Monday night is band night-right?

On Monday at 8pm, whenever we can all make it, the five of us ‘Fields’ have been meeting, writing, rehearsing and recording music (with occasional cups of tea and choccy biscuits) for a long time. It seems that Monday night is ‘meant to be’ too as we have tried occasionally to move it to later in the week, but to no avail. Monday is band night. That’s that.

In fact, we began recording this album together (on Mondays) and we expected that making it this way would take a long time, recording and re-recording it together in between rehearsing for the odd gig and of course choccy biscuits- as a band does. Especially for me, this is what being in a band is about.

However, like everyone else we had to deal with lockdown- no more playing together. What were we to do? How would we manage to keep Monday night as music night? How would we continue to record the album? How would we have a cuppa together?

We tried online rehearsals which were a disaster because of latency or effectively not being able to play in time (something Henry accuses me of regularly anyway!). We eventually solved the problem by setting up mini recording spaces in each of our houses and began the process of sharing tracks and recordings online for backing vocals, guitars, shakers and even rain sticks. Mixing too-on line, sharing files and listening intently often hearing things differently- but we managed it- on Mondays.

Then suddenly, the music was mixed, mastered and completed so now what? Monday was now music night-right?

No, Monday night was… art night! Still in lockdown we moved to discussing artwork, logos, photo shoots (see Henry’s blog) and album cover design (see Deb’s blog). All good stuff and the final artwork, photos and logo for the album are fab but I was missing the collective tea and biscuits and ultimately Monday at 8 was supposed to be about music making-together.

You can imagine my excitement then as lockdown eased and the weather got reliable, that we were able to meet in the garden. We all agreed to organise a meeting to discuss the art in person with some refreshments (beer) in my back garden. All sounded perfect.  

Hold on though, should we not be playing, I thought?

And of course, it should be on a Monday too?

I decided to set up a range of instruments and amplifiers in the garden and set us up in a small circle to rehearse semi acoustically. I laid the artwork out on the grass too.

When the rest of the ‘fields’ arrived, there was sense of excitement and collectiveness as we discussed the cover art and logos, but more importantly that we played some of the music together for the first time in 16 months. We drank beer and we laughed together.

The only thing that I would change about this wonderful night though is that it was actually a Friday and not a Monday.

Nevertheless, the perfect oasis in a very long process.

Nathan