This month I was lucky enough to be in the house band for Hal Willner’s Jarvis Cocker Meltdown festival. The 3–hour show consisted of Disney classics reinterpreted by a host of guest singers. As is often the case with Hal, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking and brilliantly chaotic. There were only two days to rehearse. I turned up on the first feeling slightly nervous and set about trying to tune my hurdy–gurdy quietly, which is impossible. Then it was straight in at the deep end, with sheets of music flying at me in quick succession from each of the three arrangers who were putting the whole thing together. Their diverse characters ranged from New York firebrand jazz legend to gentle Tokyo classicist. As the second day drew to a close I was happy because I was getting to play loads of accordion, hurdy and guitaret, and we had managed to get through most of the set. Only one problem – so far hardly any of the singers had bothered to show up. Then with half an hour to go Grace Jones, Shane MacGowan, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss all walked in. We cancelled our taxis. Pete Doherty ran through his song then came over and said he liked my guitar. I handed it to him and he started playing a beautiful, much more effective version of the song we’d been doing, which Hal heard and told him to do at the concert. The next day, at the RFH, charts were still being handed out and music being rehearsed an hour after doors were supposed to have opened. As time ticked on Grace announced that she wanted a special riser brought on. As she prevaricated and time ticked away, I looked over at Hal. He was rubbing his hands together and smiling. As for the concert itself, there are too many highlights to mention really. It was enough of a thrill to be playing with such great musicians and a proper orchestra. But piling through “An Actor’s Life For Me” with Nick Cave was pretty memorable. Now and then in the unwanted gaps between songs one of the arrangers would come over to me and whisper urgently, “play something!” so I had the brief honour of improvising hurdy–gurdy to a packed RFH. Another time I found myself duetting on accordion with David Coulter’s musical saw. I kept expecting someone else to come in but nobody did. It was an incredible evening and I learnt a lot from Hal’s method of creating magic, which seems to be assembling a load of talented people for an unlikely cause, lighting the blue touch paper and retreating.

One of the performers that night, Baba Maal, invited me to play on his album the next day. When he had come in to rehearse, he initially found it hard to lock in with the quite rigid confines of the arrangement. I got to know exactly how he felt when I walked into his studio and found his band in the kitchen playing music that I loved but had no idea how to fit in with. In the end John Leckie the producer was looking for an entirely different flavour for the song, and the evening turned into quite a normal overdub session. I was also briefly in the studio with Ed Harcourt, working on some bonus tracks for his upcoming best–of. The tunes, as ever, were beautiful and we’ve known each other so long the parts were down in no time. A few great Ed moments too – when he walked in he hurriedly unpacked all his latest musical toys, and finished off by triumphantly producing a giant Indian headdress, saying earnestly “I thought we might need it”. He also insisted on speaking to me between takes through a vintage mic and amplifier with reverb, at huge volume, hiding underneath the mixing desk. The fabulous–sounding 60s American amp I brought along electrocuted me, the producer, his assistant and the technician. Lastly on the studio front there were an other few days in Belfast with David Holmes, doing the last few tracks for his long–awaited album. This time I brought Jon Hopkins with me, who brings an elegant magic to everything he touches.

A couple of festivals this month. Firstly the Isle of Wight, where I played alone on a little bandstand. I was glad to be there and had a great time camping, but the gig rather made me want to never do anything like it ever again. Then Glastonbury where I played with Ed and then The Waterboys. I’d never played with The Waterboys live, but Mike Scott invited me to join them for the songs I did on the album and it was really exciting to headline a stage, and come on with no rehearsal (except 10 minutes in a van with Mike). The mud was quite extraordinary, and only bearable when viewed through an alcoholic haze. I was pathetically underprepared too, arriving with binbags tied round my legs. By the time I’d found a place selling wellies I had sacrificed 2 pairs of shoes to the quagmire.

Two days later I found myself in New York taking out my mud–splattered pedals in the David Letterman studio. It was a strange juxtaposition. Letterman keeps his surprisingly small studio extremely cold – so much so that my fingers went numb (good thing I was playing slide). Once again the entire thing felt rather impromptu, being shoved on with minimal rehearsal, and all over in 5 minutes. It was only when I watched it back that it really clicked that I’d been on Letterman. One minute he was rabbiting away, then he said “Bryan Ferry”, and the next thing I saw was me! After that I stayed in New York for a couple of days to make a video for the first single off my next album with Bingo Gazingo. I took him to Central Park and round the East Village and filmed him accosting members of the public with his poetry. For an 82–year–old he has such incredible energy, and it can’t be because of his diet (ice cream and milkshakes, half of which end up down his shirt). One of the many highlights was when he stood in the middle of a playground and bellowed “I wanna put my iTube in your YouTube!” I also interviewed one of the other singers, Phoebe Legere, in her extraordinary apartment full of art, clothes, and fallen masonry. It is the only place I’ve ever been which one could describe as being ’littered with accordions’. She gave me raspberries and told me to sit out on her rusty fire escape (5 floors up) while she did the interview with the cameraman (she didn’t want me to hear).

Finally, yesterday I did the Diana tribute concert with Bryan. Surprisingly little to report, except that mercifully Wembley Stadium doesn’t seem quite as huge when you’re actually onstage. The only thing that threw me off were the troupe of models sachaying right over my pedalboard during the intro, which certainly didn’t happen at the runthrough. It was also eerily quiet onstage, adding to the unreality of it all. I just kept thinking “God knows when I’ll make it back here again, just enjoy it! Enjoy it!” and tried to balance the tragic desire to look vaguely ’stadium–y’ with trying not to play any wrong notes during the solos.

I’m on a tour bus with Jarvis Cocker, somewhere between Vienna and Amsterdam. It’s the morning after a night spent singing Beatles tunes until 4am and the air is still thick with tall stories, cigarette smoke and stale farts. The shows have been going well so far; Jarvis is playing only his new material, which is strong enough to rebuff the occasional heckle for Pulp tunes. We finish every night with a cover – last night was Paranoid (though it was very nearly I’m Too Sexy). The support band is different each night; in Italy Jarvis thought he’d be nice and go and watch a few songs, but the audience recognised him and turned away from the band en masse to try and get autographs. During the day I’m working on string arrangements for a band called The Envy Corps.

The year started in South Africa with Ronan. Probably my last gigs with him for quite a while. Although I respect him as a performer and like him very much as a person, the music does rather depress me. There is satisfaction to be had in doing a good job, but then you can get that playing music you actually like too. Still, I am grateful for the work, and for the very generous treatment the minstrels (as Ro’s tour manager calls us) receive. I explained all this in response to a question from the agent’s wife over dinner, after which her 8 year old daughter bellowed, “what, so you don’t like the music?!” well within range of everyone, including Ronan. Inexplicably omnipresent during the trip was a friend of the promoter, ostensibly there to help out, but who in fact turned out to be an arms dealer with an extremely dubious past in the apartheid–era police force and a wife who seemed mortally offended if she was unable to convince you to get drunk with her. The promoter himself, a delightful and apparently extremely well–connected and powerful man, seemed only too happy to stoop to the level of being hassled about all the tiny things tour managers hassle promoters about. It was all very mysterious.

Between these two trips I went to Paris with Bryan Ferry to do a live TV show, worked a lot on my new album, and produced some vocal sessions for Sylvie Lewis, who wanted to redo parts of her latest record. I really enjoy working with singers – it’s something I haven’t done for quite a while. Sylvie’s songs are very classic, almost instant ’standards’, and it was satisfying trying to get the vocals to be personal and characterful, and finding the right combinations of microphones and compressors to match. I also started work on a record with Katherine from the Smoke Fairies, which is going to consist of instrumental versions of hymns. I’m doing my acoustic and ambient things, and she plays banjo, lapsteel, slide and a few other bits. I’m trying to do as much as possible from memory instead of consulting my hymnbook, and it’s a lovely nostalgic feeling working with all those beautiful tunes in the absence of words I never really connected with anyway. What with all that and finishing off writing the follow-up to Honeytrap, I’m getting a bit worried about spreading myself too thin; I seem to record a lot and then not take as much of an interest as I should in promoting it, but I just love recording music and have virtually no interest in trying to draw attention to myself afterwards. It’s exciting having all these ideas bubbling away at the moment.

I’m on a flight to South Africa for some gigs with Ronan, reflecting on what a weird and wonderful way to make a living this can be sometimes. The itinerary tells me that there are to be a mere 5 shows in 12 days. This has been a month of manic travel and, once at the destination, unprecedented and disconcerting idleness. I went to LA to work on the soundtrack to the next Oceans movie with David Holmes and ended up effectively getting paid to sit around and go shopping a lot. For a restless chap who takes pride in his work, these seemingly cushy situations end up being pretty taxing, so I usually bring some editing to do on my laptop. Basically I was there for the first 10 days of recording, during which the priority was laying down drums and bass, and generally working out whether the overall feel was right – a crucial and delicate stage. So I did play now and then, and got some work done on David’s solo record in downtime, and got to hang out with wonderful people like Zach Danziger (who drums on my next record) and Woody Jackson (an amazing guitarist and genius professor of unusual instruments). I was also happy to witness once again the unique phenomenon of the Hollywood session musician, whose reputation and equipment precede him – the latter in the form of at least 6 man–sized flightcases that ominously appear a few hours in advance of the session so that every eventuality is covered, even if all that ends up being required is 4 bars of tambourine. I don’t mean this to sound in any way derogatory, it’s a quite simply awe–inspiring level of seriousness that is above and beyond anything you’ll find in any other city in the world, and they all have the musical skill to match. But it’s kind of funny too.

After the LA trip I went straight to a rehearsal with Jarvis Cocker to learn 15 songs in an afternoon, having not slept for 3 days. Interestingly, despite feeling utterly drunk with fatigue, the musical bit of my brain was functioning well and a few days later in Barcelona, the gig went great. Jarvis’ band is really loud, the bass player in particular has the most unholy tone I’ve ever heard, and that helped give me the confidence to shake off first night nerves. A lot of the sounds I came up with were drenched in reverb and feedback, but it still felt very exposed. Afterwards Jarvis asked me how it had been, and I said I thought I should be asking him the same question. I didn’t make any mistakes, but the brain was a little too much in ascendance over the heart, and I’m looking forward to redressing the balance next time.

There have been a couple of engagements with Bryan Ferry. First, 2 days filming for a possible TV show about his new album. The band piled into a recording studio festooned with wires and cameras and set about publicly re–learning the tunes we’d recorded back in August. I dislike cameras peering up my nose while I’m trying to play the guitar, but this time it was amazing how discreet they were, and how quickly we all forgot they were there – which makes me wonder about which candid moments they’ll see fit to include (a couple of close calls when we realised every word we said was audible in the control room). But most of all it made me look forward to the tour next year – especially with Chris Spedding, Guy Pratt and Andy Newmark in the band. Earlier in the month, we went to Moscow for a private show. This was completely bizarre. Some heavy government–types had hired out a small club and scattered it with a few tables and 20 or so of their closest and apparently most humourless associates. Mild applause greeted each legendary showstopper. The atmosphere was decidedly odd. If I’d been Bryan I would probably have gone mad but to my lasting admiration, all he had to comment on afterwards was a noteworthy guitar solo and some dodgy backing vocals!

I’ve also had a couple of meeting with labels – about my new album (which seems to be coming out on a major, bullshit notwithstanding) and a follow–up to Honeytrap on Just Music, which is now nearly written but not recorded. A couple of gigs with Ed Harcourt which felt like slipping into a comfy old shoes, some TVs with Jarvis and an overdub session with Herbert Gronemeyer, and that concludes a month that has left me both satisfied and disorientated. In the middle of all that a really good radio station, Chill FM, devoted a show to my music; doing a few voiceovers I realised how far away I feel already from stuff I wrote not that long ago. It made me even keener to press on with new ideas next year, despite being very grateful to have travelled so much this year and been involved with so many great projects.

Thanksgiving Day in New York, pissing rain. I’ve spent the morning helping distribute clothes at the Bowery Mission, after my flight home last night got cancelled. I came over to work on a track for my next record with a singer called Phoebe Legere. She had sent me a wonderful demo and we had to try and recreate it in a better studio. This is never an easy task for a singer, especially working on very intimate emotional things with someone you’ve never met before. So I booked a really homely–looking studio and hoped for the best. Phoebe is technically an incredible singer, so the only thing to worry about was recapturing the emotion. At times I felt more like a director than a producer – it was more about acting than anything else – and we both ended up enjoying it. After quite an intense session, when it came time to leave she said goodbye as if she was just popping out to the shops (when in fact we have no plans to meet again), which I thought was rather lovely. Yesterday I met up with the venerably eccentric octogenarian poet Bingo Gazingo and My Robot Friend to discuss Bingo’s album (see previous entries). As we walked down the street he recited poetry at the top of his lungs, frightening passers–by. After a particularly filthy and insane rant about Eminem (”crush my balls against the wall and fuck me like Biggie Smalls”) he turned to me and in a completely matter–of–fact tone and said, “Now you tell me that won’t sell 10 million copies!” Bingo was on better form than when he came to London to record with me (he flooded his hotel room, and the porter who broke the door down found what he thought was a suicide note, which was actually some lyrics from a song called “What a Life, Some Shit”). To see him smiling away listening to his songs on headphones was wonderful, even when he cantankerously pronounced one track “so–so”, and said that another had a verse missing. I’m still trying to improve the mixes; I just bought a new bit of gear and ended up using it way too much, so I’m redoing the whole thing.

I’ve been working a bit with Jarvis Cocker this month, doing a few tv and radio things before a tour next year. It all happened very suddenly with a call to drive up to Sheffield to rehearse, the night before I was due to go to South Africa with Ronan Keating. I walked in to find that I would be replacing Richard Hawley, who is one of my favourite guitarists (and who I’d been on tour with briefly last year). They all grew up together, and I felt very ’London’ somehow, in a bad way. But they were all really nice and I guess I fitted in. Jarvis is such a genuine person, and a delight to be onstage with. For my money he is one of the greatest dancers in rock and roll. He acts out the lyrics so brilliantly, I have to keep myself from grinning all the time. Michael Stipe does a similar thing, though rather more studiously. A few years ago, Ed Harcourt did a US support tour with REM. On the last day, Stipe came up to me and invited me to feel how hot this heat patch he had on his pelvis was. It was indeed extremely hot. He said, “You’re a great guitarist”. I said, “Thanks, you’re a great dancer”. He said “Thanks, I also sing”.

South Africa was interesting. Johannesburg is apparently rather dangerous and our hotel was more of a self–contained gated community. A few of us got a guided tour round Soweto and invited some of the people we met to the show. The show was in aid of people like them, but when they turned up security didn’t want to let them in! Nice. More champagne! They got in eventually. I must say though, Ronan is a very effective front man. There were quite a few acts on the bill and many different types of audiences over the 5 dates, and unlike many of the others he won them over every time. As always, the level of commitment from the front filters down through the whole band.

Before that I went to Kilkenny to write and produce with Iarla O’Lionaird (house pictured above). In spite of his extremely sweet and time–consuming children, and a trespassing cow rampaging round his garden, we got plenty of work done. He usually sings in Gaelic, but wants to start using English more. His words, when translated, are beautiful but seemed at first to suffer from a loss of mystery. I suggested that he sing as if he didn’t understand what he was saying (just as the average listener experiences Gaelic), taking a syllable at a time, and that proved very fruitful. I should also mention that the man possesses a greater number of pump organs than is strictly necessary.

Lastly, apart from a little solo gig which reminded me that I have records of my own that I should be trying to promote, I did another week in the studio with Herbert Gronemeyer. It was a very valuable experience once again, especially because I realised I sometimes assume I’m expected to do more than is really necessary – almost as if not using my laptop and pedals to get all manner of sounds amounts to laziness – when in fact on this occasion they just wanted me to play some rock guitar! Nevertheless they were extremely specific about things lilke phrasing and fingering, which had to be balanced with a certain ’roughness’. The whole band played together and we’d often do over 20 takes. This can be hard – if you’ve played it right already and they’re still trying to get the drums, you’re under pressure to keep getting it right. And if it’s you they’re working on, you can feel a bit guilty making everyone else play it again! But there’s always someone in the control room keeping track of everything, making notes on who played well when (all the takes are kept), so once again I found myself worrying about nothing – probably because, usually, I’m more hands–on in the studio. Most of the time thinking like a producer means you play much better, but sometimes it can catch you out. Like last time, Herbert’s ’guide lyrics’ sung in nonsense English proved disturbingly memorable along with his solid–gold melodies, and this new language is going round and round my brain (”siggaluuv… bevooooryougo!…. ahsaymasayluuur……. siggaluuv… ooooopencoat!…. ahseddamooorow”).

I just got back from a crazy charity event organised by Rosetta Life in collaboration with Brian Eno And Jarvis Cocker: a live internet jam session between children at Great Ormond Street Hospital, a hospice in Portobello, and a home for children suffering from AIDS in South Africa. It was extremely moving and terrifyingly chaotic at the same time. Still, by some miracle the temperamental internet connection finally managed to crank into life just in time for our big song, and everyone had fun. Then a little boy with Teurets Syndrome started setting off all the samples at once and turning every knob in sight up full and hell broke loose. Next time I’m making the keyboard monophonic!

Other than that, there have been lots of little things going on. There was a short acoustic tour with Nik Kershaw – it was so great stripping the synths away and playing those beautiful songs the way they were probably written – on an acoustic guitar. Nik really is an incredible songwriter. Hopefully a proper tour will follow. I’ve also been putting finishing touches to ‘Scene Memory’, my album of textural guitar pieces which is sounding very moody, and working on the tracks I started in New York. I wish there was more time to do my own stuff at the moment, but I’m grabbing all the time I can here and there on trains and in cars.