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Music Views
Through Tenderwood––a concept album for kids!
And Grown-Ups, too?
by PKelly on Apr 28, 2005
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PART 2
Fiddle player Ben Lee recalls:“I loved the way there was a big painting by one of Richard's kids (Rooney I think) on the wall, and remember Richard talking of how it was the concept for the album, with darkness and light, dreams and reality, day and night,or something!”
We took little cut-outs that we’d made and we’d move them around on that tapestry and try to visualize how the whole thing would work. Several times when the songs we were trying to use didn’t match up with the ideas that we had, we just ditched them. Other times the idea the for the song was so strong that we decided to. . .
. . . make the story take a detour so that we could accommodate the song.
At any rate, the tapestry became a focal point for our decision making. It was how we kept track of things. We spent a fair amount of time drinking coffee and staring at the thing. It’s still there in the studio, I think. I’m just sorry we didn’t include a photo of it in the CD booklet. It was really beautiful.
When we recorded Unleashed on British Isles we did guitar and vocal guide tracks of each song before we fleshed out an arrangement. This is often done so that the form of the song and the tempo are all set out for you––you know where the verses are, the refrains, the bridge, and where the song slows down and picks up speed.
Well, we never really made guide tracks with “Tenderwood” because we didn’t want to be nailed down to our first impressions. We wanted the songs and the arrangements to grow and change as we lived with them. I was also adamant about wanting some interesting sound effects and atmosphere that would be heard in between the tracks.
I didn’t want the usual song, 3 seconds of silence and then another song type of thing.
We were looking to create something more “through composed,” as if it were one 45-minute piece made up of lots of smaller sections or movements.
The reality of day-to-day recording in this way, though became too complicated. We were trying to create the thing from the beginning to the end and it kept getting screwed up. We’d record a song that had bits of sound effects in it and then after the song was over we kept recording stuff that was supposed to lead to the next song. But if something went wrong or we needed to change something it became too risky.
We needed to record the songs and the background and “forest sounds” separately. In order to do this we needed to make fairly definite decisions about the story and the songs. And back to the tapestry we went for another think.
END OF PART 2
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