Word up bitches!
So its been a while and brakes have been to all sorts of places and done all sorts of things. In the second week of june we flew out to nashville to do some recording with mr stuart sykes in a studio called house of david. I was especially excited to be recording here as its where my favourite band yo la tengo recorded one of their albums.
It was hot in nashville, super hot, so we took 3 or 4 days before work commenced to climatise. Life is very slow paced out there so we didn't actually get up to that much. We did a few radio things and an instore at a fabulous record shop called Grimey's. It was actually run by someone called Grimey! Recording got off to a good start and stuart got us sounding super pumped. Im not going to reveal much else about the session, the proof is in the pudding as they say. We did a gig a couple of days before we left in a venue beneath Grimey's supporting Cerys Matthews of Catatonia fame who lives out there and is married to our rough trade contact out there. Having been recording totally new songs for two weeks it felt a little strange to be playing all the old ones. We were kind of knackered and drunk but i think we went down well.
We left nashville and had a very comfortable flight(s) back to heathrow. Home wasn't totally in sight though. We stayed the night in a nearby sheraton (brakes' least favourite hotel chain) and then got a flight to paris where we were due to play at the furia festival. The jetlag was sickening, we were all short tempered, hungover and close to tears. Furia was a bit of a wash out, mud and rain was the theme and we were told that people were having trouble getting to our stage as the path had tuned into a mudslide. Eventually we took the stage and started well with new song 'hold me in the river', working title 'kegchug'. Things went quickly wrong though. Tom's guitar snapped somehow and.... well lets just say it wasn't our best. It was a shame because had the weather been better and our minds sharper then it would have been a corker. I was in a foul mood so i went back to our novotel but the others stayed and watched the ex and art brut, reports were of a high standard. Getting up was a bit of a challenge the next day but we finally flew home to lick our wounds and take a much needed brakes break.
A few weeks went by and then we re-grouped in Glasgow for a rehearsal prior to our appearance at t in the park sunday just gone. Rehearsal was good and we worked up a couple of the newies too. The weather wasn't too good up there either but not as bad as paris. The only band i saw the entire set of on the saturday night was Sigur Ros who were comletely amazing. It was a cold nights' sleep in my newly purchased tent but luckily the sun came out the next day and we all had a jolly good time. Our gig was truly exhilerating and much fun. You can always rely on a scottish audience to get you rocking. It was high spirits all round after so i went backstage and got drunk on free beer in the setting sun.
Now we've a few days off before flying to spain for a couple of festivals out there, then the festival season will really have gotten going. Plan is to finish off the album in the uk just after truckfest, hopefully we'll have it done before the summer is through.
See you when i see you unless i see you when i see you.
MArc
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