And England, like much of Europe, enters its second lockdown. The first one started on my birthday in March and the second one is close to my dad's birthday, so to mark the occasion I had an idea to sing one of my dad's favourite songs (with altered lyrics by me and my brother Andy) in his garden, as we cannot enter his house. It is a version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Lodi' and I'll stick it on Youtube at some point soon.
Regarding RIIT, well meet ups have been put on hold again, so me and Kevan have been working hard in our separate studios: Kev is working on Be Brave and a new arrangement of Learning to Lie and I have completed the arrangement for Into the Spirit, as well as improving What If, Flares, and looking again at Kite In A Tree and I Feel.
We are very close to completing all the tracking for these songs and getting ready to mix them. I realised recently that my ears are not good enough to be responsible for the final mixes (I have suffered with tinnitus and partial hearing loss for the last 20 years), so we are looking to use a studio and mixing engineer in 2021 to get the mixes spot on. That has taken much of the pressure off my shoulders so I can now concentrate on ensuring all the tracking is spot on, so we don't waste time in a studio correcting errors. I will likely be redoing a few of the vocal tracks now that I can sing along with the full arrangement (all of the vocals were done originally with only acoustic guitar backing), as I feel my emotions will run higher with the full band playing and I will deliver a better vocal.
In lockdown then, we have space and time to check what we have and improve things where needed; we are not rushing this, which is something I have been guilty of in the past.
I know I'm a little late for Halloween but here is our pumpkin from a previous year to honour Bowie. The great Mike Garson liked the image on Twitter (the genius pianist on Aladdin Sane). That made me very happy.
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