It was the 3rd of August 1999 when Brian Harley first visited our garage studio to lay down some guitar tracks. While he strapped on his vintage Telecaster I said “let’s start with a simple swing 12 bar. Do you want to listen to it first?”. “No” said Brian “just hit record and I’ll play along”. Half way through the recording I looked across at Simon. He was standing stock still, eyes shut and with a huge smile on his face. Bonus track 10 on this album was the first and only take. We had seen Brian live on many occasions and loved his playing but what we could not have anticipated was his passion, endless creativity and sheer lyricism. He visited twice more during that Spring and at the end said “now all you need is Al Olds on drums and Jo Lincoln’s gospel vocals”.
Ten years later I was looking through some old music magazines in the garage and found a box of 60 CD’s containing backups of all the tracks and out-takes. I loaded one into ProTools and fell in love all over again with the sheer magic of Brian’s playing. It was also clear that previous mixes had not done justice to Al Olds’s marvelously sympathetic drumming nor Jo Lincoln‘s power vocals. Included on this CD are remixes of all nine songs plus bonus tracks featuring three of Brian’s guitar solos.