Well it starts getting confusing for you right here – you can see a CD cover with ‘Dream Out Loud’ on it, but  the header says ‘Red Candle’ and then  this sub heading reads ‘Life in the Barrens’. When a project stretches over  nearly four years , it’s bound to go through a few make overs and name changes.

Except  at the beginning this project moved pretty quickly, with a stream of emails and files crossing the Pacific and the Atlantic at the glorious speed of 56kps ( took nearly an hour sometimes to download a file!). When Mike asked if I was interested in joining him and Steve Russell in arranging a few songs I was up for the challenge. I wanted to see if I could extend this  idea of only constructing pop melodies with ‘found’ material. Mike sent me the first song  which was ‘The Watertank and the Table’. It was just him playing piano at about 2 am and a lot of reverb on the vocal mic.  I still remember hearing it for the first time and how almost instantly I could hear how I wanted to rearrange it.  I sent back that first arrangement not really knowing how Mike would receive what I had done to his song – as it turned out he was slightly gobsmacked – but in a good way! He re-recorded his vocal to match the different tempo and key and sent it off to Steve to embed the vocals and do a final production gloss.  I was happy with this  as by the time I had worked out all the arrangements and programming  on this and subsequent tracks I felt it  needed some new ears. As it turned out, Steve worked on the first  3  tracks and then was too busy to keep going so I took over post production and Mike re processed his own vocals from his end. The incredible thing about this project is we were actually among the few in 2002 who were working this way. We thought it was a great hook for the promotion were were planning for  when we completed the album. As it turned out, completion didn’t happen for a few years. The whole story is such an amazing microcosm of what was happening in the music world at that time, how the internet changed everything, the rise and fall of start ups, and as finale, the horror that was Sept.11 finally driving a nail into the coffin that was Mike’s depression- almost effectively finishing his music career. I kept every bit of email between us all that charts the development of this collaboration, our early delight, and joys, the lows, the misunderstandings  – and I will put it all into a Podcast serial in the future (sign up on the subscriber email to be kept informed!)