As I stated in the last missive, after five weeks the band left Nashville with fourteen tracks all but complete. The only thing missing was the vocals. IG had several ideas floating around but only one or two were considered complete. So a few weeks later, at his invitation I flew to Portugal, where he regularly hangs out, and spent a week with him working on the lyrics and tunes.
Part 1
March 2011 – The quest starts at a mountaintop retreat in the south of Spain – a hidden studio in a house called El Cortijo, ruled by a veteran skin-beater by the name of Trevor Morais. There, as the rain and wind pound on the windows, they capture a couple of handfuls of rough-hewn seeds of songs harnessed from the bittersweet (mostly sweet) fruit of their experience over the preceding five hard-working, post-rapture years, visiting countless corners of the known and unknown world.
It’s unthinkable that Jon is gone. My thoughts are for his wife Vicky and all his children and family at this sad moment in their lives. I wish them all strength.
A great sadness and sense of loss hangs over me. Not only has the music world lost a fantastic musician but a gentleman of the finest order. He was a giant in my life, a great friend, a fellow traveler, a teacher, not only of music, but of life.
It’s an irregular life, although it has habits and rituals like any other.
For example, every day when I’m home, after the children are asleep, it’s rare evening that I don’t go to my studio, crank up the computer, listen to music, browse YouTube, catch up on emails, news, etc. Sometimes I write music. I am excellent at imagining a song in my head and then battling to get some semblance of it down on tape before I forget it.
Of the several million entrants to the competition (surely that’s wrong – Ed), the exhausted judges have spent many a long winter’s black night pouring over the images drifting past their bloodshot eyes like endless rain into a paper cup (no more stealing lyrics, and less of the hyperbole! – Ed) and have narrowed them down to the final seven.