n November of last year, at the end of a three week American tour, fellow musicians Steven Black (bass), Peter Richardson (drums) and myself were booked in to record an album in Nashville, Tennessee with engineer Mark Nevers.

Recorded live over six days, sessions were easy going stress free affairs, starting at 11am and winding down around tea time. We never played a song more than a handful of times and most were captured in the first or second take. The fact that the studio was also Mark’s house probably added to the relaxed atmosphere of the sessions.

As a result, I can’t help feeling slightly guilty that the recording sessions didn’t require the usual exhausting thirteen hour days and endless takes of songs. The album came together so quickly that I can barely recall the recording. And from a personal point of view this makes for a good listening experience, even to the extent that it feels a bit like listening to somebody else’s record. The whole album sounds very fresh to me.

Cheer Gone isn’t a country record. It was recorded in Nashville because I like the sound of Mark Nevers’ records. If he had been recording in Port Talbot we would have gone there to record. Having said that the album does feature some fine Nashville musicians who have been known to play in the country style: Chris Scruggs who played some lap steel and acoustic guitar, Jamey Lampkins who plucked the banjo, veteran session fiddle player Glen Duncan and Matt Swanson of Lambchop who played bass on ‘Saving up to get married’.

That’s about it, hope you like it.

Euros