So the Reckless Heart EP is out! And you can get CDs in the Store and download/stream it wherever you see fit. It’s six piano songs, live, recorded in a in May’17 at the Brook Studio by Andy Brook, with the absolutely awesome Daniel Fitzgibbon on bass and Dan “Mighty Danny” Smith on drums. I haven’t gone all-out with a big launch and the “official” reason I’ve been giving for this is that… it’s different, it’s not my core material, this was a massively fun side-project and they’re not songs that are part of my live set – I might have played a couple of them once, ever, several years ago (for anyone who remembers the glorious days of the Hoodoo’s open mic in Croydon).
The deeper reason (and the reason I’ve been dithering over the release for two years) is because the songs are still incredibly raw for me, hefty emotional songs about some of the toughest specific moments I’ve been through. There are songs about feeling completely intimidated performing; about loving someone who will never, ever, be able to love you back; about relationships devoid of intimacy; about being supported through a referral into life-changing (probably life-saving) psychotherapy; about cracks in a marriage; about sanity called into question. And quite honestly, I wrote these songs out of desperation, and I was angry: angry about the situations I was in, about things that had happened, about things I’d done. I cracked, and songs leaked out. So every so often over the past two years, I’ve picked up the project to work on the artwork or plan the distribution or whatever and thought, nah, I’m not sure the world needs to hear the worst of who I’ve been, regurgitated in musical form. And I kept going round in that circle until a friend at a gig told me to just do it anyway. Other people write in rawer ways. You are not necessarily handing your pain on. To everyone else, it’s music. I’ve been playing the piano since I was five – a lot longer than I’ve been doing a lot of things – so it makes sense that the songs I wrote there would get at the deeper stuff. And all of this over-thinking only happens when I do that: think about the record.
When I listen to it, it makes me really happy.
Because it’s a different energy, and a different sound.
Because the day we recorded it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Because it was something I had always dreamed of doing.
Because I never imagined getting to work with guys this talented.
Because I hear the three of us all pulling off riffs and turns that were genius and totally of the moment, live.
Because in their way all these songs are about people I loved very much and who were hugely significant: my ex-husband, my ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend before that, my therapist, the other musicians I met when I first started gigging, the alter-ego-muse I occasionally try to chase.
Because of what I’ve learned.
Because one of these songs is the first song I wrote, and by extension because writing and playing songs has changed my life in such massive, magical ways.
We had a great day, and I love these songs, and I hope you’ll enjoy them.