelled Sydney 3 week
before he was supposed to play as he thought the amount of money that
had been organised wasn't enough even though he agreed to it, and then
the Melbourne one the day before he was supposed to arrive and they had
just printed posters for, as he kept changing his mind about flights,
whether he wanted to bring a Dj or not and money upfront, but
unannounced to me just trying to get out of it, Che was also in a lot
of trouble at the time for tweeting the day before and leaking
information about a bomb threat that had been made to a school whilst he
was doing a workshop, which made front page news in New Zealand. Che's
said to me look we have some time off the following weekend, so I paid
him the agreed money and thought I would get the stems the next week, I
was wrong they didn't come, then suggest to Logan Bell from Katchafire,
as I had him inline for a track, and thinking he might be able to push
Che's manager but no Logan would have to be one of the busiest musicians
I've met. At this point I decided to contact Kylie Auldist from the
Bamboo's to come in and record on 'City Lights' as I was blown away with
a performance I'd seen her do at the Espy and then hung out with her at
a 70's themed wedding video clip shoot for our mutual friend Shirley
Davis. Che's manager offered me a brand new complete track, which I
thought was amazing and agreed to straight away but after a while of no
communication and was waiting for the individual tracks, I contacted
Che-Fu directly asking him what was happening with the track, which he
knew nothing about his ex manger giving me the track, the payment that
had been made and Che said that he had he fired him and had no contact
with him further and had to talk with his new manager so sort it all
out, which I did before long Che and his new manager were on a plane and
came over to record, but by this time there was no more space left at
this point pf recording so I unfortunately had to remove Kylie from the
track, but her backing vocals are till there.
I was having alot of issues with the drums and finding the right sound
for them so I brought in Mech MC, a ex band member and Australian
champion Beat boxer to come to get a roots feel through the track, which
unfortunately didn't work but did manage to keep parts in there.
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