Louder Than War join Blue Rose Code in the studio as they record their new album.
Blue Rose Code is a musical ensemble, embodying the creative vision of Edinburgh based musician and songwriter Ross Wilson. Over the years Blue Rose Code have created a compelling canon of work that has embraced a myriad of musical contexts, ranging through folk, jazz and soul, to more recently country. Alongside this his songs have communicated an authenticity of storytelling and emotional engagement, that has had a strong resonance with his loyal and expanding audience.
As a live unit, both in smaller acoustic and full band electric modes, Blue Rose Code are a captivating and life affirming experience. In live performance songs never stay the same and are regularly reinterpreted and given new emotional meaning. It is thus no surprise that Blue Rose Code were invited to headline one of the days at the 2024 Cambridge Folk Festival.
Having recently moved back home to Edinburgh, and after road testing a collection of new songs, Ross and Blue Rose Code are in the studio completing the recording of a new album. A recent Kickstarter campaign to support finishing the recording of the album, received an overwhelming and heartfelt response from the Blue Rose Code fan base.
Louder Than War were invited into the studio on one of the recording days, and we had a privileged view of the vocals being recorded for one of the songs. We also sat down with Ross to reflect on some of the songs that will appear on the album, and on the recording process itself, including the musicians involved, and the emerging musical direction.
The studio for the recording of the new album is Solas Sound in Glasgow, founded by Blue Rose Code bassist and engineer/producer Gus Stirrat. Close to the vibrant Finnieston quarter of the city, where we broke for lunch, the studio has a relaxed and creative vibe. We joined Ross and Gus, alongside the very talented vocalist Niamh Corkey, as they were working on the vocals for a track inspired by the book ‘Wherever You go, There You Are’, written by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Observing the vocals being put together and recorded was an insightful experience. Initially a Ross lead vocal with Niamh joining Ross on the chorus, the song then rapidly evolved into an exquisite duet. The detailed attention to timing and phrasing seemed to perfectly complement the artistic freedom to go with a different approach in the moment, with everyone contributing ideas. At one point Ross suggested a Crosby, Stills and Nash like layering of the vocals on the song’s bridge. At another point, Niamh came up with a stunningly beautiful wordless harmony between the lines of the chorus.
Some of the lines in the song seemed to hang memorably in the air, “…like the books on your shelf you never read”, “…do we ever get to change who we are?”. Gus, sitting at the mixing desk, aptly summed up the process as “Going where the heart is going”.
After a break for lunch, we returned to the studio, and I sat down with Ross for a relaxed chat about the new album, and the direction his music is taking.
LTW: Can you say a little about the Solas Sound recording studio and what you enjoy about working in it?
Ross Wilson: Solas Sound is somewhere that I’ve become very comfortable in. I feel like it’s a real resting place. I think the relationship that I now have with Gus, as an engineer, but also now more broadly as a producer. Also getting the guys more involved in production. Lyle (Watt) has been really involved, and it’s been nice. It’s been nice to be a bit of a distance from Edinburgh. So, I can sing in the car and get my voice warmed up and just give myself an opportunity to try and land when I get to the studio. It’s a nice part of the town, but also it has everything that I need without being ostentatious. It’s small but perfectly formed. I feel like I’ve never not had a good experience here, which is really important. It’s got a nice vibe.
How have you approached these recording sessions and what is the actual process in the studio?
I certainly hadn’t planned on doing a new record. I’d kind of planned to press pause. When my mom died, I just didn’t feel in any way creative, and I spent a year waiting to process grief and the grief kind of arrived before I noticed it was there. After I came out the other side of that, the family and I had decided to come back to Edinburgh through that process. Arriving back and just building a new life up here and feeling geographically closer to my band mates.
Without the pressure of feeling like I needed to write an album, without a deadline, songs just started to arrive. Then we had a couple of days in the studio in October last year I think, just to workshop some ideas and try and grow the songs in more of a kind of country way, back to a Scottish sounding folky thing. We are playing with this wonderful fiddler called Mhairi Marwick. She’s really brought a new vibe to the sound, much more in that country direction, but Scottish country. It all happened in a way that was more organic than previous experiences. So, we had those couple of days and we had a baseline, and then we came back in and did another few days, and in the intervening period I’d written some more songs. It’s happening in a manner that has felt much more artistic, a lot freer, and I just feel yeah different as a man, and consequently I feel different in the studio, and as a musician. It’s been a really happy experience, a really joyous experience this time. Away from the pressure of any deadline.
Which musicians have been joining you on the recording sessions?
So, Gus Stirrat on bass, and he’s been engineering in his studio here, Solas Sound. So, from the start we have had Gus, and Mhairi Marwick on fiddle, and Lyle Watt on guitar. Lyle does all the good guitar on the record and I do a little bit of other stuff. You are in today where we have got the extraordinary Niamh Corkey singing with me. Yesterday we had jazz legend Paul Harrison on keys, and the day before we had bandmate Stuart Brown on drums. We had him in last year too. So, it’s a lot of the same faces, but with Niamh and Mhairi added and it’s taking it in the direction that I thought intuitively I wanted to move towards. I felt really happy with how…. it’s funny because the initial couple of days that we had in, they seem so long ago, felt so detached from what we’ve arrived with. But now just these three days this week I feel like we are getting to a landing place that I’m getting quite excited about.
Can you describe some of the songs you have been recording?
Yeah, you’ve come in and listened to a song, a duet with Niamh, which is inspired by a wonderful book written by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I have another song inspired by my love of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I read this great biography by a French poet called call Christian Bobin, and it felt like a devotion to Emily’s work, his writing it was so evocative. It really took me to a place where I felt like I was nearly inhabiting the same space albeit two hundred years later. She lived as a shut-in for almost all of her adult life, and I had this vision of her kind of creeping out in the morning just as the sun was coming up and running across her father’s lawn, running through the dew barefoot. From there I just wanted to write a song about how inspiring I found her. As an adult, for someone that didn’t spend really anytime outside, she saw the world and was able to express how she saw the world, in a way that I’ve just never been able too. I return to her work time and time again. It’s called Emily Dewdrop and it’s really a devotion to Emily.
I have another song which is about a father who never knew his daughter and who misses the relationship he could have had. It’s a song that people have come up and asked about after the show. It’s funny since my mum died I felt a lot more comfortable writing in character rather than just from a first-person point of view. I felt a bit more comfortable building on the truth, you know having a bit more artistic licence. So, developing a skeleton of idea but then taking artistic licence of where the story goes. I think maybe that started with my song Sadie on the previous record.
What else do we have? (Laughs) We have a rammy of a song written about an old Twelve Step Fellowship friend, who shall remain nameless. He is a guy that I knew for the duration of my stay in Liverpool. I found him to be a great source of wisdom, and inspiration. Yeah, a good source of advice. An incredible guy.
Another song called Broken Hallelujahs which is a stream of consciousness adventure through the Midwest and on to the southern states of America. I guess this is a bluegrass inspired song. I wouldn’t call it bluegrass, but you know you wouldn’t be far off if that’s how you described the direction of travel.
I think there’s loads of good stuff on there actually. I haven’t written anything in the studio this time which I am actually really pleased about. Because sometimes you write stuff in the studio, and it sounds crap.
A number of the new songs have been road tested at your concerts, what has that added to the development of the songs by the time you get to the studio?
They have. I really enjoy having the ability to sing the songs in, if you will. I’ve always been into really unfashionable music, and I grew up loving Counting Crows. When everyone else was listening to cool grunge bands I would have gone to see Counting Crows one hundred times before I would go and see Nirvana. There is something about Adam Duritz’s ability to distil his spirit into his singing. It’s so immediate. They had this big, big, gap between releasing the first and second record and in between, in the interregnum, they released a double live record, one acoustic and one electric. He has this moment, where Duritz says, they have been on the road for seven or eight years, and that he feels like they are only now learning how to play these songs.
So, to be able to take songs out; and when you’re performing properly and you’re in sync with the audience you can tell if that verse is going on too long, you can tell whether actually you need to just trim the flab off that song. It’s great to be able to just grow songs or indeed shrink songs in a live context. Also, it means that the guys come in, and they have defined parts, it’s not like a flying by the seat of your pants thing; but you get to just feel relaxed enough that you can be confident and bold in what you are doing.
When it comes to mixing this album, what will you be looking for in terms of how the music is presented?
I’m definitely looking for something…. it’s a move away from that kind of soul band feel that we had on the last record. Because we have got some beautiful additional vocals, and in particular the fiddle, and some mandolin that I really wanted. I always go where my spirit takes me. It’s easy to post rationalise but I just felt that the songs this time have gone in a direction of a more acoustic sounding thing. I also listen to a lot more country stuff at the moment so I think that will probably inform the production, but there is no escape from a Scottish accent and that grounds it where it belongs.
The new album is called ‘East Of Eden’, what does the title mean for you?
It means loads and loads of things to me. So, East Of Eden in a biblical context means you are kind of removed from grace. You are away from the light of the divine. It’s also the name of one of my favourite books, I grew up loving Steinbeck, Steinbeck’s East Of Eden. It’s one of my favourite books, I just love his writing, I just jump into it, and it carries me away. I love the descriptiveness, I love his description of landscape, I love how everything is rooted in the great outdoors. So that’s what it’s about. Also, you know I guess I have been East Of Eden, I’ve been away and I’m back East of Edinburgh, I’m loving being home. There’re loads and loads of different meanings to it.
Is there a timeline at the moment for when the album will be released?
Yeah, I’ve got an album tour. I mean we have already had two album launches without an album, so I’d better hope that the album is ready for the album tour in the autumn. We are looking at mid-October.
Final question, what did the amazing response to the campaign to support the completion of the recording of the album mean to you?
I never wanted to do it. I don’t like the idea of going with a begging bowl to people. I think that if I don’t value what I do then why should other people, so the notion of people just gifting me money doesn’t sit well with me, and it still doesn’t sit well with me. However, I don’t have the means to…. because people don’t want to read about me moaning about the perilous state of the music business, because it is what it is. Unfortunately, a device for getting music out there now, getting it recorded and funded, a device for that is Kickstarter. So, I am unspeakably grateful to, and was overwhelmed and surprised, at the gusto with which people took to the campaign, and so, so, grateful. It’s given me again a sense of ease and comfort which has allowed me to operate and get people in to lend me their talents.
You can find out more about Blue Rose Code, including upcoming shows here. If you haven’t heard the music of Blue Rose Code, take a risk and seek it out, and open up an exciting new musical world to jump into.
Interview, words and photographs by Gareth Allen. You can find more of Gareth’s writing for Louder than War at his author’s archive.
A Plea From Louder Than War
Louder Than War is run by a small but dedicated independent team, and we rely on the small amount of money we generate to keep the site running smoothly. Any money we do get is not lining the pockets of oligarchs or mad-cap billionaires dictating what our journalists are allowed to think and write, or hungry shareholders. We know times are tough, and we want to continue bringing you news on the most interesting releases, the latest gigs and anything else that tickles our fancy. We are not driven by profit, just pure enthusiasm for a scene that each and every one of us is passionate about.
To us, music and culture are eveything, without them, our very souls shrivel and die. We do not charge artists for the exposure we give them and to many, what we do is absolutely vital. Subscribing to one of our paid tiers takes just a minute, and each sign-up makes a huge impact, helping to keep the flame of independent music burning! Please click the button below to help.
John Robb – Editor in Chief