"I was coming to Nashville in October of 2003 to pick up an ASCAP award for 'The Long Goodbye'," [Brady] explains, referring to the Brooks and Dunn's number one country hit he penned with Ronan Keating. "Garry West suggested that we lay down some tracks while I was in town, as an experiment." The blend of southern hospitality and Irish intensity proved to be a dynamic, unexpectedly fruitful match. "In that two day period we recorded six tracks. They turned out so well that I felt I'd like to complete the album in Nashville....I came back in January and April of 2004 for two weeks at a time and finished the recording in July. September we spent mixing and mastering. In all, I crossed the Atlantic eight times. That's how much I believed in how 'right' this record felt, how right for me this new direction was."
The Nashville recordings are marked by some of his purest, most direct performances – with the bulk of the tracks cut with a small band. The musical collaboration is undiluted by technology: sequencers or click tracks. Brady embraced this mode of recording with his recent 'Paul Brady Songbook' project, a full-band-live-in-studio CD/DVD and RTE TV series, still fresh in his mind. "I haven't made a record like this since 'Hard Station' in 1981," Brady says. "It's like going back to square one. The musicians didn't always know what was coming next, and it made for an electric, slightly dangerous atmosphere that came through in the music."'Say What You Feel' was captured very quickly, relying on the sharp instincts of the Nashville musicians brought together by co-producer Garry West. The core studio band included Kenny Malone (drums); Danny Thompson, Byron House, and Viktor Krauss sharing string bass duties; John R. Burr (piano); Reese Wynans (Hammond organ); and Tom Britt (guitars). "The musicians didn't have weeks to learn the material," Brady explains. "We just passed out chord charts, spent twenty minutes to learn the song, then rolled tape. Everything we laid down on the tracking sessions is on the finished record: drums, string bass, acoustic guitar, piano, and me singing live with the players as we cut the track." The immediacy of the sessions never comes off as unfinished or hurried, thanks to the combination of the musicians' assured, deeply-felt performances and the quality of Brady's new songs.
"The songs are all very different," says Brady. "The majority of them are recent and co-writes, though one is more than 10 years old and one I started more than 5 years ago and had never finished. Some instinct made me keep the older songs back and not record them until now." With 'Say What You Feel', Brady stopped holding back, "If you feel something," Brady explains, "just say it. Get it out. The sky isn't going to fall, and it's going to be better than if you sit on it and let it fester. That's a fundamental belief of mine, and it underpins what is said in quite a few of the songs....I knew by the end of the first two days," he concludes, "that I'd found a really good way to lay these tracks down and that these musicians were a magical bunch of people to work with. It was very inspirational to me. Really I think the best Nashville musicians shine brightest when they play something that's outside of country music. I'm not remotely country. I'm a white Irish soul singer."
Tracklisting:
Smile
Don't Try To Please Me
Love In A Bubble
I Only Want You
Living For The Corporation
Say What You Feel
Locked Up In Heaven
Sail, Sail On
The You That's Really You
Doin' It In The Dark
Beyond The Reach Of Love
The Man I Used To Be
"I was coming to Nashville in October of 2003 to pick up an ASCAP award for 'The Long Goodbye'," [Brady] explains, referring to the Brooks and Dunn's number one country hit he penned with Ronan Keating. "Garry West suggested that we lay down some tracks while I was in town, as an experiment." The blend of southern hospitality and Irish intensity proved to be a dynamic, unexpectedly fruitful match. "In that two day period we recorded six tracks. They turned out so well that I felt I'd like to complete the album in Nashville....I came back in January and April of 2004 for two weeks at a time and finished the recording in July. September we spent mixing and mastering. In all, I crossed the Atlantic eight times. That's how much I believed in how 'right' this record felt, how right for me this new direction was."
The Nashville recordings are marked by some of his purest, most direct performances – with the bulk of the tracks cut with a small band. The musical collaboration is undiluted by technology: sequencers or click tracks. Brady embraced this mode of recording with his recent 'Paul Brady Songbook' project, a full-band-live-in-studio CD/DVD and RTE TV series, still fresh in his mind. "I haven't made a record like this since 'Hard Station' in 1981," Brady says. "It's like going back to square one. The musicians didn't always know what was coming next, and it made for an electric, slightly dangerous atmosphere that came through in the music."'Say What You Feel' was captured very quickly, relying on the sharp instincts of the Nashville musicians brought together by co-producer Garry West. The core studio band included Kenny Malone (drums); Danny Thompson, Byron House, and Viktor Krauss sharing string bass duties; John R. Burr (piano); Reese Wynans (Hammond organ); and Tom Britt (guitars). "The musicians didn't have weeks to learn the material," Brady explains. "We just passed out chord charts, spent twenty minutes to learn the song, then rolled tape. Everything we laid down on the tracking sessions is on the finished record: drums, string bass, acoustic guitar, piano, and me singing live with the players as we cut the track." The immediacy of the sessions never comes off as unfinished or hurried, thanks to the combination of the musicians' assured, deeply-felt performances and the quality of Brady's new songs.
"The songs are all very different," says Brady. "The majority of them are recent and co-writes, though one is more than 10 years old and one I started more than 5 years ago and had never finished. Some instinct made me keep the older songs back and not record them until now." With 'Say What You Feel', Brady stopped holding back, "If you feel something," Brady explains, "just say it. Get it out. The sky isn't going to fall, and it's going to be better than if you sit on it and let it fester. That's a fundamental belief of mine, and it underpins what is said in quite a few of the songs....I knew by the end of the first two days," he concludes, "that I'd found a really good way to lay these tracks down and that these musicians were a magical bunch of people to work with. It was very inspirational to me. Really I think the best Nashville musicians shine brightest when they play something that's outside of country music. I'm not remotely country. I'm a white Irish soul singer."
Tracklisting:
Smile
Don't Try To Please Me
Love In A Bubble
I Only Want You
Living For The Corporation
Say What You Feel
Locked Up In Heaven
Sail, Sail On
The You That's Really You
Doin' It In The Dark
Beyond The Reach Of Love
The Man I Used To Be
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