This Kickstarter hopes to raise the money to manufacture vinyl & CD versions of “The Optimist Hotel”, an album of new songs recorded in Room 13 Studios in Gent, where last year I recorded “Pennypot Lane”, an anthology of some of the more popular songs from the back-catalogue. Room 13 is such a great place to work. Not only is it in Gent, but engineer Ward Neirynck is a total genius when it comes to recording voice & guitar. As with last year, Yves Meerschaut contributes breathtakingly beautiful piano, & these recordings are also gifted by the vocal presence of the sublime Vera Coomans, & from Canada, Saskia Tomkins has added her absolutely gorgeous strings. I am so happy to have reconnected with Vera, who sang the women’s songs on the original 1997 “Gentle Men” recordings, & Saskia is for me the most eloquent & expressive of violinists, & I am lucky to have these three exquisite voices gifting these songs their magic.
The songs on this album are:
The Optimist Hotel, Wide-Eyed, Wizz Jones Plays Guitar, The Battle of Bamber Bridge, Jana is 16, In Favour of Wild Things, No Place Like Home, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Tout Va Bien & (the CD bonus track) Mutualade.
They are all linked by hopefulness, I think. Not everybody lives happily ever after in them, but they are about people who are hopeful, & who refuse to relinquish that hope.
There is an abundance of Kickstarter reward options – a great live recording of the Irregulars Xmas knees-up at the Albert last December, celebrating the completion of “Voila! Here we Are”, which should have come out as a double vinyl, but austerity decided that that wouldn’t be possible. But it’s an excellent album out on CD (eventually) & this is a double CD cheery collection of most of the songs from it, plus some old favourites, & the livelier songs from “Murder At The Grange” getting the full band treatment- & a rare band version of “Lifestyle Choice” too.
There’s also a “Rough Guide to The Optimist Hotel” book of lyrics, texts & illustrations, & lots of artwork options, too, including 5 12×12 gouache paintings I did working out how to create a cover for this album, trying out varying shapes, compositions & colours.
BUT – that’s enough from me. Thank you for reading this, thank you for your kind support in the past, hope you can help with this one, but – times are hard, so no pressure!
Best of regards whatever,
Robb
PS – not offering an LP as a reward as they are absolute pain to post!
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