I have just emerged from the unforgettable mammoth voyage that was Hal Wilner’s Rogues Gallery Live. 3 concerts, 60 sea shanties, and more performers than you could shake a cutlas at. At one point Lou Reed, Tim Robbins, Shane MacGowan, the Carthy Family, Neil Hannon, Gavin Friday, Chris Difford and many more were all onstage, and I thought I had to be dreaming. Too many highlights to list really, but playing hurdy-gurdy with Lou Reed is worth a mention. At rehearsal he prowled onto the stage, and told the band: “I do not want to have to follow you at all. You will follow me. I will change the chords and the timing without warning and you need to keep up. If that sounds like fun, then play. If that doesn’t sound like fun, don’t play anything“. It sounded like fun, and we did play, and he seemed to like it. Random observations I made: he has a pair of glasses whose lenses flip up and down and he likes to play with them a lot; he has unexpectedly soft hands and is very courteous and gentle under a gnarled exterior; he has a phenomenal sense of tempo, disregarding the ubiquitous metronome in search of the ’sweet spot’; he really likes hurdy-gurdy. The house band included David Coulter on (literally) show-stopping saw, Roger Eno on piano, euphonium and naughty crosswords, Andy Newmark (from Bryan Ferry’s band) on drums, Martyn Barker (who plays on my next record) on percussion, Dudley Phillips on bass and Kate St John on accordion. at the Dublin show all the artists crowded in at the back of the stage just behind my amp to watch the show, and the atmosphere was amazing. It was truly a privilege to be there.

Earlier in the month I went to Belfast to work on a film score with David Holmes. The director is Oliver Hirschbiegel who did ‘Downfall’. It is mostly bass and laptop guitar textures. I took the files away to mix at home, and we’ll get together again in a few weeks to do the remaining cues. I also had a session with Annie Lennox. Before she arrived the band set up and got an arrangement going, and it sounded good, if a bit ’session musician-y’. Then she walked in and quietly but firmly changed the direction of the whole thing, explaining her ideas gently then pounding the shit out of an upright piano to demonstrate. It was brilliant to be playing with that unmistakable voice coming through the headphones. A weird guitar solo was called for, and again she directed things very eloquently; a couple of times I messed up at the end and swore, which made me feel guilty.

I did some more recording with Beth Rowley, and her drummer Phil Wilkinson, who adds strange bits of junk to his drumkit to devastating effect. She asked me to do a couple of gigs with her to fill in for her regular guitarist, so I had to learn the set on the morning of the first show. Then I found out the show was televised and it was a bit nerve-wracking. I can’t help it, no matter how many times I do tv it always makes me nervous. Even in the days when I did terrible miming jobs which didn’t involve actual playing, I used to worry about falling over instead. The other gig was at T In The Park which turned into a bit of a reunion as lots of old friends were there playing with other bands. Then I went to a session with a great film composer called Alex Heffes. He is making a record of improvisations with various people all over the world, from Uganda to New York. He wanted some sounds from me to tie certain elements together without compromising the purity of the interactions, so it was an interesting exercise - I had to be very discreet, but still contribute something tangible. I ended up on tracks featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto and Regina Spektor.

The artwork to my next record The Grape And The Grain is nearly ready, although I don’t think it will be out until after Christmas now. I’ve been writing again, and I got a brilliant new Swart amp which has been inspiring me. I have a lot of ideas floating around at the moment which have been driving me a bit mad, so I’m just trying to get them all down roughly so that they can be experienced in reality instead of in my head. Inevitably, some of them come out and I wonder why I devoted so much time mulling them over when in fact they’re a bit crap, but there are plenty that I want to keep working on. David Lynch talks about “staying true to the idea” - meaning that at every single stage you need to cling fiercely to the essence and feeling of the initial inspiration. It sounds obvious, but it’s really difficult not to let certain things slide - you might compromise just slightly on the feeling of a guitar sound for instance, and it might seem that it doesn’t matter, but it can actually fatally skew the integrity of the whole thing. In other words, I’ve had to do a lot of twiddling and tweaking before I can actually sit down and play.

In musicians’ parlance, a ‘roast’ refers to a particularly challenging gig. I am currently stuck in snowy Gatwick awaiting a plane to the Matterhorn, on the way to a prog-rock roast presided over by the impossibly affable Jon Lord (of Deep Purple fame). When I received the sheet music a day before the rehearsal, and saw page after page densely blackened with semiquavers, I panicked slightly and started to think of ways to escape. But then I cast my mind back to my college days when I used to be able to play that sort of thing, and decided to ‘get my chops back’. It’s been a stimulating experience.

Most of the last month has been spent in my studio, working on a number of projects. I produced a song for Beth Rowley which will feature on a forthcoming Dusty Springfield compilation, recorded for a My Robot Friend track, did 4 new Smoke Fairies songs, continued work on the Brian Eno/David Byrne project, and had a great couple of days with drummer Seb Rochford, starting new tracks for my next record. It’s being overseen by David Holmes; he always seems to get the best out of me when we work on other projects, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when we do something of mine. I’m trying not to write or plan too much in advance, and letting the tracks evolve instead, avoiding my usual sounds and tendencies.

Also this month I was asked to contribute a track to an album put together by Rosetta Life - a charity that uses the arts to enhance the lives of terminally ill children. They gave me a 15 minute cd of a 5 year old girl called Kimberley, who at birth was given just weeks to live. She is unable to speak, but can sing and imitate sounds. So music is the way she communicates. I made an electronic track using only sounds that she had produced, and overlaid a commentary by her mother explaining her condition. As with the previous thing I did for this charity, it seemed like a blessed project in a way - there were so many happy accidents, and unlikely alignments of disparate elements turning out to be in time, or in the same key. It was a joy to work on.

A friend in LA is producing an album called ‘Headless Heroes’, featuring a lovely new American folk artist called Alela Diane covering obscure 60s songs. He asked me to do string arrangements for 3 of them, and it was great to be able to record them all at home and send the files by email. I’ve been so enjoying working at home and having these wonderful projects come to me. It’s the kind of life I want at the moment (especially now that I am at Gatwick in a 5-hour delay).

A couple of forays into adland, one successful and one not. I just deleted the paragraph I wrote about the experience, but if you can imagine a situation where bullshit also has the capacity to break your heart (though at no fault of the people you are working for I hasten to add), then you’ll get the jist. I have a lot of respect for people who spend their whole careers doing that kind of thing. Even when it goes well, it’s decimating.

A session for Jon Hopkins’ new album and a few tweaks to the closing credits of the Hunger soundtrack, and that’s pretty much it. Spare moments were spent thinking about with lyrical approaches to my next solo project. I think I want to sing this time and, whereas I’ve often written for others (and 10 years ago used to write and sing my own songs), I have a pathological aversion to most of the lyrics I hear and write. But I’m finding another way to approach things, partly inspired by The Books. I’ve also really enjoyed singing again, and ended up adding backing vocals to the Beth Rowley and Headless Heroes tracks. Like the unexpected prog roast, it’s a new challenge and I’m going to take it slow and steady.