Today was the first day with Craig in the studio. He arrived yesterday, so his equipment was already in the studio. John and Kevin were in early, wiring everything up, mic-ing everything, initially just the amps as we get me into playing guitar on the tracks. Craig brought some guitars, two Teles, two Ricks, and a Gretsch, the amp is a Pro Reverb that once belonged to the late Jeff Walls from Guadalcanal Diary. Craig also brought his pedalboard, and although I have recently put my own together, there are some pedals that I used on this first day, strange devices with odd names, the world of effects pedals is large which is amusing when you see old footage of Hendrix or Page with one pedal, or Paul Kossoff with none.

The first song had some parts that I’d sung for Craig on a voicemail, he’d added it to his song but wanted me to play it with my sound. I used Salim’s Rickenbacker 330 which has recently been to the hospital and now plays really nicely and has that classic Rickenbacker sound. Apparently, it was Salim’s first real guitar. We moved through the songs quite quickly, the first one taking longer than the rest, but that’s how it works. You never know what it’s going to take to get a song to do what it should. We always laugh in the studio when someone says, “We should be able to get this one down quite quickly”.

The studio is packed full of guitars at the moment with Salim’s, Paul’s, Kevin’s, William’s, Craig’s, and mine. There’s nowhere to sit as the control room is full as is the live room, all stands are taken, and we are leaning them against a wall if we can find one. I’m also sitting in the control room to play the guitar parts with my pedalboard in front of me and a lead stretching out into my UE 405 and from there into Craig’s Pro Reverb and Sarah’s Super Reverb. It’s musical spaghetti, but the ears don’t want to be in that room, standing in front of the amps.