(or 'The Excitement of Making Music with Friends')
Perhaps the saddest part of being close with fellow musicians is the inevitable distance that grows between everyone over time. It’s especially true of all the wonderful people I met at uni, but it’s the same for those from back home who’ve since moved away. That said, the space makes reunions all the more sweet.
One that stands out happened in 2023, when Sam Julian, ABC and I finally found ourselves back in the same room - determined to record something, anything, in the short time we had. We hadn’t been together since Here, of All Places in 2017, so it was incredible just to share a room again.
I brought along You Have This (originally You Got This), reworked from #ASongInSevenDays. I had a feeling it could live in the power-pop world of GEOFF II, so I stripped it to its bare chords and started jamming it out with the two of them. I had some sense of where it might go, but Sam took us somewhere completely new.
I’ve actually got footage of the session somewhere - one day I’ll cut it together so you can see the song take shape. Sam suggested we just roll tape and mute the click track completely, which, to me, was terrifying. I knew we’d have to overdub afterwards - ABC on drums, Sam on rhythm guitar, me on bass and scratch vocals - and the idea of no click felt daunting. What happened next was the last thing I expected.
We played it again and again, bouncing off each other, laughing as we missed cues and found new grooves. ABC became the solid metronome he always is, and the hilarious eye contact during the trickier sections made it one of my favourite ever studio sessions.
I’m pretty sure we went with the second-to-last take. It just felt right, and we were buzzing to hear it back. We printed it there and then so we could listen on the way home. We knew there was more to come, but that early version captured the pure thrill of being back together - drawn in by the simple joy of making music with friends.
We went out for a meal that night and parted ways the next day, but we’ll always have that moment bottled up in that take - the one recorded before the ink was dry.
There’s something about catching a song while it’s still finding itself - before you know exactly what it’s going to be. We did finish the song later, of course - it’s there on GEOFF II. But that first take, the one before the ink was dry, still feels special. It’s the sound of three friends finding their way back to each other.
There’s something about catching a song while it’s still finding itself - before you know exactly what it’s going to be. That moment of possibility is the whole reason I make music: to chase that spark and to share it with great people who make it all mean something.
We did finish the song later, of course - it’s there on GEOFF II. But that first take, the one before the ink was dry, still feels special. It’s the sound of three friends finding their way back to each other.
You can listen to GEOFF II here - or if you'd like to hear the 'ink still wet' version of 'You Have This', you can join the Tea Break Club to gain access to a secret collection of unreleased tracks...
