Sunday 10 November 2013

To The Bone: The Second Sessions: Saturday

I'm up early and Marcus and Willow are still out for the count. As I'm in 'Rock 'n' Roll' mode... I decide to make Bolognese sauce for later tonight. Once Marcus has walked the dog we're ready to roll...
Time for another new song. It wouldn't be a Jones album without what Marcus calls 'a bit of waffling'. Yup, here's Trev talking again. 'Cabin Fever' comes from a story that I'd read about Raymond Carver. He needed to finish some short stories for a publishing deadline and borrowed a friend's cabin by a remote lake. He thought that such classic isolation would focus his artistic mind. He didn't make it beyond the weekend. The reclusiveness did nowt but bore the arse of him. 'Send a letter or a woman" he wrote as an S.O.S to a friend, before giving up and running from the hills and back to the static of the city. I know the benefits of solitude based on my Corsican ennui and Carver's reaction interested me. For me, silence offered solutions. It wasn't immediate, but eventually the benefit of a quiet life insinuated itself... I was dumbstruck by a keen but gentle excitement; the sense that something within me was really changing and... it had nothing to do with alcohol or caffeine.
This felt like a true and natural healing; there really was therapeutic benefit to submerging oneself in silence.
"A question is forming
A knot is unravelling
A new day is dawning
And my heart is beating fast..."
I play a ten thumbed guitar part on Marcus's Country and Western Gibson, and then comes the warbling, partly spoken, partly sung. Marcus prods away at the piano and conjures up some atmosphere with mellotron voices. It all sounds suitably odd; conjuring up images of a bug eyed unshaven writer in old clothes, smelling like a damp dog, sitting poised for inspiration.


Lunch and then into 'Some Kind of Surrender'. Marcus suggests a Ry Cooder rhumba type shuffle and that kind of shapes the approach. It's slower than I'd intended and I have to roll the lyrics and even sustain a few notes. Christ, I'm almost singing! The Scientist adds Norah Jones octaves on the piano and some electric twang and acoustic strum before we head indoors for that Bolognese. We discuss whether vegetarian Lucinda (just returning from a gig) will notice that there's a pound of beef mince and half a pound of pork lardons in the sauce. Marcus reckons that she'd be more offended by the garlic, so I rustle her up a tomato and basil ragu that will suffice. Tonight's red is a stonking Spanish/French border Cabalie 2012. Lemon tart and some straight talking ensures that I don't think of Match of the Day until it's too late. How did that happen?
Regardless of the Cabalie's 14% content, we'll all sleep well tonight...

2 comments:

  1. After just watching the Quo documentary on BBC2 tonight I admire your reticence to live the Rock n Roll lifestyle. But there again there are only two of you to fall out with each other. And that would be such a shame :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Hunchback and the Scientist never fall out. The Scientist is always right; it's a scientific fact!
    Quo never a favourite of mine; probably stemming from youth club days when I miserably attempted that shoulder dipping Quo dance. I always looked in the midst of a fit...

    ReplyDelete