One more song

The Road - Release date: 9th February 2024

When we arrived in Portland and after recovering from our very kind Jerry Joseph and family thanksgiving experience (sweet things with meat?) the first thing we did on day one in the studio was to sort out gear. Things like; which snare drum would be used and which mic sounded better on my voice. Tucker had done a lot of work in advance and he knows his eggs so it didn’t take long to pick out what was going to do the job. He told me my voice had expensive taste and I wasn’t sure what he meant at first but then he explained that the very, very expensive vintage ribbon mic from RCA was the stand out choice for my vocal. I would spend most of the next month staring at or past it, thankfully he was quite a fetching chap.

Once we’d picked out the right equipment from Tucker’s treasure trove (he had one room full of just snare drums) we wanted to hear how it all sounded together. Henry and I were positioned in the live room together, separated by some sound absorbing boards. Everyone else had their own booth with sliding glass doors so that we could all make eye contact. Tucker was in the control room which sits in the middle and has huge windows and 360 views. I think even Tucker was surprised by how good things sounded right from the first go through. The Road was one of the last songs we worked on. We recorded it on the 14th of December which was over two weeks into the project so we were all well in the groove. We’d developed a really good way of getting through the work while having fun and letting ideas have a chance to become features of the songs. Here’s Adam and Martin discussing the fist mix with Tucker:

I always knew we might not fit all the songs Tucker and I had picked out onto the record or in fact into the time we had to record. We ended up taking two songs off the list and adding Last Dance which was a new one Tucker hadn’t heard until we arrived. That still left us with more minutes of music than would safely fit onto a 12” vinyl. Tucker also came up with the idea of The Road Interlude which was intended to be a teaser for the song and that’s exactly how it ended up although at the time we planned the song to be at the end of the record not released two months later. However once we locked in the release date of the 3rd November 2023 it made sense to have another song to bring out in the new year giving us something to shout about in 2024 in case everyone forgot about us over Christmas and new year. Having a teaser on the record of what was to come felt like the right move and so The Road became the follow up single.

The song is about those people we all know too much about. Could be George Best or Gazza or it could be Caroline Flack, Amy Winehouse or countless other’s who’ve been celebrated and then torn down., had a camera shoved in front of them at their lowest point. I wish I didn’t know all of their grimy person details that have crept into my brain from whatever source. I don’t think just because someone is famous, good at sport or in the public eye for whatever reason, that we have a right to know all about them. At the same time I don’t think we can blame the press for it - of course some of them are scumbags - but If we did’t avidly consume it they wouldn’t write about it. Social media has probably made it worse in the short term but perhaps we’ll get bored quicker and evolve faster. Maybe China sent Tiktok to save us all?

I was trying to write from the point of view of someone who’s experienced that kind of fall from grace. To be clear - I am aware that the name “The Road” is just about the naffest name for any song ever. I still cringe a little when I say it but unfortunately I don’t think any other name fits (on the other hand in at least half the gigs we play no one understands my accent so they won’t have any idea what the song is called). The “Road” in this song isn’t supposed to be the road as in “the road is calling me babe, I have to go now, I won’t cry if you don’t cry” like most country songs of the same name. It’s meant to be that the person in the song is trying to get away from all the noise and fuss around them. The line is that they can’t hear the road so maybe they can stop for a bit.

The road 

V1

I've been leaving traces 

Of myself in places 

I don't want to be associated with 

My decline in stages 

Is written on pages 

I don't want to waste my wages on 

My wages on

Chorus1

But I can't 

Hear the road from here 

Maybe 

We've come 

Far enough 

V2

Spinning stories of my former glories 

To whoever ignores me the least 

While my tales unfold 

The lies I told 

Still keep their hold over me 

Their hold over me

Chorus2

I can't hear the road from here 

Maybe we've come far enough 

So I'll keep the wind at my back 

V3

Try as I might 

To put up a fight 

And not be so soon overcome 

It's already begun 

There's just too much been done 

To hope for any other outcome 

Any other outcome

Chorus 3

But I can't here the road from here 

Maybe we've come far enough 

So I'll keep the wind at my back 

And feel the burden rising off of me 

It always helps to have friends and our friend Chris Metzler is a friend with friends. One of his friends is former BBC editor Mike Brook and Mike cut some of the footage from our USA trip, shot by Tom Oxley, into this very cool video (don’t share please this is a Field Report preview and we’re offering to various publications as an exclusive).

Video below