Talent shows itself in many ways and recently I’ve had the pleasure of working with possibly the most talented chap ever to visit the barn. John King got in touch with me some months ago to enquire about recording a song with his son on piano and how it had special meaning and relevance. He explained that Phil was blind and that they had recorded it before but it didn’t quite work, so they felt they should try somewhere different. Well as a (passive) pianist I am always inspired by piano based music but wasn’t expecting quite such a dramatic journey.
Phil has been blind all his life so has never seen a single thing - it still baffles me that concept and is virtually impossible to imagine, cos within your imagination you literally see things you have previously seen and albeit you can twist these things you have to have a starting point, but if totally blind then where is your starting point for imagination?
Phil plays the piano with such ease and agility is an inspiration to watch. Not only this but he knows exactly when and where any note is wrong and somehow between us we correct any (minor) errors effortlessly. Further to this he knows exactly what other sounds he wants in the song and plays all these parts appropriately including drum patterns. So easy it seems that when doing a bassline he often drinks a mug of tea at the same time - I like Phil and we’ve had a ton of fun working on lots of tracks now.
Phil’s father, John, also sings and plays banjo so having just visited the Bluegrass region of Kentucky where banjo based Bluegrass Country Music was born it seems quite appropriate that we are doing these songs!!
Autumn Leaves is a French song originally titled Les Feuilles Mortes which John has literally translated to English in parts and left some parts in the natural French. Singing this was interesting and I was asked to provide a session vocalist, so asked my own bands’ singer Kerry to try and being an actress she had no bother performing it, giving it a subtle French twang! I think John enjoyed the duetting with Kerry and we had to bend a few recording rules to achieve things, but that’s what studio do, right!
Phil himself didn’t sing on this track like he does on some other compositions we have done. Also a very impressive video was put together between myself and John as Director, using lots of great photos and some video footage taken form the initial tracking days. You can check it out below.
Autumn Leaves on YouTube
