Of A New Album

"Head Above Water" by Marshlander (2019)

Marshlander by Mark The Artist 

Dear Friends - I write "friends" because I am pretty certain that most people who find this page are known to me personally! If other people read it I don't think I know who you are or really how to find out, although I would have to give some thought over any ethical boundaries of that one if I did.

For quite a lot of the past year I have been focussed on completing an album of some of my songs. It is the first time I have undertaken a project like this and it has been an interesting and challenging process. Twelve years ago I recorded five tracks of my compositions with my ceilidh band, but I didn't actually play much on the tunes apart from a few percussion overdubs. It was nice to hear my music in a replayable form, but I've never got around to recording much that was actually played by me.

For the album, "Head Above Water", I used a small studio in The Fens, Grange Farm Studio. It is a purpose-built facility housed in a converted barn and has worked with some illustrious names in the music world. The engineer, Isi Clarke could not have been more helpful. My rig is hardly standard and she tried out a few configurations for microphone placement achieving a good sound in the end. I was, though, specially happy with how she captured the guitar sound.

Now, many months later, the fruits of that labour have ripened and several other things came to the boil at the same time. An artist local to me, Mark The Artist (whose work I have admired for about thirty years), asked recently if he could paint my portrait. It was an honour to sit for him. The result was so good I felt it would make a brilliant front image for the album. It was not a foregone conclusion that he would agree, but I am delighted that he did. The rest of the design was done by another friend who lives nearby, artist/photographer/musician Dan Donovan, who took some photographs back at Grange Farm.

I really wanted to include the lyrics in the pack, but even though Dan tried many formats, he could not fit even three songs of the eleven on the album into the available space! I guess I am a little wordy at times ... I would still like to be able to share the lyrics with people who like to read lyrics - maybe eventually in the form of a separate booklet or songbook, so I shall put them on here as blog entries to follow this one. If you are interested in a cd copy of my album, "Head Above Water", released in May 2019 click the "Buy Now" button below which will take you to a secure page on PayPal. If you prefer you could stop me and buy one at a gig somewhere or send an e-mail request to marshlander(dot)musician(at)gmail(dot)com
(substituting the correct punctuation where I've put brackets!) and I'll send a PayPal invoice to your e-mail address. When you pay the invoice you'll be asked for a delivery address. The cd is £10 plus £1.50 postage and packing within the U.K. Obviously it could cost more to post outside the UK. I've made a point of keeping the use of plastic to a minimum (i.e. just the cd itself) and the packaging is recycled materials and good old parcel string. I'm not sure what is acceptable in other countries, but I'll try and find out if it appears necessary.

The album contains eleven tracks and runs to a total of one hour and fifty-one seconds with the following list of tracks, all written, composed, performed on voice, guitar, drums and harmonica by me, Marshlander. I've deliberately kept this album to the orchestration you will hear if you see me play live.

The eleven blog entries after this one contain the lyrics and a few words about each of the songs on the album. Each track listed below also links to the relevant lyric page.

1. Grey
2. Blame It On Me
3. Time To Go 
4. Dear Mr Carter
5. Pansy Potter
6. Cruiser
7. Be Home Soon
8. Lean on The Tiller
9. Damn You, Enchiladas 
10. In Your Place
11. Say I'm Sexy

EDIT:
Of course if you prefer, the album is now available on Bandcamp as a download in pretty much every format you might want.