You’ll both be aware by now that I’ve been usefully spending time learning how to record music at home, time I’d usually have devoted to live music. I’ve an album-length collection under my belt, and have even started playing music on other people’s records. One of these is now commercially available, and that got me thinking about making my own music more widely available.
Never one to let the grass grow under my gathering moss, I’ve now finished another album. It’s called These Are Difficult Times. Whereas Locked Down & Blue was a collection of more-or-less conventional blues, soul and rock songs, this new collection These Are Difficult Times is (in the main) an assemblage of longer, largely instrumental pieces in which I expose my inner Rick Wakeman. Yes, it’s all very Six Wives of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and their Journey to the Centre of the Earth On Acid Ice. With banks of old-fashioned-sounding Moog synthesizers and Mellotrons and so progressive-rockily on, in like fashion. It’s appeal, I imagine, will be … er … selective.
Well, up to a point. The first track on These Are Difficult Times is actually a cover version — of Birdland, a jazz-rock piece originally recorded by the band Weather Report on their 1977 album Heavy Weather. It’s much the most accessible piece on These Are Difficult Times. I have decided to release Birdland as a ‘single’ using Distrokid, a music streaming service. This will make it accessible in a variety of formats, and, wonder of wonders, incorporates a licensing agreement that allows one to record cover versions.
So, if you click on this link, Birdland — as well as other bits of These Are Difficult Times — should be available on Spotify, and as well as and, notwithstanding inasmuch as wherefore, (deep breath) Apple Music, iTunes, Instagram/Facebook, TikTok/Resso, Google Play/YouTube, Amazon, Soundtrack by Twitch, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, iHeartRadio, ClaroMusica, Saavn, Anghami, KKBox, NetEase (beta), Tencent (beta), Triller (beta), and MediaNet. So, not only have I become a session musician, I’m now a recording artiste. Fancy!
