Get In Line

Now that I’m getting back into this Blogging thing, I realised I was very overdue with a review of the latest musical release that I’ve been intimately involved in. Namely, the debut album – Get In Line – by Country Rock chick: Charlie Savigar. This is a ten track offering which features my input on 9 of the 10 tracks. Rather than go into too much detail, I thought it might be good to give a few (hopefully) interesting facts about each song, and post the latest Promo videos which are yet to be featured here.

If you want to listen along to the tracks whilst reading my notes below, then you can stream the whole thing from Soundcloud, and if you wish to own it for yourself (and support an unsigned artist into the bargain) then you can download it from iTunes, or buy a physical copy from a gig.

Get In Line
This is a firm favourite as a live track (we usually open the set with this) and a nice little rock-n-roll number. Originally the album was going to be called “My Journey” – but I thought this sounded a little passive, so I went through the songs on the album for potential alternative titles and realised that “Get In Line” worked just great. I also had the idea for the artwork that you see at the top of the post, with us all standing repeatedly in line. This was expertly shot by, great friend of the band, Kris Gruber at my dad’s house (the same location that the Superbad video, below, was shot. See picture at the bottom of the post for more of the line).

The drums for this were recorded in sessions with Tim Pennells.

Save Your Love
The beginnings of this track predate everything else on the album by quite some way. Originally recorded in sessions with Gregg Jackman and Francis Rossi way back in 2006, it was put to one side for a while until Gregg suggested that it needed to be sped up a little. Which he proceeded to do in a very painstaking process in Logic. We then searched around for a suitably weird instrument for the intro, which we found in the shape of an oddball Washburn Rover travel guitar (see pic). Brass was supplied by Charlie’s friend Bridget Goodwin who’s favourite phrase during recording was “Just shoot me”!

This is the only track on the album that I didn’t play or sing on nor does my brother play the drums. Instead the drums were hit by Michael Kruk and the bass was added by Nicholas Rossi. Francis played the solo for this track on his distinctive customised Telecaster – in one take!

When Will You Learn?
One of my personal favourites from the album and a really great pop tune. It reminds me a little of some of Ray Davies songs.

Following The Signs
I actually recorded the first demo of this song, which is actually the version you can hear on the promo video. Gregg Jackman re-recorded the drums and possible the vocals too. Marc Wyburn supplied the electric violin.

The fun video has been featured before, but it’s well worth another look.

What's Your Name?
This is the slowest track on the album and we tried to get a more acoustic / Latin feel on this one. In the end Haydn recorded the drums playing the snare with his hands rather than brushes and sticks. There’s a little percussion loop in there and this is the only thing on the album that was not recorded specifically for it.

In order to play this track live Dan (Newell) has to switch from brushes, to one brush one stick, to full sticks and back to brushes again, it took a while to get the best version of this. The lead guitar line was played on a Taylor T5 through a tape echo simulator, which gives it that wobbly, in and out of phase sound.

Superbad
A great pop tune again, that’s great fun to play live. The video for this one was again shot at my dad’s house on a sweltering hot day. Performance artist – Frog Morris – did the background painting live and then sweated his behind off as the spaceman/robot. The video was directed, shot and edited by Ben Henderson. One other interesting fact is that Kris Gruber (who shot the Get In Line cover pictures) also helped out on the video, his hands are amongst those holding postcards. Our friend Daniel Baker also turns up as Superdude (with carefully disguised logo), everyone supplied their own costumes for this one. Both of our drummers, Haydn & Dan feature too as Bond and The Penguin respectively.

Adrenaline
The heaviest track on the album and one that was recorded pretty much all at our house. The drums were re-recorded by Gregg again, but otherwise it’s actually a home project. I’m very happy with the heavy rock sound we got on the guitars, although I couldn’t tell you now which guitar we used, possibly my Les Paul Custom. The video for this one was our lowest budget effort to date (less than £200) – it was written/directed by Frog Morris and filmed and edited by his brother Theo. We tried to mimic the beginning of the Long Way Home video at the start, before heading off into the woods.

Sell By Date
This is, probably, my favourite track on the album. It’s a quirky little number that bounces along rather pleasingly.

Long Way Home
This is another earlier recording from Francis Rossi’s studio. This was also my first studio experience of working with Charlie (I provided a few harmony woo hoos). The bass on this one was provided by Allen Sassani and the hillbilly guitar lines were played by Adam Wedd.

Although you can’t really tell from the finished work the drum track was mostly recorded in little 2 and 4 bar sections to make sure we got the killer version.

Dance
Finally the album is rounded off with another track that is mostly comprised of the demo recording. The slide guitar parts were all played on Charlie’s Tanglewood resonator.

Tracks were variously recorded by Gregg Jackman, The Animal Farm, Tim Pennells and myself and all mixed by The Animal Farm. Mastering was by Hafod Mastering in Wales.

Except where mentioned in the text all drums were played by Haydn Callow and bass by Alex Lofoco.

Following The Signs

It's been another hectic and busy year so far (well that's my excuse or not Blogging and I'm stickig to it). I've already had trips to Mexico, Nashville and the top of Mount Snowdon. On the music side we played a 40 minute set at Tootsies in Nashville (more on that later). To top it all off we have created a fabulous new promo video for Charlie's new song: Following The Signs which we recorded and mixed ourselves.

This was a real labour of love and took several months to get everything together. We needed a large number of props, including a book (lovingly produced by myself with Victoria and Frog Morris), costumes for all the band and four different outfits for Charlie. After the problems with rain on the last video shoot we decided to do everything indoors. The only real option for this was to convert out house into a studio. This meant costumes in the dining room, make-up in the conservatory and film sets in the living room and front bedroom. The house was crammed with equipment and people! The illustrations in the book (see above) were created by the highly talented - Frog Morris - and he even came down to lend a hand on the day too. Alongside the band and Frog we also had a make-up artist, Maximilian White the director and Rob Macfarlane on second camera - quite a house full. To cap it all a Virgin Media engineer turned up halfway through to fix the phone - what he made of it all I don't know.

Many of the scenes were to be filmed in front of a big green screen to allow us to shoot the various locations that were in the book. This meant hanging a big green sheet up (there's a great pic of Frog ironing this flat - check out the Behind The Scenes page for this and loads more) in the spare bedroom. I soon realised though that the door was going to be in the way, so this had to come off! Somehow we also managed to get a wind blower in on the landing to create a blizzard at the end of shooting. Filming kicked off in the Living Room with Charlie and our severely jet-lagged director - Max. To give you a flavour of this, here is video clip of him explaining to Charlie what she needs to do...



I think she got it!! After the living room scenes we had to shoot all the other "locations" in the bedroom. This created a headache for Max and Rob as there was very little room and for the most part they had to shoot everyone separately and then edit them all together in post production. After lots of takes and various reactions from all the guys (and four costume changes for Charlie) - everything ended in a huge snowball fight and blizzard!! Charlie even managed to throw one snowball right at the camera lens, but fortunately she didn't break it. After the wrap it was time for Max to do his magic, we were just hoping that we'd got all the shots we needed.

Well we needn't have worried, once the video arrived we absolutely loved it! We were relieved and happy as so much time and money (about £1200 in total) had gone it to it and it came ou looking like the budget was much, much higher. So here it is, do enjoy watching (make it full screen and turn up the sound if you can, it is HD after all) and make sure you give us some feedback... oh and pass it on to anyone who might enjoy it:



Many thanks to everyone who helped getting the video together...

Video director / editor: Maximilian White
Second Camera: Robert Macfarlane
Make-up: Mallzii MUA

Following The Signs recorded and mixed by Daren Callow.
With many thanks to Ville Leppenan

Thanks also to Frog Morris, Victoria Morris, Alan and Lorraine.

Anywhere And Everywhere

It's taken 4 months, but it's finally here! The next EP release from my musical partner in crime - Charlie Savigar. Unlike the last EP - Long Way Home, which was recorded at Francis Rossi's home studio and produced by Gregg Jackman where I sang a few backing vocals - I had a slightly bigger role in bringing this one to fruition. I had a hand in the engineering, production and mixing, as well as playing guitar and singing on all the tracks!

Aside from this the majority of the singing and playing is done by Charlie herself. She sung all the vocals and played guitar and all keyboards on all the tracks (she's a very skilful piano player, which we don't get to show off live yet). The final two musicians on the tracks are my brother - Haydn Callow - who played all the drums and Italian bass player - Alex Lofoco - who supplied all the low end notes. As is the modern way the songs were recorded in a number of locations including Acton and Clapham and then mixed in my own home studio. Charlie is one of those artists who can't really be pigeon-holed into one genre and she writes in a number of musical styles. So here's a quick breakdown of what to look out for on each track:

1) ANYWHERE AT ALL
This is a toe-tapping Country rock number. As with most of these songs - Charlie's guitar is on the right and my guitar on the left (the same as we stand on stage). This was actually the last of the songs that we recorded and I felt we got the best snare sound on this track. I had a very small contribution to the writing of this song as I came up with the "anywhere at all" lyric when we were jamming it originally.

2) ADRENALINE
This song is a full out rocker and the heaviest song we play in the set. In this case my guitar is double-tracked and Charlie's picked guitar part moves from the left to the right. We shortened the intro to make the song more immediate and we play it a little different in the live show. We had great fun getting the "heys" in the middle 8 echoing from left to right in the stereo mix. This was also Haydn's first recording playing double kick drum pedal (ie he plays kick drum with both feet, for that rolling drum sound).

3) NO GOOD FOR ME
This is a song that people often pick out as their favourite song in the live set. It makes use of a lot of harmonics on the guitar (where you touch the string lightly and pluck it so it rings like a bell or a chime). It's also a great lyric, which you might not guess is about alcohol and not being able to find the drink you like! We had fun at the end of the song as mostly it's played to a click track, but the drums and bass slow down and we had to slow our guitar parts and vocals to match what they've done.

4) BLUE DAY
Again another different feel for this song which is part rock, part blues and part ballad. It's also in 3/4 time which is a bit unusual for a rock number. The end of this song originally had a 4/4 section, but we decided to change this fairly early on in the recording process and keep the 3/4 feel all the way through. Originally it also had my overdriven guitar part played all the way through, but we gradually cut it out from parts of the song to create a sparser arrangement. We also had lots of problems with one of the sung days (the first one after the guitar solo) which had an annoying "click" right in the middle of it! In the end Charlie had to re-sing that one word!! You might also be interested to know that the guitar solo is actually three different takes edited together - hopefully you'll never know that now. I have to say I really like the ending of this track where the piano chords, bass and guitar all resolve back to the root chord. The sliding guitar stop at the end is from my very first guide guitar part.

Well there you go, that's a brief summary of each track and now, I hope, you are wondering where you can get hold of the EP!! Well check out this link:

http://charliesavigar.bandcamp.com

Where you can download the tracks in MP3 format or a number of others. Also if you are quick you can buy one of a limited edition of the EP on CD. These CDs (pictured above) are individually numbered and signed by Charlie herself! Move quick if you'd like one of these as there are only 30 or so left (from 50 to start with). If you are happy to wait Charlie's EP will shortly be on iTunes and so on, and you can also download her first 3 track EP - Long Way Home from there:

Charlie Savigar on iTunes

Hope you enjoy the songs!

Daren
xxx

P.S. For those of you born in the CD/MP3 age you might be interested to know what EP stands for. It's actually short for "extended play" and comes from the days when 7" vinyl singles could be made to play at 33 1/3 rpm instead of 45 rpm. Slowing down the spin allowed more music to be put on the smaller format - hence the extended play moniker.

P.P.S. You might also like to know where Charlie is in the Hotdisc chart as it's chart day again today. She was at #36 last week and #8 in the UK chart.

P.P.P.S. As a bit of fun there is no number #13 EP - instead there are two #14s in purple cases (Charlie's favourite colour).