| Simon's profileSimon's spacePhotosBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
December 25 The Hawkins' ChristmasOK, Christmas Day is here. Happy Christmas everyone.
It's just gone midnight and I’m sitting next to the family tree in the playroom. The house is quiet. All I can here is the tick tock of the old kitchen clock and a distant tide coming in. Coloured lights are flickering, the children are sound asleep, the kitchen’s cleared up from supper and the dishwasher is on. All the presents are wrapped and put in their place (in stockings by the fireplace or under the tree). Father Christmas has had his mince pie and maybe a little something else. Somehow I feel this is one of the best moments. So much to look forward to.
Already I feel like we’ve celebrated Christmas a few times over. We had my parents over before they drove up to London to visit my brothers and their families. Yesterday we had some good friends visit us (Clare & Simon, Jack and Tim) who we know from our days when we lived in Holland working for Shell.
But Christmas Day for us should be a quiet, family day. Here’s how I think it will go… We’ll wake up with Poppy bursting into our bedroom asking us to go down to the playroom to see what Santa’s left. We’ll probably take everything upstairs and have a nice cup of tea in bed while Moo wakes up slowly. When he’s up we’ll take it in turns to open our stocking presents (at least as best we can with two small children).
Christmas muffins are a family tradition now and I’m delighted to see that Sandra’s already laid out the baking tray. They're just wonderful with melted butter, honey and hot tea. We'll probably exchange phone calls with our parents, brothers and sisters before Church. At 10.30 we’ll go to our local parish Church for the Christmas service where the vicar will lead a traditional service. It will be packed out. Here’s a pic of what our local English parish Church looks like:
Our normal church is literally a warehouse but doesn’t meet this weekend (I’m not getting into that debate).
After church we’ll come home and open a few presents from under the tree with coffee and sweets. Poppy’s main present is in the garage (I’ve yet to put it together). Then, after a light lunch (baked potatoes, smoked salmon, patés, Christmas chutneys, French cheeses, mince pies and Christmas cake) we’ll all have a rest. Moo will sleep. Poppy will snuggle in our bed while we watch a movie. I’ll probably fall asleep as well! We’ll try to watch the Queen’s speech at 3.00. After that we’ll go for a brisk walk along the sea front. A lot of people promenade on Sundays so I think it will be especially busy. After a nice cup of tea we’ll open some more presents, give the children their supper and do bath, stories and bed.
Then, when all is quiet, Sa and I will have our own Christmas in the drawing room where we have our own tree and a fire. We’ll start by opening a special bottle of champagne we've saved. Dinner will be at around 8.30 and we’ve a 21 pound organic turkey Sa ordered a couple of months ago from a local farm. We’ll have everything you can imagine with it – bread sauce, several stuffings, onion sauce, cranberry sauce, sausages, bacon, her wonderful roast potatoes, parsnips, etc etc. The bird will last us most of January in some form or other - pies, risotto, curry, soups, sandwiches... Then Christmas pudding which will come to the table on fire. I love this bit. When Ross was with us he pointed out the British obsession with raisins. It’s fully evident here. They’re in the cake, pudding, (they might be in the stuffing), in mince pies. Everywhere. Hadn’t thought of it before he mentioned it.
After dinner we may watch a little TV maybe. There are some cracking things on British TV over Christmas. We'll record most of what we want. Again it will last us well into January. In reality we may well crash after dinner.
So that’s the Hawkins' Christmas. I hope you can celebrate Christmas with the same peace that we are blessed to enjoy. I never take that for granted.
Yours needing to go to bed or I'll definitely fall asleep during the movie,
S. December 21 The Shhh Music Christmas PartyEach year, around the second week of December, me and my imaginary friends at the studio have our Christmas Party. Lights go up, candles get lit, papers and boxes get cleared away, iced mince pies and tangerines come out and the most fun, we get to open presents.
It all starts with a UPS man coming to the studio with a big box. It’s like he’s delivering a Christmas hamper, only instead of being filled with gastronomic delights from the food halls of Harrods, it’s full of new toys from my tech boys at Millennium Music or Studio Spares. Last year it was full of sound insulating material, nails and hardboard. Yes, it's sad how excited I got about a few nails and some hardboard.
This year our Christmas Party was rescheduled because some of us were unwell. But the box was electrifying. For those interested in studio stuff, here's some of the highlights:
You can imagine my excitement when the knock at the door finally came. I had to tell (virtual) Tim Hughes to sit down and shut up while I signed for it. It was a cool moment taking out everything from its shrink wrap, plastic casing and putting/loading/setting them in their place.
But my favourite item this year didn’t actually come from the box. It was a little piece of software that came over the net and cost a fraction of the price of a G5. I love it because it’s fundamentally changed the way I work. It allows me to network several PC’s together, transforming my set up from a simple DAW with plug-ins into a multi-host ‘sound farm’. So now, all the plug-ins that I’ve ever owned (plus all the new ones) are loaded up onto slave machines and my main PC has been freed up to run my DAW and process audio. And the best thing about it is... it works!
Now, if you managed to stay with me through all of that tech stuff you will see where I’m headed. The first lesson for me this Christmas is that it’s not the big things that necessarily make the most difference but the small things that smartly change my life. And they don’t always come in the box with everything else. So I hope and pray that my eyes will be opened to find a few more small things this Christmas.
Yours thinking maybe I’ll swap Selfridges for www.SkyMall.com next year,
S. December 19 Children’s EnglishAs a writer I’m fascinated (obsessed?) with the way different words spill over into others. That’s what SongTools is about – analysing words at a sub-syllable level to produce surprising combinations of words and phrases that work together in a lyrical way. It doesn’t happen all the time but when it does pay off, it’s always a cool moment. Especially in a cowrite. (I’m thinking of the ‘Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea’ moment Twila and I shared in writing ‘God Will Go’).
But after all of the thought, coding, analysis, energy and everything else that I’ve put into SongTools over the last 12 years, I'm realising that sometimes, instead of trying to be smart, it might be smarter to do the opposite. Because children seem to be able to do this stuff without any programming whatsoever.
Today Poppy gave me three wonderful examples of how changing one or two letters can somehow put fairy lights on an ordinary phrase:
I'm sure all parents have their own examples.
I felt like I should have corrected her but I didn’t. I guess partly because her expressions (to her Daddy) were just adorable and partly because it seems that using words like eleventeen is so ‘three years old’ and I just want her to stay there for as long as possible. She’ll find seventeen soon enough. In both senses.
So tomorrow I’m going to try writing another way – offering my ‘creative child’ a total amnesty on using incorrect English. In fact, asking it to say things in Children’s English. It might be fun.
Yours wondering if the last stages of man-flu will ever go away,
S. December 17 Christmas ground rushWell I've finally shaken off this man flu thing but it's left me hopelessly behind on all things Christmassy. It reminds me of how I felt in one of my more adventurous moments... Not far from where I grew up in the South West of England, there was a private airfield where people went to fly gliders and sky dive. I was always fascinated... how could anyone deliberately step out of the open door of a light aircraft into the blasting wind, not having anything beneath them other than the site of a pair of brown boots against the green rolling fields of the English countryside? They said it takes two minutes twenty seconds to fall 2000 feet if the parachute and it’s spare both fail to open. Well, that didn’t put me off having a go and one warm summer day I got to find out for myself. There were two feelings that I will always remember:
So what’s this got to do with Christmas? Well, this is more or less how I’m feeling right now: There's that sense of ground rush, as if time deliberately runs faster in these last few important days before the Hawkins’ production of Christmas plays to a live audience. But I guess I’m also pretty sure that some way or other the cards will make the last post, the presents will be bought, the wrapping will be done (even if I don’t make it to Selfridges) and we will all have a great time. I guess I should try to enjoy the journey down! Yours finally printing off our address labels, S. December 13 The ideal Christmas presentUrghh, it’s 16.21 on a Tuesday afternoon and I’m in bed with man flu. Man flu is an English illness identical to its female counterpart but requires less sympathy. I owe a bunch of emails and I’ll reply to everyone when my hands stop shaking. There, you see, I’m even using this to try to get sympathy.
I just loved Sue’s blog about Christmas shopping in America. I put my thinking cap on to try to come up with a way to make it easy for all of my American friends. Here’s what I came up with…
There are so many benefits to buying all your relatives a toilet for Christmas…
Sandra and I were talking about this the other night. Maybe if 30 pounds (50 dollars) is too expensive they might sell a bucket instead. Have I just been really offensive? Blame it on the man flu.
Yours feeling sorry for myself when I should be celebrating Poppy’s birthday today,
S. December 10 Selfridges is calling to meI used to think of Christmas shopping as just another job on my TODO list at a time of the year which was actually very inconvenient: I just had too many things to finish off before the end of the year so it was a chore and there was nothing celebratory about it. That was before I discovered 'personal shopping' at Selfridges in London. Since then, my Christmas shopping is something I really look forward to and I get to enjoy the season and all that it means without some of the stress I used to feel. Here's how it works:
I'm a little late this year, partly because of me being away and partly because I wanted to finish off some stuff in the studio last week. But, with the smell of Christmas trees filling the house, Selfridges is now calling to me. I'm going to book it up....
... there, just done it. Feeling excited now.
Yours thinking about what I'm going to have for my Christmas lunch,
S.
P.S. Something funny happened yesterday. Caught myself trying to get in a non-existent driving seat in the wrong side of my car (why do we drive on the other side of the road?!) December 07 Undeniably YouAt WAJ this year there was a master class on Thursday afternoon where we all wrote to assignment a song targeted for one of four different artists. Given that Wayne was actually looking for songs for several projects of his, this really was pitching to a producer for a slot on an album he's working on.
Anyway - I wrote an upbeat song called 'Undeniably You' which I put together in a real hurry but it still needed some work. So after WAJ Joel worked some gold leaf into the lyric and we tracked the vocal when I was in Nashville last week. Barry has since added some sparkle into the production and Holly's just sent me the finished demo which is here:
There's a 180 sec clip on the list on the right which a little quicker to download.
Hope you enjoy it but if you've got a moment let me know what you think (simon.hawkins@shhhmusic.com).
Yours still a little jet lagged,
S. December 05 Barbie Birthday CakeGot back to an empty house. The quietness and the gentle crashing of the waves were welcome relief after 18 hours travelling. I wrapped up a glowing jelly toy I’d bought at Charlotte airport, grabbed my camera, jumped in the car and drove the short distance to where Poppy’s 4th birthday party was just getting underway.
The welcome home is always the best part of going away. To finally hold my family (except Moo, who was at Grandma’s) made me feel I’d finally arrived. Poppy climbed up me somehow, wrapped her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go. One of her friend’s mums asked Sandra “is she always so pleased to see your husband?!” And Sa explained that I’d been away in Nashville for a week. Immediately I was assigned photo duty, dj for pass-the-parcel and drinks waiter for the grown ups. It was fun to be with family and friends once again.
The party lasted a couple of hours before I finally got to see Moo. While the girls were asleep we had some ‘man time’ together, doing jobs in the house with him following me around. We went to the shops to buy the Sunday papers and played with some left-over balloons from Poppy’s party. I gave up my Sunday afternoon snooze in a bid to beat jetlag. But when it got to the children’s bath time I regreted it because I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Once the children were off to bed (and stayed there) Sa and I got a chance to catch up over a glass of wine and a crackling fire. I gave her some presents I’d brought back and we talked over how our weeks had gone. I loved her story about how one breakfast time last week Poppy role played a judge in court while Sa practiced for an interview. And how they made Poppy’s spectacular birthday cake by stabbing a sponge with a naked Barbie. It looked amazing. I was touched that the cake was playing a guitar I'd brought back from my last visit to Nashville.
Yours grateful to be back home safely,
S.
P.S. If you want to sing 'Happy Birthday' click on the media player on the left!
(it may take a while to load) December 03 DON'T DO IT ROSS!!Going home today. Bit sad. Had a wonderful week. 5 finished songs plus a few more to finish by email (or next time). I love all of them. I’ll also miss my cowriters and other friends here. I’m going to get told off by Belinda for sucking up now I know. But I remember as I was a child we used to have people come to stay with us and I always got upset when they left. I think Poppy’s like that as well. In fact, walking through the airport I caught myself quietly leaping for joy (if that’s possible) when I saw an eight foot bright blue guitar standing in the corner. You wouldn’t see that in Felpham. Or Arundel. Or London come to think of it.
I was reading American Songwriter in Borders this morning and thought I was turning native Nashville’ian… one of the songwriters featured in the ‘portrait’ section is John Scott Sherrill, a writer I saw at the Bluebird the other night. In fact, thanks to Lyn, I was sitting right next to him. Clearly an amazing writer. Whoops, sorry Lyn, I meant to call you ‘L’.
Yesterday was a cool day. I had a ‘no show’ cowrite in the morning and normally that would be a bummer. But after 4 days of writing, writing, writing I have to admit having an early breathing space was a relief. Not that I wouldn’t have given my all if we had written but, well… I’m sure you know what I mean. So I had an opportunity to meet some more people at BBMP and do some writing on my own in the long green room. I like that room. I realised they’ve replaced the speakers and mended the sustain pedal on the piano in there.
Had lunch with Barry at the Thai restaurant near Starbucks. He’s been working incredibly hard to get about a million tracks finished in a week… he was still there when I called him at about half past midnight. He promised to have a late morning and I checked – he wasn’t answering his phone at 10.30. Good man.
In the evening Holly and Guy kindly invited me back to their place for supper. Jacob and Houston are so cute. There was more than a resonance of our home - our two who are the same kind of age. Houston seems to be light years ahead of Moo. Jacob is a little older so that lets Poppy off the hook. But they had the Christmas tree lights on, stockings hanging from an enormous fireplace and there was the smell of Christmas in the air. You Americans know how to do Christmas. That was reinforced when I went shopping for a self powered, self lit, six foot, blow up plastic snow storm. This was exactly the kind of thing Sa had in mind when she put in her request before I came to bring back something totally over the top for Christmas. I’m afraid I had to pass on it because it was a little bigger than I thought it would be, even deflated in its box. Never mind. Maybe if don’t bring a piano next time.
On the way to the airport I dropped my songs off at Ross’ place for him to give to Holly on Monday. He's so funny. I saw his car outside his house and it got me thinking how much his car is a metaphor of all we know and love about Ross: big, American, slightly messy but in a really cool way, loud, comfortable to be with and great fun. So as I get on my flight I say DON’T DO IT ROSS!!! DON’T SELL YOUR CAR!!! IT'S TOO MUCH PART OF WHO YOU ARE, YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE THERAPY.
Yours wondering if I’m going to power down my laptop in time to make my flight,
S.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who made the last week incredible. See you soon. December 02 When The Hall Is EmptyHi, I’m back. Thanks to Sue and Belinda for their cool contributions while I was away.
Just a quick message tonight. Had an hour this morning video calling with Sa and Poppy (Moo was asleep). Feel like I've been watered.
Two cool songs today – thanks to my cowriters: James Tealy and Caleb Collins. Speaking of whom, I’ve just got the demo of the track Caleb and I wrote in September. It’s called ‘When The Hall Is Empty’ sung and played by Caleb. Love what he’s done with it - very nice work my friend.
I've added a clip to the list but if you want to hear the whole thing just click on this link:
May take a minute or two to load. Hope you like it.
Holly mentioned that the demo of 'Indelible' is being tracked tomorrow. Can't wait to hear that.
Yours needing an early night,
S.
P.S. thanks Ross for dinner at J. Alexander’s. Pics below (if taking photos of my food and posting them on a website isn't too weird)
P.P.S. thanks also to Terry for the present for Poppy that arrived at BBMP today… very touching… it’s very kind of you. December 01 Guest blogger: SueAccording to Londontown.com, their second most popular tour for visitors is the Jack The Ripper Murders Walking Tour. I have never been to England. But I’m positive that walking around to places where Jack the Ripper murdered women would not be on my list of things to do.
Simon (whose blogging usually occupies this space) has invited me over. I’m definitely coming soon. Will I be considered hopelessly predictable if I want to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace? I promise not to annoy the men in the large furry hats.
If you came to St. Charles, where I live, I would take you downtown to Main Street to walk on cobblestone streets and shop the antique shops and eat somewhere quaint that has uncomfortable chairs. I would take you across the Missouri River to St. Louis to ride up to the top of the Gateway Arch and visit our zoo and eat at a great Italian restaurant. Midwesterners are fun and we are just goofy over people with British accents. I think you would like us.
I had scheduled nothing for today before I came to Nashville. Sometimes I do that. Something almost always turns up, and that’s what happened today. I showed up at the office and an old friend came walking out of the room next to where I dropped off my stuff. He’s in from Dallas and was co-writing with someone I know but have never worked with. They insisted I join them, and so I got to help write a song, renew an old friendship, and build on a new one.
This afternoon James Tealy came by, and we rewrote two songs we had already written. Both songs are much better for the extra effort. One may end up on James’ album. The other is for a project that is such a long shot that I’m not going to even say what it is.
I got to hear a new demo of a song Simon wrote with Joel Lindsey. If you are a friend or relative of Simon who is reading this, Simon is kicking some serious songwriting butt over here. I’m so proud of him. I’m so impressed with his ability to listen and absorb and incorporate what he learns into every new song he writes. He’s a quick study, that Simon.
I know it doesn’t sound like an exciting day. It’s just unfortunate that I’m blogging about it, cause I’m not doing a good job at all of dressing it up to make it interesting. Some days are like that, I guess. So because my day, although interesting to me, sounds pretty boring, I’ve decided just to paste in a description of something I would do today if I were in England:
“Admire the winter wonderland of a crisp, clear English countryside from the comfort and warmth of your own period steam train carriage bedecked in rich, luxuriant Christmas wreaths and garlands Enjoy a traditional Christmas carol concert among candlelit cloisters, quires and stalls of some of the most historic and architecturally stunning cathedrals and churches in England.”
Cheerio, English friends. Simon will return tomorrow!
|
|
|
