One day I’ll finish my “Places in Time” project. Meanwhile I just found an older recording inspired by Henk van Rensbergen’s “Abandoned Places” Website. Henke kindly allowed me to use some of his evocative images to accompany my music for an exhibition in 2002.
Category Archives: Music Projects
Folk Songs
I set out to record versions of many of my songs in a fashion that anyone could sing them. i.e. Folk songs (which is where they all have their roots anyway. You can check them all out here. Eventually I hope to have them all recorded with my own vocals (ugh !) and a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment.
WMDJ Voices
Some 8 years after the last time I amalgamated my music with Tom Kelly’s poetry I’m working on this new project. This time the “band” has a new member in photographer Peter Dixon and the project will work towards gallery multi media exhibitions. We have some interest for venues. The picture to the right is one of Peter’s that I’ve heavily cropped to place here. You can see more HERE
I had just returned from Jarrow where I had commissioned the building of a new powerful audio computer. (They used to build ships in Jarrow) I asked Tom if he perhaps had a new poetry collection that could get the WMDJ treatment and he had. I wanted to see if the how this would work out now that technology had moved on. In many ways it was now too easy to make soundscapes, and the creaky old equipment I used on Urban Grit was now retired ( example )
There is a WMDJ website at www.wmdj.org.uk and work in progress on this project can be followed HERE
Over the years I have recorded many voices in oral remeniscence sessions, many of them relatives of mine. I started to add these to the work to supplement Toms poetry readings and it really worked and so the project was named Voices.
TECHNICAL NOTES I’m working with Cubase SL and Propellerheads Reason and now that my Akai sampler is retired I am using soft sampling mostly in Reason. Tom and I collaborate via email and I set up a scenario whereby Peter can email his pictures to Flickr which then get drawn into the WMDJ website.
The Aksana Project
I am working with this Russian Vocalist and her Record Company. I’m redeveloping some existing material as well as writing news songs. This material represents some of my best work in years. You can chart the progress in the Project Blog
Songs For Characters
About 12 years ago the BBC ran a cartoon series called “Little Monsters”. I wrote songs for five of the characters (see below)
Recently I came across some DVD’s in the pound (£1) shop so I bought a couple for my granddaughter who was not born at the time of the original shows. Whilst refurbing my studio I’ve come across the DAT master so I’ll cut her a CD as well as putting the tracks up here in MP3 format.
The songs are kind of a pastiche of things from The Beach Boys to Bon Jovi but I recall having a lot of fun writing and recording them even if the production company had a rather strange way of releasing product.
The tracks were produced partly in my project studio and then finished off with vocals, guitars and mixing in one of my favourite studios, Fred Purser’s “Trinity Heights” in Newcastle.
Vocals are handled by , Phil Caffrey, Mick Whitaker, Tanya Rowlands, Paul Caffrey and the massed voices of St Albans Primary School, Walker. I handled all the instrumentation and I can spot myself on some of the voice characterisations.
You can hear the tracks by clicking on the character or their name. Two of the tracks are not the mixes actually released. “Tell Tale Tallulah” is an extended mix featuring Mick’s scat vocals which are beyond the fade on the released track. “Dangerous Dave” features the “heavy mix” rather than the tamer one for release. Actually, Fred Purser, a former member of the Tygers of Pan Tang (for whom I’d written songs) remarked that “Dave” could have been Tygers Mk2 – scary huh?
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 Friendly Franco |
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 Tell Tale Tallulah |
 Dangerous Dave |
Characters (c) Splash Productions |
The Works Tour
I worked with visual artist Maggie Parker and poet Maureen Almond. Maggie and I illustrated Maureens new volume of poems, “The Works” for a multi media tour. Maggie provided images and I produced soundscapes and together we were the Laptop Orchestra backing up a remarkable poet. Click here for some reports from this exciting tour
Gateshead Titanic
I worked for 6 weeks withe the Reavely Theatre School in Gateshead helping youngsters compose songs for their production of a musical called Titanic. I did a pre Easter visit to kick strart this. The Schools owner Sandra had a Great Uncle Albert who served on the Titanic and was one of those who perished. She decided the next production would be based on Alfreds story and the Titanic.
After we had looked at some telegrams and artifacts to set the scene, the 11 year olds were charged with the task of working on the sad song for the ending.
Dear family, Alfred is dead,
The good news is, we have a spare bed.
Tugs at your heartstrings doesn’t it?
The Attitude (Fear of Crime Project)
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I produced a CD with a group of young people from East Middlesbrough in Studio 64. Over a period of 4 weeks I had helped the group write a track that expressed their feelings about the place they were growing up in. II also produced a video featuring the song and this was shown along with another video on the same subject made by a group of older people at a presentation at the University of Teesside. Presiding over the occassion was the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon. |
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Songs Of Love Work And War
This was originally a review at South Shields Customs House with music from the Steve Thompson Band, narration from Tom and back projected images. It has become a Kelly/Thompson “genre” of material and new songs are being added and new forms of delivery considered. Below is the live album available to listen for free and to download. Only 3 tracks at present but more to be added.
[bandcamp width=350 height=555 album=3360192008 size=large bgcol=000000 linkcol=ffffff]
Steel Town
Around 1996 I started teaching music composition part time at South Tyneside College. Here I met poet, playwright and local historian Tom Kelly. Tom had written many songs too and over the next 3 years or so we exchanged stories and anecdotes in the staff room. I told Tom of my early days in a rock band whilst serving an apprenticeship at Consett Steel Works and how I “escaped”.
Then one day passed me a note “Steel Town…a new musical..a young man dreams of escaping, to be a rock and roll star…”
Of course I was hooked and we embarked on what was to become quite and adventure for me.
WMDJ Urban Grit
In 1999 I worked with Poet Tom Kelly on a CD called “Urban Grit”. We called the collaboration WMDJ. There is a WMDJ site at www.wmdj.org.uk and specific details of Urban Grit HERE
This me working in my Studio at around the time of the WMDJ Urban Grit collection. There number of things you don’t see anymore: Pony tails (not on Stevie T anyhow,) Atari Computers,Floppy Discs, VHS Machines, Akai Samplers,TX7’s – still have mine – no idea if they still work