Song 4 - "Because of You"

Only 2 days after "Take your Time" winged it's way back to New Zealand on 27th October 2009, I finished my second song and sent it through for Rob's additions. This year (2010), I will have known my wife Gail for 10 years, but in all that time I had never written a song for her - about her - and although I never set out to make it so, this was to be it.

It's funny, but quite a lot of times, the strongest sounding line of lyric becomes the title to the song - and when writing this one, I found myself putting the words "because of you" at the end of each line, so the subject matter really wrote itself around that line.

The song has a bit of a latin beat - and is probably the most commercial sounding song on the whole album - something which gave me doubts once it was recorded. In fact, I am still not sure about this one even now - it just does not seem to sit in the same bracket as the others. When I first suggested the project to Rob, my very words were "we could produce songs in say the style of the Eagles" i.e. easy listening country type stuff - but this was the first time we had strayed completely away from that concept (we did with later songs too but this was the first).

Rob too, thought it was commercial but wanted to stick with the song to see what he could do with it. I was all for ditching it at this stage and would not learn what Rob would add for a few days, as this was the Melbourne Cup (horse race) weekend in Oz and it's a ritual of his to sit down with a few beers and not get involved in doing anything else. He picked the winner too, and no doubt sank a few on the proceeds.

I had to wait until the 8th November before I could send him the separate tracks for him to mix and add acoustic guitar, lead guitar and harmonies to. These eventually arrived on 28th November - mainly because Rob's third song had by now been written, recorded and sent to me for working on - but that is for the next chapter.

When the additions came through, they had certainly beefed up the song, so I was a little happier. Rob had worked hard on this one which made me a little less keen just to ditch it now. The one thing Rob had done was to soften each beat of the rim shot on the rhythm track - it was a little too prominent. He had to take each one (and there must have been over 100) and change the volume individually - something you can at least achieve with "Cool Edit" - the computer program that we were both using.

If only I had known - what had taken him ages I could have done in the flick of a switch on my keyboard (which also included the rhythm track). I can change the parameters for any one or group of notes in an instant this way and could have saved Rob a lot of hard work - I definately could not discard the song now.

The harmonies were very well done and fitted in nicely with the little bit of harmonising I had done on the song myself, and has he had heard the song so many times while working on it himself, Rob found that it had grown on him and he was even more happy to add it to the album.

Gail loved it too!! Here is a clip

Song 3 - "Take Your Time"

On 23rd October 2009, Rob's second song arrived (wish he would get on this blog and tell you a bit about the song from his perspective).

It's called "Take Your Time" - aptly named, because I wasn't too sure about this one when I first heard it, but the fact that I find myself whistling it now and then proves it has grown on me. It's a personal song about when he first moved to New Zealand in '73, the advice given to him by his Grandfather at the time still holds good today as Rob finds himself giving the same advice to his own family.

Again, I did not feel I would benefit the song by adding any harmonies (especially as I found Rob's phrasing on this one a little difficult to sing along with). So, I just added a piano track to the vocals, guitars and bass already laid down by Rob. A gentle song that obviously means a lot to him - hope you like it too.

Song 2 - "Anyway"

The first number was just feeling our way really. I simply added a piano track to Rob's mix and that was it. A bit more was going to happen in the next song - "Anyway", the first of my efforts.

"Anyway" was written on 7th October 2009. I had first intended to make it about the two of us, but soon discovered, much to my shame, that I knew so little about my own Nephew, that I was struggling with the lyrics.

Instead, I just imagined a couple of guys the wrong side of 50 or 60, sitting on a park bench and having the "Where have our lives gone" conversation. The rest came easy.

I recorded all my tracks and emailed them to Rob for his additions. As you will see from part of the song extract, we harmonise together for the first time in our lives (weird). Rob added some nice acoustic guitar and in the space I had left him, he put a superb guitar solo - some of which you can hear. Can you believe that Rob could not use the amps to get the effect he wanted on the guitar because the electric fences over there interfere and make the amps crackle. I never even knew he was in prison! I reckon he did a pretty good job just using the guitar effects pedal.

When replying, Rob suggested a string track added in the last verse which I subsequently recorded - (you'll have to buy the track or, better still, the full album to hear that though - details will appear on Rob's website once the whole thing is finished).

One of the obstacles we discovered that we were going to face when we did this song was the difference in our accents. For example - I sang the word "fast" as any true Englishman would - i.e. "farst" whereas Rob sang it as "faast". We agreed that on my songs he would be English, and on his, I would be a Kiwi.

The start of it all - Song 1 "The Last Goodbye"

Rob Smith and I (Paul Jolley) are both the same age - somewhere between one zero and another - despite me being his uncle (he is actually 6 months older than me and I will never let him forget it).



We are both self taught musicians and have both earned our living from music for over 30 years. Rob is a guitarist mainly, while I am predominantly a keyboard player, although we can both play a fair few instruments between us. We both write, record and produce songs of our own. Why, you may ask, have we never worked together? Our problem is that Rob is in New Zealand, while I am in England - 12000 reasons why we cannot get together - that is, until now.


Despite our advancing years (he will love me for that) we can both fumble our way around a computer and so the miracle of technology has bought us together - working on our own album of 12 original songs - 6 written by each of us - and produced via emails.



Because of the distance involved, Rob and I had not really kept in touch, apart from news via my sister Jean (Rob's mum). In September 2009, Jean played me some extracts from an album Rob had recorded with a girl singer (Hayley). I liked what I heard and obtained Rob's e-mail address to request a copy of the album. Whilst writing to him on 28th September 09 - I hit on the idea of perhaps doing an album between us via the internet if we could. Rob replied the next day saying we could certainly give it a go.



Neither of us knew what capability each other had for home recording, but as it transpired, we both had the same Cool Edit program on our systems and also both used a master recorder - we were in business.



As a try out, I added a piano track to one of Rob's songs recorded with Hayley. Rob responded the next day with a demo of our very first song - one he had written the day before called "The Last Goodbye". We were off.

Click on the play button of the player below for an extract of our first number.