Tied to a Tree | Grainger & his art guitar

OLD RECORDING THREE
TIED TO A TREE (Grainger)/ solo

LISTENING INSTRUCTIONS
I always think my song’s were meant to be listened to alone with head phones where you can hear and feel the intimacy of the song’s and also hear some of the weird stuff lower down in the mix but failing that at a nice soft volume with a loving pair of ears lol xx

(Again I’ve wrote an essay, I’m sorry but this process to me is like a diary and I just ramble when talking my music past, if you’re interested in the origins of my song and the time of my life I recorded it etc then please read on….if you’re too busy or not bothered just click the link and listen to an old song of mine and please leave your comments, check out my other songs on my page too by clicking my name under the song xxx) MANY thanks my FB friends xx

So this track is a few years older then the previous two old recordings I’ve put on my YouTube page and is one of my 4 ‘kitchen’ song’s……Bob Dylan had his basement tapes and I had my kitchen song’s lol I can finally listen back to this and my other kitchen song’s and say I’m really proud of them and they sound real cool, I’m proud of the effort and hard work (writing out string sections for them or flute parts) rehearsing people and creating some real interesting sounds and parts. And they encompass a real journey, there’s a real range of instruments on there from the crappest keyboard ever owned to lush violins and flute……and there’s the full range of me on them, the acoustic, the arrangements but also my guitar style, my weird sounds and experimentation……so I’m very proud of them and its weird this is the first time I’ve let people hear them but I got caught up with me Not singing on my album and really got into country and went a different way with my album..but it’s lovely to be able to have my YouTube page now and be able to share my song’s with whoever feels like listening to them….my early solo song’s are also a real testament to me of how many people and friends helped me achieve and record these songs, I have so many thanks to give and I’ll try here….. my kitchen songs and recording them was a great great time with fantastic memories, but of course it’s took me like 15 years to realise that cos at the time I was too stressed having a brian Wilson music meltdown to realise…..So have a listen my friends, see what u think and please check out my YouTube page and my other songs on their, leave your comments cos its nice to know you’re out there as my friends listening…..

IT’S FUNNY THE THINGS YOU REMEMBER BUT THE THINGS YOU FORGET…HERE’S A FEW THINGS I CAN AND CAN’T REMEMBER ABOUT THIS SONG……

*can’t remember anything about the writing of this one other then I was having a huge nick drake phase and its easy to here his influence all over the song. And the lyrics are pretty hippy influenced, and being free from normality…..
* SO WHAT ARE GRAINGERS KITCHEN SONGS?
so after Riley ended and my brief time playing with some other bands and after feeling sorry for myself for a while I Decided I wanted to be less a guitarist band member and do something with my own song’s, problem was for about the last three years I hadn’t wrote much as it wasn’t needed and I was too busy trying to become a better guitarist and discovering wonderful effects and ways to make weird sounds all over other people’s song’s…..but I hazily remember that summer just writing again,and the writing was mainly done in my family home, some in the garden, some alone in my room and after being wrote I’d often play them in the kitchen as I liked the natural echo and sound the room had,I thought it helped my voice….so then I Decided I’d take four of these songs, I made some four track demos of them on tape (which was as advanced as my recording skills were) and then decided I’d record them in the kitchen…..so next…..
* I called my old buddy and old songwriting comrade Arron Fellows and said fancy recording me on your computer in my kitchen….he said yes bless him and we together laid the four tracks down on a real real early recording on computer technology….I think it was literally plug the guitar or mike direct into computer and go for it, there were however some real nice bits we captured, he did some nice backing bits I remember but In conclusion I know I needed them recorded a bit more professionally…. so next
* I called my pal Russell Tite who was sound engineer for Riley on numerous occasions and at the time was a sound engineer for a band called Rooster and then went on to be a sound engineer for The Kooks, I told him what I’d like to do and he offered me his help with his assistant Jay miles (hey Russ I tried to find Jay on here to tag him in and give him some love and thanks but couldn’t find him) u still in touch with him?? If u are tag him in for me….. I’m forever thankful for Russ and Jays help as they were soon to find out what a nightmare I was to work with lol
* so I explained to Russ, I didn’t want to record the song’s from scratch because there were some nice things happening in those kitchen recordings I did with arron, I wanted to keep his input in there and I was desperate to keep some of the recording of the ‘kitchen songs’ in the kitchen…..lol so I wanted to take the files from the basic of computers and translate them over to a much more modern recording programme…I was told by Russel many MANY MANY times I was insane and it would take 1/10th of time to just start from scratch but no I was one stubborn confused melting down bugger, I was doing lots of paid gigs at the time so money wasn’t an issue (never thought about other people’s time) but we got there and then we added and added things……
* so like I said above I’m proud of the arrangements and parts I created for my kitchen song’s, I think everything and every part came from my head, but I have so many people to thank who helped me get to the finish line…….
* so Jay Miles put down some lovely Irish drum and kind of Indian tabla drum thing you hear on the track…….then
* I called my old drummer buddy from Riley Sam Martin (who by then was drumming for several other acts including scott Mathews so he was a busy boy but he was always available for me like so many others and I love em for it xx) so Sam came in and put down some cymbal percussion on the bridges…. then
* I had created my swell in and out guitar parts based on what I thought a string section might do but I gave a call to Rob Jones who knew a girl who played violin ( Rob I can’t remember her name– how bad is that ? If you’re still in touch with her on fb tag her in so i can give her some thanks and praise) and that idea really was appealing, so I wrote out some different three piece violin parts on a keyboard as by then i didn’t want to lose the guitar weirdness I’d put down and then wrote them out on music manuscript paper (putting my music gcse A to full use) so violin girl could play them….I rehearsed with her a few times and then she came to the studio and put it down like a champ and it was a glorious few hrs listening to that happen…… so then
* Rob being the absolute music man and player lol knew another girl who played flute (I think he might have been dating this one can’t remember and again I can’t remember her name which is awful but Rob if you’re reading tag her in so I can give her some thanks and praise) and I had this little dancing gypsy riff flowing through my head for the song and the flute was great for it and that went down……
* then earlier in the process on one hazy Smokey (u know what I’m talking about Russel and Jay) night we got an old radio out and did some twirling thinking it might be cool to put it in the track and it worked really well and we hit gold by finding the channel we did which was one of Muhammad Ali’s trainers talking about his third fight with Joe Frazier the thriller in manilla…..so the sentences u can make out are things Ali said during the fight….pretty cool….
* to go with the radio vibe we had we put a radio type effect on my voice and anything that helps my asthma breathless singing sound a bit better I’m glad to go along with.

REVIEW
So even though my ‘kitchen songs’ never got released, while I was busy recording the delta album I let some media friends from hull review them for their website as we were going to be doing some bbc hull radio and gigging there coming up and I needed something they could listen to before hand…….so they listened and wrote the following about this song

“Tied to a tree comes from a different place entirely, acid drenched and invitingly late sixties, as oil lamps, burning incense, and communal living are brought to mind. Slow spiralling vocal effects from Grainger with clever poetic lyrics half sung half spoken. This song reminds me of the chilled out visions from the hippy scenes of Midnight Cowboy. Swirling noises caress and shimmer as strings, and hand drums create wispy layers for the voices to fold into.”

Real kind words, and I dig them.