Storm Shelter

Writers

Original Song by Vesty & Wishart, with rewrite by Plumley & Wishart, plus additional material by Clare, Dowse, Falcone, Mayr, Rule & Sabatelli

Performers

Bridget Remembers

I sent an early vocal recording to Don but it didn't start coming together until Martin and I worked really hard on the structure and integrating the chorus, which had always seemed like it belonged to another song. He wrote new guitar parts and we uploaded the results to Don.

Michael Mayr from Comitatus got involved because I was recording some supporting vocals for Hermione Gart and he'd heard that and I invited him into this project. He mixed up a wealth of electronic sound for the track.

I invited Alex and Matt from Heed The Thunder to add brass to the track. Sadly Alex was out of town when it came to the session but Matt filled the house and the street with the sound of his trombone I could have recorded him forever but on the third track he warned me I was getting trombone fever so we called it a day there.

Don Remembers

This is one of the first tracks worked on after Bridget provides clarinet performances on 3 Behold The Action Man tracks: Every Opera,  Stand and Deliver, and Crank Up The Vibes.

This piece did take time to get started. But once Martin’s guitar set the chords and vocal arrangement for me, I was able to do a quick old-style watery piano and a brass ensemble arrangement via my old K2000 synth. The piano part was my effort to continue to keep the CD mysterious. And Michael seemed to key in and create even more mystery with his synth work.

The quickness of this one coming together can also be seen in the performances by the next five crew members, as they did their parts in just one month. That’s pretty fast considering those five sessions were in California, Germany, Philadelphia, and Bath.

The brass ensemble part of mine was a bit of fun on a couple of fronts. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. At least not in a rock context. I used to play trombone in high school and college. So, I put my memory cells in action and tried to keep in mind the parts I used to play. I also tried to make sure the output from the K2000 sounded like a real brass ensemble, as opposed to a keyboardist playing brass presets. After Bridget and I discussed which parts to keep, it was really cool to plan for adding real brass instruments. Twas great having a real trombonist like Matt become part of the ensemble. Made me feel like I was momentarily time traveling!

Don's Timeline