The Lake & Sea Project: 17th October, 2022
Lake & Sea is a new duo recording project with my partner, singer and lyricist, Theresa McKay. Now available on Bandcamp. We’re very proud of this album – give it a listen.
The Lake & Sea site also has previews & more information.
Mick Glossop, one of my all-time favourite engineers mixed this album. Mick generously says this: “The new album ‘Tiny Lungs’ by Lake And Sea (which I mixed) is the best project I’ve worked on in the past 5 years! The songs, performances and arrangements are fabulous.”
I’ll be adding updates here, so watch this space.
Lloyd Cole / Rattlesnakes to Guesswork Tour: 2019 through to 2022
This tour was supposed to run for an initial 5 or 6 months followed by a break, then straight into a second album recording session with roughly the same personel – with the potential for a third discussed. Of course the pandemic happened and it didn’t quite work out like that. We did manage three months straight through from September to the 23rd December 2019, before taking a two month sanity break, then out again in late February 2020. At that point Covid lockdowns began, literally as we crossed the border into Denmark, causing a scramble for us all to get home before the world closed down. There were highlights – fantastic shows in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Auckland, Wellington, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and many more. It was great to see the world just before it closed. I remember watching ABC news in Brisbane, around the middle of December, when the first reports of a new coronavirus came in. The main concerns in Australia then were around the bush fires that were raging all over the continent (see photo). What a world we now live in. Anyway, after a two year layoff Lloyd and I completed this tour with a final run through Portugal, France and the U.K. Whilst it was really great to get back out and finish the job, it was also very interesting to see the effects of the pandemic on these countries – or oddly, in some cases, a lack of any effects. In Portugal everyone in the audience was masked, but in France and the U.K. very few. You get used to it all after a while – the necessary Covid protocols we needed, looking for empty restaurants to get lunch or dinner, being masked when everyone else seemed not to be, etc, etc,. My main takeway from the experience of playing shows during Covid is just how much we need music and art in our lives. So, thanks so much to everyone who came out. It was a pleasure to play for you all.
Lloyd Cole / Guesswork: 2019
I played electric guitar on Guesswork, Blair Cowan played synths and Fred Maher programmed drums. Lloyd Cole wrote, programmed synths and did everything else. We mostly worked remotely; Lloyd in Massachusetts, me in Toronto, Fred Maher in Los Angeles and Blair in Glasgow. I love this album – it’s very brave – sitting somewhere between Rodgers and Hammerstein, motorik and post-punk is how I hear it. Mixed by Olaf Opal in Bochum, Germany.
Nightswimmer – Theresa McKay
Theresa’s e.p. from 2018. All songs original except: Dobro – David Sylvian/Bill Frisell and Song To The Siren by Tim Buckley.
Clark | Jones | Pottie – Frisell EP
Bird Is The Worm – new jazz review Kentucky, U.S. “I’m a sucker for any ensemble that wants to dig into the Bill Frisell songbook. The trio of guitarist Neil Clark, bassist Alisdair Jones and drummer Ambrose Pottie offer up their versions of three Frisell compositions, “Blues for Los Angeles,” “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa” and “Variation on a Theme” (check out Frisell’s Gone, Just Like a Train and Ghost Town for the originals). The spirit and sound of the originals are present in the trio’s renditions, but thankfully they use them as an excuse to go off in their own direction rather than as some reverential tribute album. Plenty likable.”
Clark | Jones | Pottie are: Neil Clark (guitar), Alisdair Jones (bass) and Ambrose Pottie (drums). These recordings are live off the floor with no overdubs added.
John Paul Kleiner – Inter City
If you want to quickly dive in I recommend checking out Someday Girl and Tell Me Your Secret. I helped John Paul realize this recording over a period of months in 2018. He contacted me on the recommendation of our mutual friend, Robin Billinton, with a view to helping him produce an album of songs. InterCity is the result and is a collection of folk/rock/protest songs (with a strong pop sensibility – and a hint of bossa nova) but you know, talking about music….we had a lot of fun realizing these tunes. I play electric and acoustic guitar, JP is the vocalist and is also on guitars, Ambrose Pottie on drums and Alisdair Jones and me on bass.