Welcome to my first Blog where I'm going to write about some of the studio sessions I've been involved with as well as some of my live exploits as part of my life as a working musician. It's more for me to try and remember what I'm up to as I normally respond with the same olde same old when people ask me what I'm up to. Recently I've been putting the finishing touches to Ronnie Drew's latest and sadly his final album.

Angus Fanning of The Sunday Independent has organised the whole project & it involves Ronnie Drew singing jazz tunes and folk tunes in the jazz idiom reminisent of the Nat King Cole trio. Guitarist Hugh Buckley is at the helm, producing the session with his great & imaginitive arrangements and he brought in Myles Drennan on piano/drums and Dave Flemming on Double Bass for the dates as the house band which has been augmented by Richie Buckley and Paul Sweeney on brass.

Bless Paul, he'd never been in a computer based recording studio before so cut & paste and comping takes on the fly totally amazed him. He seemed rather serious about buying a similar set up until I informed him on how much money & time I'd spent building it up at which point he had to sit down and have a glass of water. Angus got some special guests in to do some vocal Duets with Ronnie such as Damien Dempsey, Immelio and Mary Coughlan.

Immelio's track worked out fine, all things considered and the Mary Coughlan song sounded great especially with Hugh's arrangement but the stand out track for me was the Damien & Ronnie singing a rainy night in solo which sounded special as soon as the first note was struck. It reminded me of Van at the Astral Weeks stage of his career. A funny moment was when Damien exclaimed that he had made it because he was recording a duet with Ronnie Drew to which Ronnie exclaimed “Bollox, you've made nothing”.

I'm currently mixing the tracks after having Myles return to put some drums on one or two tracks and replace some little piano bits as the 1930's Piano has now finally been rebuilt by Paul Wade, who I'd consider a friend at this stage after all the work he's done on the vintage broadway upright. What will happen to the album is up to the Drew family & Angus and they have a few options to consider as they're hoping to have it released in time for christmas.

I was with Ronnie a week before he died as I was dropping in the latest version of the mixes for him to check out and he seemed in good spirits sitting on the side of his bed, smoking his havana and chatting away. A big shame that he won't see the final product as it was his selection of tunes that he always wanted to record with his jazz musician mates. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.