Bridget's view

My working relationship with Spirits Burning started with the following email that Don Falcone sent to David Law at The Hawkwind Museum Website.

I was newly married to Martin and our daughter, Hannah, was fourteen months. Music was the last thing on my mind! But I did have a few vocal tracks from a few years back when I'd been working with Michael Vesty (a Bath-based musician and DJ). I sent a CD-R to Don with the vocals to a song, Hits Your Eyes, now entitled Another World.

All communication at first went through David Law as I was very protective of my privacy. Don built a song around the track and when Black Widow, the record company putting out the CD, heard the track they asked Don for another track with me on. I still didn't want to be involved in singing again but had one vocal track left, Salome. These tracks went on the Spirits Burning album Alien Injection, which has been recently released on vinyl as well as CD.

Then Stephen Palmer, a long time collaborator of Don's, got in touch to ask if I'd like to contribute some vocals to Mooch's next CD, Dr Silbury and his Liquid Brainstem Band. I was beginning to feel a musical destiny knocking loudly on my door again!

Martin and I looked into home recording and bought a little mixer and microphone and downloaded a free trial version of a studio called Ntrack. By the time Don got back in touch again in 2006 and we discussed the idea of doing more work together I was back into the swing of things, Hannah was older and soon to be starting school, giving me more time for writing and recording. Don told me about a project he had in mind that he had named Songbook Closure. He sent me a letter, lyrics and a tape of songs for consideration and I sent him some earlier work of mine. We liked each others style and it soon became obvious that we worked well together and dealing with different time zones though sometimes bizarre and frustrating agreed with us.

We found ourselves deeply involved in writing and sharing songs and over a two-year period wrote 15 or 16 songs from which we picked the best to go on Earth Born. There is a missing song however; Luna.

Sometimes we had very clear ideas of the music and the musicians we invited to contribute to the track. Other songs grew more organically, randomly, haphazardly, wonderfully!

Spirits Burning & Bridget Wishart have a history, a present and a future and it would never have happened if David Law hadn't forwarded Don's email. So cheers David!

Don's view

In early 2005, I started a new project on the whiteboard in my studio. Called Songbook Closure, the idea was to revisit some of the lyric-based songs I had written in bands from my pre-CD days. Probably not enough for a full CD, but enough to get one started. Basically, these were songs that hadn’t seen the light of day in space rock, ambient, drum ‘n’ bass, or experimental projects. These were songs that still struck a personal emotional chord. Perhaps I could weave them into Spirits Burning and give them new life. Ironically, most of them were written for a band I had played in during the 80s called Spirits Burning. I had already resurrected the band name for the space rock collective. Why not resurrect some of the best songs?

The original band usually had a female singer. Most of the lyrics were gender non-specific, or had some lines that took on new life with a female vocalist. So, the initial plan for Songbook Closure was to get a female singer. I had given a tape to Doug Pearson to hand to Barbara Manning, a local folk singer he had worked with, but nothing ever came of that.

I then thought about inviting every space rock female signer I could think of. For some reason, I hadn’t done anything with Gilli from Gong (despite meeting her in person a few times). And leads for singers like Renate in Amon Duul seemed to close before they really opened. But sometimes you get lucky in finding people on the internet, or people who know people...I had been able to work with Bridget on Alien Injection.

This came about through David Law. I saw his interview with Bridget, then contacted him to hook us up. The two songs on AI with her had gone very well, and Bridget kind of seemed interested in doing more. So, I decided now was the time for my Songbook Closure idea and Bridget might just be the singer to make it all happen. It was late August, 2006, and I decided to write a letter to Bridget that would shape our lives much more than I could ever imagine.

This is what the letter said:

You can read more about the evolution and recording of individual tracks on the CD from the Tracks page.

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_{Earth Born the CD is dedicated to the life of Clara Falcone, born November 23^rd 1920.}