Exciting News: Our former Club President, life member and chronicler of dragons, Chris D’Lacey, has an album out on December 24th. Just in time for Christmas streaming! It should be available on all the usual platforms: Spotify, iTunes, Amazon etc.
Chris says, “Some of you will know that I’ve written songs all my life. I was doing it WAY before dragons ever entered my consciousness. It’s always been a hobby – but then so was the writing until I came to the club. Don’t think there’s any danger of me gracing a stage at Glastonbury any time soon. To be honest, that’s not what this is about, anyway. I just like writing and recording. Most of my life I’ve worked alone, because I’ve never considered myself to be a true musician, and I’m certainly not a singer. But a few years ago, a family of musos moved in next door and everything blossomed from there. My main collaborator, Jon, is a fabulous drummer. He’s pretty damn good at anything with strings or keys on it, too. At the time the album started, we were both trying to wrap our heads round Apple’s Logic Pro recording software. So for want of something to work on, I lobbed a little demo at Jon. Bish, bash, bosh. Eighteen months later, we had enough tracks for an album. We call our ‘band’ NELSON ROAD cos, erm, that’s where we live. And it’s not just me and Jon, we’ve also called on the services of his cousin Mark, a bass player, and a brilliant session guitarist called Elliott, who you can hear on ‘Masquerade’, ‘Home To You’ and ‘Amanda Jayne’ especially. So what about the songs? Well, they span a 40 year period. (Yep, I kid you not.) We basically chose the ones we liked from my vast catalogue. We have songs about serial killers, John Lennon, climate change, lurve (both good and bad). There’s even one about my 18 year estrangement from my mother (every songwriter writes at least one about their mum.) All the lyrics are mine. So are all the tunes, though I credit Jon on track 5, ‘Home To You’, because it was written as a present for his girlfriend, Poppy. He takes the lead vocal on that one; kind of awkward if I sang it! Jon and I arranged the songs together, and I mixed and mastered them (with a bit of help from the Apple software). So there were no studios involved. All done at home, Jon’s and mine. I play guitar, acoustic and electric, and occasionally bass. Jon, likewise, when he’s not drumming. Most of the clever bits would be down to him. So there it is. If you give it a listen, I genuinely hope you like it. It won’t be for everyone, but if you want to offer any feedback, feel free. It would fall into the rock/pop category, I suppose.”
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