'Blues to the Bone'

I wrote these songs years before this recording. I sequenced and performed them solo at my normal regular gigs. When I started playing them with the band each muzo naturally brought along his own interpretation and style. So we started doing shows and playing gigs as the recording date drew closer.

Carl du Preez

A day before the recording the drummer had urgent work in Johannesburg. Paris (Paris Studios) recommended James Porter, a professional drummer with years top-notch experience, with is own drum school and studio (Mustard Seed Records). James played perfectly with us after listening to pre-production material the evening before the recording. We recorded all scratch and drum tracks during the first day of recording, James often doing it once only!

James Porter

Garth Airey played keyboards on the album. What a versatile and skillfull player on many levels. He combined effects from his Roland XP and his Korg Triton here and there to get some very funky sounds.

Garth Airey

Richard Mitchell played bass on this album. He has been playing with me for years, first in a band called Ambassador, and still does.

Richard Mitchell

Willie van Zyl, a professional and studio sax player, supported in some songs to give it that edge and Cape Town texture.

Bellydance

Urshulah

www.urshulah.co.za

'Face It'

Since the 1st album we had good fun playing many shows, festivals and did some limited touring as most of the muzos have other occupation as well. We did a live recording at 'Dorpstraat Teater.' Different muzos helped out at different times as each one was also busy with other music work.

This was the aim of the 'Face It' recording.

The album was recorded by James Porter in his Mustard Seed Studio, Somerset West, Cape Town, South Africa. We tried to record with all the muzos playing at once but in different rooms. It worked fine except for the lead vocals and acoustic guitar bleeding into one another. We attempted to record an exact vocal track over the recording which gives the vocals a 'ghost' effect at times. Different but interesting.

One evening, one take, except for 'Unwanted' which was really just me on guitars and James on the Durbaka drum.

Mitch played bass again and Garth again on keyboards. This time however Willem Prinsloo played drums and Lida Pieterse violin as they had been playing with us for some time.

Tim Lengfeld did mastering.

A DVD of a live recording at Sirrocco's is included in this album. Kevin Hough played bass as he had been playing bass for us for a while as well.