Yesterday I had the considerable pleasure of recording Brian Eno’s vocals for a track on my next record. I brought in an instrumental track and a rough melody, and he came up with the lyrics and some incredible backing vocals. It was so moving hearing him build up that familiar and beautiful sound of his on one of my tunes. I had to keep stopping myself from laughing. And all this was done in a gloriously informal setting with cats, sculptors and Polish accountants wandering in and out as Brian sang in front of the monitors (he hates singing with headphones) into a handheld mic.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on that record recently – mostly editing and arrangements since I want to leave the guitars til last to try and avoid excessive oberdubbage. I had some violinists over one day last week to do 6 tracks; they kindly agreed to play in return for dinner at The Crown organic pub which is my regular. My kind of people.

Other than that there have been a few sessions and gigs with various folk including Sylvie Lewis, an English singer living in LA who I met when she was opening up for Ed Harcourt on our American tour. She writes gorgeously arch songs with complicated jazz chords; the last time I had to play chords like that I was wearing a bad suit in the lobby of the Kensington Hotel aged 16. We were paid in toasted sandwiches and thought we really had it made. Then we got the sack.

Well, it’s been another gloriously varied fortnight. The Greenbelt Festival was brilliant; they had us playing in a grim bunker on a lovely sunny day so the prospects weren’t good, but what started as a small crowd turned into a large one as people texted their friends to get them along. Steve Jones saved the day by starting the gig on his own with a beautiful song while I faffed around with my equipment. Last night I had the pleasure of supporting Foy Vance in London and made lots of new friends. We’re going to do more concerts together for sure.
On the freelance side of things, I conducted my orchestral arrangements for Ed Harcourt which was a real thrill. The orchestra did a great job of playing along with Mr Harcourt’s patented rubato, and on one song I got revenge for the tear he brought to my eye by bringing one to his. The engineer on the session was an old schoolfriend who I hadn’t seen for years, which settled my nerves as soon as I walked in.

There was also the last Ronan concert in Germany. We were joined by a full symphony orchestra. Unfortunately no-one had seen fit to soundproof the stage so my amps ended up 2 feet away from the 4th violins’ heads. They hated us. I tried to make light of it, and as I turned my amp down to 1, apologised to one of them about the noise. Instead of smiling back, he fixed me with a Teutonically humourless glare and deadpanned: “Vere iss ze power cord?”. I should have hit him with a few bars of Smoke On The Water, but I don’t think that’s what he was getting at.

Back in my own studio, I’ve been preparing tracks for singers from what will be my 3rd record. Honeytrap took so long to release that I have a load of material backed up. Exciting but frustrating. I also did a pitch for a B&Q ad. I didn’t get it, just got a demo fee. But I did gain an insight into the bullshit workings of the corporate mind and their vertiginous stagger around every meaningless adjective there is (”a bit more contemporary, edgy, reflective, upbeat and chilled, ok?”). Still if these thing get picked up they pay unthinkable amounts so I expect I’ll be suckling at that evil teat again sometime soon!