About Count To Ten
A few scattered diary posts from the spring 2007...
LONDON, JUNE 8TH - "FINISHED"...
Whoops, I've fallen behind... Too much going on...
Last time I wrote was the evening of my recent Brighton-gig and the next day I travelled to Germany to do 3 nights with German-born Ayo. Great to once again hook up with the various German working partners that have become good friends over this past year. It was very inspiring to meet Ayo - a fellow female solo artist who's a managing succesful carreer and family at the same time. She's lived in Paris for years so it was a great mixture of French musicians, German crew and British tour manager.
I had decided on trains in stead of flights for this trip - I loooooove trains. Nothing you can do but look out the window, let your thoughts run free, eat pretzles and drink buckets of coffee.
I've been through a couple of crises about the mixing of the album - who and when. It's all been a bit messy but we're back on track, starting this Monday.
On the one hand I can't wait to get it all sounding "finished" but on the other hand it's scary... because then it's actually going to be "finished" - all done, no more excuses, final ever-lasting versions of the songs...
Still, after living with the pre-mixes for a month now, I'm so happy with this album and I'm sure mixing is only gonna make it better...
Press release about a September release has now gone out in Denmark, the Germans are aiming for an October release and already I can feel the work starting to build up, my calendar is rapidly filling and suddenly I realise that this year so far has been quite relaxing. Suddenly I remember what it's like when the ball starts rolling before a release and then the one and a half years of touring that follow after. Goodbye summer holidays, goodbye family-weekends...
I'm dreading it - and I'm DEAD-EXCITED about it as well...
I went back to hometown Århus for the annual SPOT-festival this weekend. I wasn't meant to go but a panelist had pulled out of a panel on "Breaking The UK" and I was asked to stand in - representing the struggling musicians' point of view.
I'm not gonna go in to it here - you'll have to wait for the book :-) - but there's no doubt the UK market is the toughest of them all with their monopoly on knowing what's cool and finding "The Next Big Thing". I doubt anyone from Denmark is ever going to "BREAK" the UK in a big way - but that doesn't stop us from trying :-)
x T
LONDON, MAY 8TH - PUTTING UP A FIGHT...
I'm back in London. In the end we didn't quite finish last Tuesday. Truth be told, there's one song that hasn't got lyrics yet, it's putting up a real fight, and I'll have to record it myself, last minute, here in my flat once the words have found me. I've got a good little studio setup so it shouldn't be a problem...
I'm hoping the words will turn up this week on one of my daily visits to my local cafe where I sit in the window and study bypassers... It's a good place for writing.
I did a photo session Wednesday with a friend of mine, the photographer Martin Dam Kristensen, who has taken most of the pics you've ever seen of me - and once again I took a moment to appreciate being my own boss and not having an army of Artist&Relations- /product manager-people looking over my shoulder, making unfitting decisions.
Normally there would be at the very least a make-up person, a stylist and a couple of people from the label as well as some smartarse, hotshot photographer - but for this session it was just me and Martin - my clothes, my make-up. We did lots of crazy, fun stuff and plenty of good pics have come out of it.
Now I was meant to have some time off but as always "things come up". My manager has just called and asked if I want to play some support gigs in Germany this month. And I just can't say no...
AARHUS, MAY 1 - AND JUST AS YOU THOUGHT THE SAX WAS EXTIINCT...
Dennis and I are finishing recordings TODAY!! What a day! The sun is shining from a bright blue sky and I've finished recording my fourth album! Woohoo!
I'll write more about it over the next weeks as today's a bit busy - but let me give you some insider information:
I (yes, me) have taken up and old hobby for a few minutes and put some tenor saxophone on a song. And just as you thought - and hoped - the sax was an extinct instrument! But don't worry, it's very subtle and I'll make sure it's low in the mix....
Apart from that it's all good. I'm very, very, very happy!!
LONDON, APRIL 23RD - EASY AND STRAIGHTFORWARD? HA!
Has it been a week already?
We finished the UK tour last night at a sold out Ronnie Scott's. Wicked place! All in all it's been such a lovely tour and audiences have been fantastic everywhere!
Today Karoline has gone back to Denmark and I'm left with a mild hangover and 3 days to find my way back to the real world before I too go to Denmark for 4 final days in the studio.
I could write a whole book about my thoughts on the process of recording this new album - I can't believe I thought it was going to be fairly easy and straightforward. When have I ever let anything in my life be easy and straightforward? Working on the album has whirled me into all kinds of inner and outer conflicts...
Over this next week I've got to decide who I want to mix the album which is the stage where everything that's been recorded is made to blend together nicely and sound just right as a whole. It's annoyingly important and painfully expensive. And on the one hand I'm happy that it's my decision rather than some record company "artist-and-relations"-person's - but on the other hand I'm freaked out by the responsibility that lies on my shoulders with this record. It's been quite a mouthfull to self-produce with no big-shot-with-bags-of-experience to call the shots!
And mixing is something I know very little about. I mean, I know how it works and I know how I'd like it to sound in the end but I don't really know how to get there. It's so abstract - sometimes a song moves you; you're touched by the vocal and you feel like tapping your foot to the rythm but then the same recording in a different mix can leave you feeling nothing. How does that work?
So yeah, a couple of big decisions and the final few days of recording coming up this week...
AARHUS, MARCH 26TH - THIS YEAR, TO SAVE ME FROM "TIS"...
Today might be a long one, though. I'm alone at the studio because my co-producer might be having a baby as we speak!
He managed to very quickly set everything up so I can record vocals and guitars on my own but the lovely new old red guitar I've just bought is making strange crackling noises and I can't decide which of the 500.000 buttons or 300.000 cables to try and jiggle to make it stop. PLUS my voice is tired and I'm going CRAZY in this little, hot room - so I probably won't get much work done...
Hm... My tired voice... It's frustrating. I never really thought of my voice as an instrument. It's always just been there as a way of letting out steam and telling stories. Never even really saw myself as a singer, I think. I always just "was" my voice - like a colour inside of me, like a temperature, like a thought, like air. I dunno, it's hard to explain (and trying makes me sound like a self-important idiot, yeah, I know!) but it's like lying in a bath, ears under the surface, listening to my heart and breath and blood pumping around my body. That's what singing feels like to me. The sound cycles around my body and like a broom sweeps up anything that wants to get out but can't be put to words.
But at the moment my voice is not playing on my team which is a total slap in the face. We were one and the same but now it wants attention and extra care - what's that all about? The problem, I think, is that I've become a little more reckless and playful in my writing: I'm writing songs that go too high and too low, naively expecting my voice to follow wherever my head wants to go - and it's not having it... We'll be friends again soon, I'm sure, we just need to get together and practice the new songs a bit...
Apart from my co-producer not being here and my voice playing up it's going really, really, really well with the recordings so no need to worry! :-)
I sometimes joke with my friends about all the English words and song lyrics we misunderstood when we were little and hadn't learned the language yet. One of mine was from Wham's "Last Christmas": This year to save me from "tis" (Danish for "piss") I'll give it to someone "spasser" (patronising Danish word for a retard). I also pronounced the band INXS "Inks"... (Was I the only one?)
Now I'm older and not only do I know to say "In Excess" instead of "Inks", I also now the actual meaning of the word "excess" - and it's printed in my forehead when I'm in the studio. The mild stuff, though: coffee and Diet Coke mainly. Still, stuff that's not working wonders for my general - and recently deteriorating - health. I go in to the kitchen having this inner dialogue between the vegetable-yoga-half of me and the "in-the-name-of-my-art-I-need-to-live-like-there's-no-tomorrow"-half, the former asking for the occational cup of tea with lemon and a few pieces of ginger root, and the latter - and stronger half - reaching for yet another cup of black coffee and a Diet Coke.
I do try and stay healthy - like bringing yoga on-the-road with me but who wants to lie down on the floral-pattern carpet of a Holiday Inn in the outskirts of Detroit (God knows what might have taken place there over the years) and much less on the floor of a greasy venue!!?
Naah...
x Tina
SOMEWHERE ABOVE GERMANY, MARCH 18TH - FRANZ BECKENBAUER AND THE PRESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN SAID TO SAY HELLO...
I'm on a plane from Düsseldorf, Germany, back to London, so tired I can't think straight. God knows why - after 6 months of silence - I've chosen this moment to write a diary entry! Perhaps I'm just too tired to care that I might not have anything interesting to say? (I always worry that you might find these tales of endless travels a bit boring...)
Perhaps it's because in this zombie state of mind, even more than usual, I'm overwhelmed with the surreal-ness of my job. Thursday night I was at a Damien Rice-concert in Berlin, Friday I was selling myself cheap at a German TV-channel's stand at a "messe" in Hannover and last night I played an award show outside of Düsseldorf with Franz Beckenbauer and the President of Afghanistan, Mr. Kazei, in the audience. President Kazei is one of the best-protected men in the world because Taleban don't like what he's doing - they apparently killed his dad in '95. Around his palace in Kabul there are 3 rings of soldiers - first an all-Afghan, then half-Afghan-half-American, and lastly an all-American. He arrived 15 minutes into the ceremony - it all happened very quickly and in complete silence: like a wind through the room suddenly 30 men in black suits with Mr Kazei in the middle in a beautiful green robe, hurled in and found their front row seats, over-looked by another group of serious-looking security people along the walls. (Unlike me) he sat patiently all the way through the - way too - long show until at the end he was given a Steiger Award for "Tolerance" for the work he has done in Afghanistan over the past 5 years. It was all very moving - one of his countrymen, a musician, descriped Afghanistan and the Afghan people as a beautiful musical instrument that no-one has yet discovered how to get in tune and play...
I've spent quite some time in Germany this month on a radio-tour and some other bits and pieces and I'm loving every moment of it! I meet so many friendly, humorous, genuine and helpful people every single day and I'm amazed at the dedication of the people that are "working me" down there! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the beginning of a life-long relationship between me and Germany :-)
I believe I left you hanging 7 months ago, wondering if the taxi-ride across the Canadian border really was the turning point of "The Bad Luck-tour" with (or rather without) Teitur. The truth is I can't remember. I just remember eating too much at an Indian restaurant 15 mintues before going on stage in London, Ontario, subsequently playing all my songs slightly out of tune, in half tempo. (Mental note: no Kashmiri Korma and garlic nan before a gig...)
This was back in September and it would be pointless to go through everything that's happened since then: tours in the UK, Germany and Denmark and weeks of solitary songwriting in London...
What's important now is that I'm in the midst of recording my next album!!! :-) We did 10 days back in January and then another 9 days in February and over the next couple of weeks we should be pretty much finishing off. Knock-on-wood. I thought this was going to be an easy album to record. The songs seem to have come about more naturally this time and I expected they would roll down onto tape without too much fuss and trouble. Especially with everything I've learned from working on my first 3 albums. It turns out, of course, that it's so different every time, from record to record, from song to song, from day to day and once again I'm left feeling like a novice, a new-born, groping in the dark...
The most valuable lesson so far has been one of not pushing myself too hard. I get very caught up in the process, I stop listening to my body and I forget to rest, eat properly and take care of myself. After the 9 days in February I was so run down with a combined throat- and tooth-infection, I couldn't open my mouth and could hardly stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time. I've never had a physical break-down like that before - and I couldn't hear it at the time but everything I recorded in that period is useless. So over the next weeks I'll be re-recording all my vocals - this time full of energy :-)
I recorded a 6 track-EP a couple of weeks ago - live and acoustic - to take on tour with me this spring. I initially thought the timing was really bad - doing an EP with 5 completely new songs in the middle of recording an album! - but as it turned out it was the perfect reminder of how relaxed and pleasant recording should be. No pressure, not too many worries about getting everything 100% right and pleasing everyone or about radio-potential and critics!! (All the shit you get caught up in when you're recording an album that's gonna define the next two years of your life!) Here it was just me and a song... It's put me in the perfect frame of mind to do the last work on the album now. I've got a really good feeling about this one!!
I'll tell you much more about it later... xx