Eddi Reader

My most recent record, Love is the Way, was made over three sessions in a little recording room down an abandoned alley in a few sunny hours and thundery hours in Glasgow, last summer.
It was one of my ambitions to find a brilliant, warm environment to play live in and record in. I also wanted to meet an engineer who would be empathetic to my desire for capturing mood and feeling over technical trickery.
Mark Freegard had been working as an engineer in London and America successfully for years.
Working on recordings by: Justin Currie and Del Amitri, The Breeders, Manic Street Preachers, Marilyn Manson, Maria McKee, Madder Rose and many more.
He left London to move up to Glasgow because he fell in love. He found this little room above the Glasgow to Helensburgh train line where he has installed his recording system.
It’s a rented place that was a former rehearsal/ writing space for The Blue Nile. Boo Hewerdine had worked with him and encouraged me to check out Mark and the space. I didn’t bother. I was depressed and dark about not having a lot of money to record a new record. I had talked to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade earlier in the year about perhaps doing a 'best of' record and having a couple of extra tracks. The boys in the band wanted a record of some kind so that we could tour later in the year. So I was looking for somewhere to record two tracks.
Boo yet again told me of Mark so, reluctantly, I investigated it. I walked up the alley past the wild cats and tripping over the potholes. I walked in highly sceptical and angry, burned out, hopeless.
Feeling I would never find anyone who would help me. I noticed that Mark had his recording desk unusually in the middle of the recording room. I saw lots of windows that let in light and the noise of Argyle Street never mind the train that kept on coming under the floor. I noticed the wall full of winking burlesque girls from the sixties.
I told him that I would like to try a session with the live band thinking I would hear something negative about how not possible it was in that place. But Mark was so positive, excited even, and when Roy arrived after driving from London all night he and Mark hugged each other because they were old friends.
As the boys arrived everything got mic'd up. Boo had a couple of new songs I wanted to try and I remembered Jack Maher from Sharon Shannon’s band had a beautiful tune, so I called him up and got him to come over from Dublin. I had a few others that might sound good so I had sent little demos of the songs to everyone. Boo and John and Jack taught the chords to each other and we set sail. Mark recorded everything and I don’t know how he got the clear real sound he did. I think it might be a secret.
After the first day’s session I realised we had five tracks and I thought I had the beginnings of a new record. I sent the first day’s recordings to Geoff Travis of Rough Trade and he set me a budget to record a full album.
My history is well known and if you happen not to know it, GOOD! Forget it. I am starting from here.
I have a passionate love of instinctive, beautiful songs. Also a slightly insane attachment to romantic chord structures. Words that speak of some universal humanist truth. That can be 'thrown away' with no regrets. This can be summed up in most of the songs on this record.
That’s it. I hope you like it. It’s personal to me and maybe nothing to do with corporate commercialism nor is it meant to be. There is only something ambitious in the hope that whoever hears it will use it as I have used it, to soundtrack life a little bit. To dance with bare feet to yourself singing along with me.
And if you listen carefully you will hear the Helensburgh train. Always came in on time…
Eddi
xxx
LOVE IS THE WAY is out now on Rough Trade Records.
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