A BRIEF RECAP
What a strange couple of years it's been. Since MINE AND YOURS was released in May of 2001, things seem to have become blurrier and blurrier, for various reasons, and I can't help but wonder where all the time went. The last time I checked, I was in London again, farting away on a computer in the flat of RAK studios where my new record, WHEREVER YOU ARE, is being mixed. We are nearly done and I am very happy again. This one has been a bit more of a, um, process than the previous two, but in the end, I believe it has been worth it.

LET'S PUSH THINGS FORWARD
For me, the record began coming together in March of 2002. I had written a lot of songs since the recording of M&Y, most of which were fairly dark and sonically somber. At the time, I was coming off several difficult solo tours that had been somewhat under-supported by my record label. The response had been good, but the solo travel and general uncertainty about my immediate recording future had left me feeling a little beaten. RCA had only promoted M&Y for four months in the States due to financial cutbacks, but 'Girl on the Roof' had done remarkably well as a single in the UK and sales were beginning to perk up to show for it there. 'Comfort' and 'Mine and Yours' also made it onto the 'A' list on BBC Radio 2. But despite the positive signs, I suspected that RCA might not pick up the option for another record. They had been kind enough to furnish me with a Pro-Tools recording system for my apartment, and I had been doing demos of the new songs since December. But the songs were getting repetitive, mired in self-loathing and limited imagination. After years of feeling consistently prolific and progressive, I was finally in a rut.

I called my brother Jason one afternoon to moan about the state of affairs. He offered to come up to New York and work on stuff with me. I bought him a plane ticket and we took three days and hashed through the demos together. We refined some of the songs and started a few new ones amidst a lot of drinking and soul-searching. By the time he left, I felt rejuvenated and ready to move on. I decided to start writing stuff geared towards lifting myself out of the place I'd been in and things began to slowly come together.

RCA picked up the option for another record shortly thereafter and we began looking for a producer. Stephen Hague, an ex-pat American who had worked with the likes of Pet Shop Boys, New Order and Blur came to see the band in London in April and called up to say he was interested. We struck an agreement and began scheming. Stephen had a summer house in Woodstock, so New York seemed an appropriate place to start. I had moved back to Nashville at the beginning of July, dumping all of my possessions into a little house with a lot of windows and a soothing suburban essence. In one month I had managed to get things relatively settled. Bob Bradley agreed to house sit for me for the six weeks I would be gone. Leaving was a little painful, but I had a tentative feeling that better things lay ahead. And so, early on the morning of August 3rd, I packed up the old diesel Mercedes I had recently purchased and set off for NYC.

GODDAMN YOU, RASPUTIN
A few days later my band mates, Ethan Eubanks and WhyNot Jansveld, Stephen and myself all convened in a rehearsal studio on 27th St. Stephen turned out to be a slim man who spoke very softly and carried a big computer. We all hit it off pretty well and immediately got down to business, starting out with twenty-odd songs that would be narrowed down to sixteen for recording purposes. As the days passed, it was painful to see some of them go. 'Cuba' was the hardest to omit from the recording process; I'd been playing it live for awhile and it always seemed to go down pretty well. 'Half The Way Home' was another 3/4 thing that was sweet but just didn't fit. Continuity is the best way I have to judge these matters, I guess; a lot of them are near and dear but at some point you have to start thinking in terms of making a coherent body of work instead of a lot of individual moments. But I believe that songs have a life of their own and found comfort in realizing that the good ones would see the light of day soon enough.

The rehearsals went really well. At the end of the week we took the stage at the Bitter End on Bleeker Street to try out some of the new stuff on unsuspecting patrons. The whole thing actually turned out to be a little weighted in our favor as all of our friends came out, dancing and drinking to their heart's content. I thought things went very well, considering the amount of preparation time. I always enjoy playing things live and putting your brain in that quick reaction head space; you always seem to figure out what works and what doesn't a lot faster. 'Only a Dream,' 'Attitude' and 'How Will The Kids Get High' seemed to take on a new life onstage. 'Hold On' seemed a little tired for some reason. After a festive saturday we played another preview show at the Mercury Lounge on Sunday. This one was better, upping my levels of faith in all of the songs and generally improving my mood. 'Beauty' sounded exceptional, as did 'Growin' Up.' We used the money earned to buy a lot of libations and went back to Brooklyn for an impromptu party at Jeff Hill's apartment. One of the liquids consumed was a very strange anis-like Dutch liquor called Bols. This seemed to twist everyone's melon into a knot and I can't say for sure that some people will ever be the same again. I returned to the hotel the next day and ordered breakfast in to ease the pain.

I repacked the car on Tuesday morning and headed out to Brooklyn to collect the boys. The recent breakdown of the Benz's air conditioning went from being a mild discomfort to a full-on catastrophe as we found ourselves stuck in traffic on the BQE in 96 degree heat. As we neared Woodstock three hours later, Ethan capitulated to the temperature and passed out cold in the back seat.

WELCOME TO WOODSTOCK! SEND MORE LOSERS
After asking around we located Bearsville Studios and settled into what would be our living quarters for the next couple of weeks. The accommodations were two adjoining apartments in a converted 19th century Dutch farmhouse. It was supposedly haunted, so we chose our bedrooms carefully. After securing groceries from the local supermarket we met up with Stephen and our friend Emily for dinner. Afterwards, we sat on the grass chatting and drinking for a few more hours under an impressive array of stars. I fell asleep at some point, far away from change and tedium in general.

We loaded into the studio the next day. That night we did about five takes of 'Attitude'. It's always pretty amazing to be in a nice studio and putting your own songs to tape. I was also thoroughly enjoying watching E and Y. E had two drum sets and an array of other crap strewn around him; he was concentrating with that Manson look on his face. Y, his instruments arrayed around him like a bad photo shoot for Bass Player magazine, was grinning like a cat. So it began; we were off.

We finished 'Attitude' the next morning before the first pot of coffee was gone. Next was 'How Will the Kids Get High,' a Kinksy number that I had written a few weeks before in Nashville with my friend and sometimes band mate Daniel Tashian. We got around six takes and put it to bed. While Graeme, the engineer, and Stephen did some sort of computer backups the boys and I settled into a nice game of Scrabble. Scrabble, perhaps the finest of all board games, soon became an integral part of the sessions. In fact, I can best recall what we did and how it went by how I was faring with my vowels and consonants. Fortunately, I remember winning nearly every game. Y put forth a stunning effort, given that he was playing in his second language, but stunning isn't always good enough, is it, Wijnand? Crazy Dutch bastard.

NO SLEEP 'TIL....
And so the days began falling into a rhythm of morning coffee, one song recorded, a Scrabble game begun, another song cut, lunch and completion of Scrabble game, another song cut, beer run and possibly another song. The boys tore through the stuff remarkably fast. I have a fond memory of one of their finest hours: one night at the house I was struck with one of those bouts of insomnia I get for no apparent reason. I stayed up until six drinking E's Miller Lites and writing songs. The next morning I played a few of them for Stephen and the boys, and we decided to cut two: 'NYC Girl' and 'How Much'. The boys got 'How Much' in exactly an hour from the time they first heard it. I have certainly been guilty of taking their expertise for granted when touring, but being in the studio with them offered an entirely new perspective on their proficiency. Even Stephen Hague raised his voice above a whisper on several occasions to comment on the rapidity of the pace.

Outside the studio, things were a little less interesting. For reasons that have always befuddled me, a full day of recording generally seems to leave me as tired as a half day of exercise. (My half days, as you might imagine, are filled with exercise) It's all I can do to try to forget about it for a few hours. Our nights in Woodstock were rarely ambitious, to put it mildly; unless we felt like going pretty far out of our way to create some sort of communal orgasm with nature, most evenings were spent in pursuit of the 'social arts.' To be fair, a few nights were actually passed within the confines of our cozy Bearsville haunts, chatting and playing more board games. But generally we attempted to hit the town, at least as hard as Woodstock can be hit. Night life in this former bastion of Liberal America consists of three options for the drinking man: the Landau Grille, the Pine Crest and the Joyous Lake. (Otherwise known, respectively, as the Before, the After and the God-Has-Abandoned-You-Completely) We tried to ingratiate ourselves to the staffs by listening to embarrassing local gossip and leaving large gratuities, but found them a bit wary of musicians passing through. The rhythm of the night settled into the following pattern: Guinness's at the Landau; Heinekens, Jameson's and billiards at the Pine Crest and, on really desperate occasions, death rattles in the Lake. Occasionally, the odd female would gracefully disturb this pattern, making us remember the better things in life while someone ordered up another round of whatever she and her friends might be having... but the story will remain overwhelmingly male-dominated for these purposes, for the overpowering aroma of under-sexed man is the only sensory recollection I have from these occasions.

Back in the studio, things were picking up steam. 'Patience' was a song I had written that winter on a train in Europe. I was very proud of it but the version we were putting down in the studio sounded like a competent Ron Sexsmith imitation and not much more. I felt like it could use a few curve balls and everyone obliged me in some experimentation. After running it for an hour or so, E was playing an understated-yet-funky back beat on two drum sets, Y was playing his bass part on a Casio keyboard and I was back on the Telecaster with something dastardly through the Memory Man. The finished product was far more interesting than where it started. I'm happy we took the time to refine.

By the end of day four we only had three more songs left to finish the basic tracks on. Given that ten days had been set aside for the process, everyone was happy. Will Petzel had come up from NYC to film some of it for posterity and a possible web site posting and seemed to agree that there was something special in the air. Then again, I recall everyone having serious cases of the famous 'Guinness Repeats' at the time; Will's sixth sense may have been picking up on something a bit less artistic.

We invited the New York posse up for our final night at Bearsville. Everyone arrived in the afternoon and hung out on the lawn. Our friend Steve volunteered to grill; a grocery run was made and the sweet smell of vegetables and meat was soon wafting through the air to greet arriving local friends. Not surprisingly, memories became hazy as the night wore on. At one point the vegetarian contingent made a formal protest about aluminum foil being used in the grilling of potatoes; a remarkably uncoordinated dancer punched out a light fixture; I performed a horrible strip tease on a dare; our friend Stewart was forced to run down the road with his pants down while chanting 'I am beautiful, I am attractive.' The night was capped off by a food throwing session that emptied the remaining contents of the refrigerator.

GRAEME STEWART IS A BLOKE
After four days of bottoming out in Manhattan while Stephen gathered everything together, I returned to Woodstock alone. I arrived at the house I would be occupying for the next month with various roommates, a five bedroom job built in the 70's Rangular wooden style of many excessive homes in Woodstock. It was located about a quarter mile down a dirt road from Stephen's studio, where we would be recording vocals and overdubs over the coming four weeks.

My initial reservations about the house were quickly calmed by the presence of one Graeme Stewart, our erstwhile engineer who would be my house mate for the duration of our time in Woodstock. Graeme was sprawled on the couch, watching television while sipping a Coors Lite.

'Fancy a pint, then?'

One could make the argument that this single question nearly became the death of me in Woodstock. Perhaps it was the way he said it or just the deadly look in his eye when he did; one tends to forget these things after answering affirmatively too many times. This inquiry would not only signify the end of the work day, it would become a silent mantra I would chant inwardly during the long hours of work that lay ahead. It would become a cosmic bumper sticker, a souvenir of this tiny berg that ended up inadvertently shaping some of the more prescient moments of my short life.

That night we headed back over to the Landau for some bonding time. Graeme is English, tall and lanky with a particularly English affinity for pronouncing entire sentences in one syllable. Newly married and the father of one strapping baby boy, he had a lot on his mind. Regardless, he became more than an engineer, more even than a drinking mate. I would go as far as to say that Graeme Stewart was, at different times, my surrogate mother, my brother, my nanny, my driver and, to his horror, my 'father figure' in Woodstock.

Graeme came to my sessions fresh off various Radiohead projects, including the last two 'experimental' records. I was a little worried that he would quickly become bored with my vintage pop stylings, but he maintained a relatively calm and interested demeanor during the tracking while getting some great sounds. Things had gone down gritty without sounding self-consciously roughed up, and I was happy.

FINE DAY, INNIT?
The next day we set up at Stephen's converted barn studio and got down to business. On this and most days following, I worked on guitar overdubs downstairs and did vocals and keyboards upstairs in the control room. The studio had a nice deck that overlooked the woods where I would often sit while Stephen and Graeme did various tasks, contemplating hangovers and listening to the Autumnal mating rituals of approximately 89,452 forms of wildlife.

And, as it turned out, there was a lot of waiting to be done. Stephen and I had agreed to try to get a lot of raw performances onto tape and then let him edit them together. On previous records I had spent a lot more time going for near-perfect performances on tracks that were then 'punched-in' on to correct mistakes. The great thing about the new method was that I could spend a lot more time going out of my mind trying all sorts of things, focusing on vibe more than precision, which suited my tendencies as a musician very well. The down side to it was that once I had played twelve versions of a guitar part, I was reduced to waiting for Stephen to edit the best stuff together. This was an integral part of the process but one that I had not anticipated. Sometimes I think it was good that I had as much time to reflect and strategize everything before moving on to something else, and sometimes I recoil at how close to the brink of insanity I began to feel waiting around in a small town. Occasionally I would crank up the Benz and head off into the Hudson Valley, attempting to get lost on county roads that all seemed to inevitably wind their way back into Woodstock. Sometimes Graeme and I would head over to Kingston on Sundays and take in a movie at the mall.

Other times, stranger experiences seemed to attract us like teenagers to a State Fair. One of the more amusing involved the young and talented singer/songwriter named Michelle Branch. Miss Branch had been kind enough to include Mine and Yours on a 'Best Of' list in Spin magazine and Ethan suggested that it might be interesting to get her to sing on something for the record. One of the early favorites we had recorded was entitled 'Little Sister', a song that had been written as a sort of paen to the lost female teens of America. I quickly re-wrote it to be a duet, a conversation that was, in retrospect, a piece of shit. But times were crazy in Woodstock, and the prospect of having Miss Branch add her particular brand of chirpiness to the proceedings seemed like a great idea. Managers were contacted, demos were passed and I had a very encouraging conversation with Michelle on the phone. She was touring with Sheryll Crow and happened to be playing in Albany on a Saturday night. Arrangements were made for a Sunday session and Graeme and I headed north for the show on Saturday to say hello and prove that we were, in fact, real live human beings. (Or at least that I was. Graeme had been recording with Radiohead for quite awhile and was happy to be regarded as sub, or possibly hyper, human) We watched Michelle's show and made our way backstage afterwards. While being cordially treated to beer and refreshment, we traded road stories and discussed the song in question. Arrangements were made to meet the car service transporting Michelle and her assisitant for a quick deposit in Woodstock. Then, as we were making our way back out to see some of Sheryll Crow's set, we found ourselves sequestered by Michelle's road manager in the hall. As Michelle bravely joined him at his side, he explained that she was sick and that the session would have to be postponed. In fact, Michelle had been complaining of some sort of virus or another during her show. (I seem to recall Graeme making some sort of joke about hoping she could 'pull through' for tomorrow.) Regardless, this unexpected news crushed our spirits like a tin can in a vise. We valiantly tried to enjoy a few numbers of Sheryll Crow's arena-lite set, but couldn't shake the disappointment that came with knowing we were going back to the same old Michelle Branch-free Woodstock. It was as if we had been broken up with; she knew the entire time that she wouldn't be coming to the session, yet treated us like royalty and left us with a forced tear of regret. We retrieved the Benz from the parking lot and drove straight back through the Hudson Valley, stopping at the Pine Crest for our daily ration of Guinness, two more crushed souls left for dead on the highway of teen pop.

Then there was the day after my birthday, wherein the throes of a psychological collapse induced by another hangover, I returned to the mall and spent a fair amount of money on a new wardrobe consisting entirely of clothes from Sears and Burlington Coat Factory. I was beginning to feel the effects of cabin fever more than I realized at the time. Evenings continued to be capped off by Olympian drinking sprees with Graeme at the aforementioned local haunts. I would love to report that most of these were full of wild doings involving sultry hippie women and farm animals, but the sad truth is that most of them were passed playing pool in the company of three or four decidedly male diehard locals who seemed to be as desolate as we were, in their own unintelligible ways.

OVER THE HUMP
The spirit of the proceedings was given a considerable lift by the arrival of one Chuck Norman. Chuck is a programmer from London whom Stephen had hired at the beginning of the recording but didn't arrive in Woodstock until our third week because of previous commitments. I, for one, was a little skeptical about having a proper 'programmer' on the record, not really being sure what function he would serve. (And also having a running frustration with being compared to David Gray.) Chuck set up his gear in the corner of the control room and swiftly got to work. Though I wouldn't actually hear anything he had done for another week, the overall buoyancy of his manner and ability to deal with hardship (his luggage had been lost by American Airlines and would never appear for the duration of his time in Woodstock) quickly won me over. Chuck has a peculiar sense of himself and the world and an unsinkable wit that was vital during the long days in the beautiful confines of God's country. When I did finally begin to hear his work, I was suitably impressed. And, though no one besides myself would ever admit it, his presence lent a much-needed 'adult' slant to the general mayhem at the big house on Upper Byrdcliffe. At least, I think Chuck would like to receive credit for something noble like that.

And then, lo and behold, the boys came back. Aloft on white horses, Ethan and Whynot swept into town for a weekend of background vocal and percussion overdubs. I don't remember ever being quite so happy to see them. As usual, they proceeded to bang out their parts with stunning ferocity and a general sense of alarm that suddenly had the studio buzzing again. We consorted, madly. It was the boost I needed to see me through the rest of it. From there on out, the clock ran smoothly and I was able to complete the tasks that were required of me with focus and brio....

The following week Graeme and I made a run down to New York to see Ethan's band Redtime's CD release show, bottomed out, came back and finished up everything the day after. Friday night, the last day of recording, Graeme, Stephen, Chuck and I all retired to the Landau to have a celebratory beverage. We toasted our future success in England, where the record would be mixed in a month or so. Unfortunately, I was so disgusted with myself regarding my recent behavior in Manhattan and life in general that I could only manage one Jameson's before hugging my goodbyes and driving back to the house. I was done with Woodstock, and it was certainly done with me. Planning to leave bright and early, I lay in bed, tossing and turning and thinking about the whole damn thing. By 2:00 I couldn't stand it another minute; I packed the car and drove straight back to Nashville, stopping only three times to pee and gas up, laughing like a hyena on ephedrine for the entire back half of the trip.

HOME, WHERE MY LOVE LIES WAITING
I arrived at my house around 4:00 PM and found Bob Bradley exactly as I had left him a month earlier, reclining on the couch and packing a pipe. Bob had kept the house in immaculate order. We talked about the general state of affairs, sipping Miller High Life's while sinking into my newly-transplanted furniture. My new living room had similarities to the one in NYC, and the fact that I would be leaving it again in three weeks for another month in England only added to the surreal quality of everything. Late afternoon Fall sunlight streamed in through the living room windows, my plants were still alive and I, head all a-buzz, felt like a true spirit in the material world.