Doves

[Whitecat]

Hi John

Love your contribution to Kingdom Of Rust - Winter Hill and 10.03 are easily two of the best tracks on the record. Considering that the band clearly loves them too (they're both in the live setlist, for example), and, they certainly fit with the rest of the record - where did it go "wrong" elsewhere? I've read explanations as simple as "scheduling differences" and as complicated as "didn't like the direction" - but I've never heard the story in your words!

Can you relate the story? Any interesting anecdotes?

Any lessons then to share based on this experience?

Cheers, and thanks for doing what you do!!

[johnleckie]

Hi Terminal3
I met The Doves in a backstage bar at My Morning Jacket gig in Manchester. We staggered out of there about 4am and few days later I got call to come up and meet again and soon found ourselves at Rockfield cutting three songs. Jez and band had demoed lots of songs over previous years but many were unfinished but all had some magic moments in the early recordings. We finished the tracks at their farmhouse studio in Cheshire which was well equipped ProTools HD, Neve pre amps and Dan Austin came in as engineer/programer as they'd worked with Dan on Steve Osbourne sessions and he's really good. With the tracks finished we went to RAK 3 to mix and all mixes sounded fine. The project was very time consuming and I was booked to record with Baaba Maal in Senegal and had other projects going after that so couldn't really get into doing more tracks on their schedule. They spent about a year finishing the record after I left and Michael Bauer mixed it all. I went to India last Oct with Dan and we recorded four bands together in Mumbai which was great fun.
Doves are wonderful people and live for the music.
Lessons to share? I find working with computers and chopping everything up and reassembling very tedious. Sometimes you dont know what you've got til its finished and great danger in going off on distant tangents. But this itself can be very creative and ofetn the only way such sounds can be found.
Cheers
JL