These are three tracks from an unreleased album provisionally titled Diverse Brew, recorded around 1985 at Hallmark and featuring Bob Theil, Don MacLeod and myself, Pat Orchard, and Bob Cairns. The project foundered because one of the guys joined a band whose management company proved uncooperative, as I recall. As the master tapes are now somewhere in Antwerp, where Bob now lives and is still musically active (his web site at http://www.bobtheil.be/index.html includes links to his albums), these were snarfed from a fairly naff cassette tape, so the recording quality isn’t exactly hi-fi. I may try again in the near future.
One Step Away (David Harley) MP3 | Lyric
There’s a song by J.J. Cale with a very similar title. This came first and sounds nothing like it. :-) OneStepAway
David Harley: vocal, acoustic guitar, electric slide guitar
Don MacLeod: acoustic lead guitar
Bob Theil: 12-string acoustic guitar
True Confessions (David Harley – Don MacLeod) MP3 | Lyric
Don wrote the tune for this. Very soft rock production. TrueConfessions
David Harley: lead and harmony vocals, acoustic lead guitar, electric lead guitars
Don MacLeod: acoustic guitar, piano
Richard Davy: percussion
Anna (Lin) Thompson: additional vocals
Heatwave (David Harley) MP3 | Lyric
The song wasn’t based on any particular incident, just a feeling about living in London at that time. I guess those feelings were justified, since the rioting at Broadwater Farm took place a few weeks after I wrote it. The banjo belonged to the studio (Hallmark, London): it was a five-string in a standard G tuning, but I played it tremolo with a flat pick to suggest a folkie/Irish tenor banjo sound. Heatwave
David Harley: Vocal, acoustic guitar, banjo, electric lead guitar, 5-string banjo
James Bolam (no, not that James Bolam!): piano
As far as I remember, all these tracks were done using a cheap but very cheerful Kimbara acoustic (which my daughter still has) and a Les Paul copy which was a bit inaccurate around the octave but had a very nice chunky humbucker sound.Don was using a Sigma acoustic, I think, and Bob was probably using a Takamine 12-string. No idea what the banjo was: I didn’t have my own John Grey long-tail 5-string by then, and it was long before I bought my Ozark.
