RED MCKELVIE - RIDIN ON TRAINS - SONGS OF NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA :
I started writing songs again after a visit from an old friend Grahame Lister in 1999. He immediately got on my case about me writing songs again and I just said yeah yeah, anything to shut him up. It didn't work, he'd sown the seeds! And I owe him one for that!
After Grahame went back to the UK I had a phone call with Terry Darmody and immediately wrote ' Wally's Song ' . That was the start of the 13 songs for the CD. I felt re-inspired to write songs again and remembered back to the time when I returned to Australia from the UK in 1969 me and Terry Wilkins and Darryl McKenzie formed a band called 'Quill' Terry and me wrote about 14 songs in about 3 weeks.
The album was a longer process and the inspiration for each song came over the next 3-4 years. Once I had the 13 songs, I felt I needed to do something with them so I tried to record them in a live band format but that session ended up being the demos for the album.
Most of the album was recorded on a Boss BR-900CD - ahh the modern age of digital recording, I managed to record all of my parts in my house with the assistance of first time audio engineer Elaine!
I tried to mix them but wasn't long before I realised I needed help so I took it up to Neil Hannan in Auckland and we mixed it all on Neil's machine. We soon realised the drum machine I played with had to go and we needed real drums. Gordon Joll was in Tamworth so I had to leave Neil with it, in fact that was about the end of my involvement with the finished CD. My instructions to Neil were "make me sound like John Denver doing a live gig with a great band "! Gordon added drums and then I talked Neil into playing double bass on the album and then I asked Jono to add some fiddle and whistle, in the meantime I sent some tracks to Grahame in the UK and he added some vocal's and Dobro. Neil sent me the first lot of mixes and went with his first mix of 'Talk about it' after two more goes at the other songs I decided that would have to do it !!
This album could not have happened without the following people’s assistance:
Neil Hannan, Gordon Joll, Jono Lonie, Grahame Lister, Elaine.
The album was recorded in 3 cities and 2 countries. Timaru, NZ. Auckland, NZ. London, UK.
Order a copy of my album through SDL MUSIC - http://www.neilhannan.com/
Red, I don't seem to have written down your phone number! Are you up on the north island at the moment? We fly on Wed 28th - did I send you our itinerary? Have you got my number? Do our mobile phoneswork in NZ? Why haven't I asked these questions earlier?
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Hey red,great to see all those old photos,missed running into you while i was in christchurch,well catch up sooner or later,regards from your olde mate,harry
