Robert Johnson is the album's only cover song, by the great Bill
Morrissey, one of my favourite songwriters, and a master of minimalist
narrative. Here he takes the story all blues guitarists know so well and
adds a little twist that seems so obvious once he's done it. If Robert
really sold his soul to become as good as he became, then the jealous
lover who poisoned him must really have been . . .
I wanted the album's coda to be a live track from a fun night as a
reminder of what it's all really about, though if I could ever tour with
the 28 players on this very studio album I most certainly would. I have
been a member of Leeds' The Original Gravity Band for 20 years, playing
reunion shows at least once per year, and this track is culled from a
2002 reunion show at Leeds' New Roscoe. Remixing the track at home in
Miami I added strings, fx, and reverb, and then with operating system
upgrades and the passage of time found myself in the studio without
project files, and unable to replicate the feel of my remix over just
Duncan Tulloch's raw stereo live mix. Mark Hornsby at Ridenour didn't
really want to work with my home remix at all and we tried to use just
the raw track but it wasn't working; Looch at MBRS did agree to work on
it, though he considers it to be "swimming in reverb". We added a few
more touches, notably a big setup for the nuclear concluding solo by Tim Lyttle (pictured live in Leeds). The applause from the home crowd is
genuine. Live sound man Duncan would hardly recognise any of this as his
work, but he was running the board on this very enjoyable night at one
of Leeds' premier live venues. On the track I accidentally misspeak the
lyric's "warm spring night" as "warm summer night" because I was staring
at the back door of the venue as I was singing, very much into the
groove of what the band was doing, to the point where I half expected someone to walk
in at that point on that particular warm summer night. The Original
Gravity Band can always be found at large in Leeds around this time in
summer. We have a lot of fun.