Thoughts

Well, I guess the dominant themes in the writing of the album are travel, journeys – physical and the non-physical type – revisiting places or thoughts you think you know well…and the shock of encountering new places/experiences – death, divorce, drunkenness, resilience, giving up.

I named the album The Hollow Way because I loved the idea of a road that is so well-travelled it becomes worn down. I was watching my favourite tv show – The Time Team - and one of the archaeologists mentioned it. It was the first time I’d heard it, but it immediately resonated. So many of these songs are about journeys of one sort or another and I’d already been thinking of giving the album a name that referenced a road of some description.

The album was recorded in my studio over about two years – it takes a long time to co-ordinate 6 people to do their thing. I put the band together with a conscious direction of choosing people to work with that I felt musically safe with – I knew that their ideas would be in line with my vision for the album, and that also, importantly, if I didn’t like what they played me they were all secure enough in themselves and their musical ability to just keep coming up with stuff until we got something that worked. I’d worked with all them in other bands – except the bass player, Geoff, but he and I went to school together and I’d been a big fan of a couple of bands he’d been in. You get to feel very close to people when you work on music with them – touring particularly – so I felt I could really trust the band on a personal level too.

Being a six-piece I was very conscious of the necessity to keep the producer’s hat on at all times and make sure that I understood what was happening with all of the parts – I didn’t want it to turn into a maelstrom, a real danger when all members of the band have a gift for composing beautifully melodic lines. In rehearsal/preproduction I would repeatedly stop the boys and get them to play their parts first with one, and then another member of the band so we could all hear how the parts interacted. It was really important to me to figure out which parts were the most important at any given time and be ruthless in creating space for them to shine through. I must have driven them nearly crazy, but it was a really essential part of pre-production.

And then when we actually got around to recording their parts I refined it still more. Even so, I still had to pull parts out, or turn them right down, when I mixed it.

I had already made the decision that I wanted to make an ‘organic’ an album as possible. I didn’t want to do a lot of editing, or use anything that was generated out of an electronic instrument to be on the album. Which is a bit different from the last 5 or 6 albums I’ve been part of. I knew that ‘real’ instruments would give me the kind of sounds I wanted for these songs…I wanted real ambience, not something I had to search for and find in a box.

I want listeners to be drawn in by the story-telling and the layers of instruments and the way they interact. The textures and moods that certain sounds, and combinations of sounds create, and the places they take us to. I don’t want to give any easy explanations of what the songs are about – I really want people to feel they can have their own personal relationship with the songs.

Genevieve Maynard

From Wikipedia:        Hollow Way           Tallboy