³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Former guitarist writes about The Life of Birds, his new album which features a flock of top folk talents:

Woke up this morning with a (self-inflicted) sore head. Last night turned into something of an impromptu celebration. I was sitting with and Bella Hardy - new pals and musical collaborators - in the St. John's Hotel, , carefully nursing an ageing pint, when Jim's phone beeped. "Hey, I just heard your 'Sparrow' song on the radio", read the incoming text. Ha ha. This felt like the last leg of a journey that had begun three years before, when I called Jim up and said "Hi, you don't know me, but my name's Dave, I'm writing an album about birds, will you come and sing a song?" He said yes, and Jim became my first recruit. And that's how we ended up sitting in The John's on Snuff Night (every Wednesday, bring your own snuff, sample and swap snuff and snuff-related objects). Later, we will head off to , the living heartbeat of the Hull music scene, and officially The Best Place In The World.

The lyrics for what became The Life of Birds were written in the summer of 2006, when I was suffering from . This is a condition that affects the inner ear and thus the sense of balance; it's like being drunk all the time, but with none of the good bits. So I had two weeks confined to a chair, looking out over the garden. One of the ways I passed the time - apart from writing song lyrics - was by spotting garden birds, using a wall-chart that came free with the morning paper. That's how so many bird names worked their way into the songs - it wasn't really a deliberate plan. Even the songs that don't mention birds seem to have a pastoral feel: gardens, flowers, animals etc.

When the two weeks passed, and the antibiotics had done their stuff, I set about making a list of potential singers. With a recent visit to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 2 Folk Awards in my mind, Jim Causley and Bella Hardy were the firstÌý names on my list. A brief flick through the CDs in the car yielded the names of , and . I ended up with a list of twenty names - some I never managed to get hold of, some were busy, some even said no (yarg!). But over the next two years, I got the ten people I needed for an album. Some of them even did two songs, so I ended up with fourteen tracks.

The majority of these people are drawn from the folk scene - this wasn't a matter of policy, it just so happens that this was the music I had been listening to over the previous year or two. I felt that the style of interpretation employed by these singers - a very transparent, non-egotistical style - would be right for these songs, with their strong story-telling thread. I was very concerned that the rather dramatic nature of some of the lyrics - especially the two songs about senile dementia - meant that they needed to be under-played and not over-acted.

The next step was fitting the singers to the songs. Some were easy enough: The Road To The South, a song about being homesick for Yorkshire, was a perfect fit for Eliza Carthy. Draughty Old Fortress, a slightly Gothic lyric about an eccentric recluse, seemed just right for Alasdair Roberts. In most cases though, I sent each person three or four lyric ideas and asked them to choose one. They would then write a tune for it or wait until the recording session and improvise a tune on the spot.

Ten separate recording sessions with ten different singers is a challenging way to make an album. To avoid a jumble of styles and create a consistency of mood, I tried to use the same musicians on all the tracks - including Murray Briggs of Aberfeldy on drums and Rod Clements of on slide guitar - and Alan Jones and I produced and mixed everything.

I've enjoyed showing my new folkie pals around Hull. Today we saw the and (where the Civil War began). Yesterday we did Snuff Night. Tomorrow I plan to drive them over the . It's very refreshing to work with people from a different musical perspective, and a different age-group - from oneself. I hope it's been a two-way benefit. Although I'm still amazed that anybody could be in the music business, play three instruments, know hundreds of songs off by heart, and yet NEVER HAVE HEARD OF ...