2012: Year in Review

January

The year started with the release of The One Thing, the debut single from New Season, as a mug. Because why not? I also started my love affair with Bolton by playing a show there with my band. 

February

I was lucky enough to go and play some shows in Portugal. My BFF Tom came along and took amazing pictures of us having fun. And Luís made a video of me playing in a wine shop.

March

March was a big one. Seasons was released, the film about the making of New Season, and the album itself followed shortly after. (You can listen to it here if you haven’t already.)

I hit the road with a nine-piece band to celebrate the release of the album. We had a grand time.

April

In April I started a massive European tour. I went to Sweden for the first time since 2008, and Norway for the first time ever. I kept an audio tour diary called Motion Sickness, recorded at the wheel of my car. It was a lot of fun.

May

The tour stretched into May, and took me to Germany, Austria, the UK and Ireland. The good times kept rolling. And I put all the photos from the tour here.

June

Poor and burnt out after tour, I got a job in Berlin working for SoundCloud. I packed my life into my car and drove to Germany. But not before playing a show in a field with Wheatus.

July

I didn’t make much music in July, but I did turn 25. I also went to Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium with Tom. We drank free beer, relaxed in the jacuzzi, and hobnobbed with Skrillex and Ellie Goulding.

August

August was a Good Month. I played at Frizon Festival in Sweden, which was my favourite show of the year, and made lots of wonderful friends. (I wrote a blog about it.)

I also played at Greenbelt Festival in the UK. Which was also fun. (I wrote a blog about that, too.)

September

September was a non-event in terms of music, but I kept up my singing by doing karaoke. I also started riding a bike for the first since I was 15, bought a rad bed and showed my parents around Berlin.

October

I mostly ate ice cream and froyo all month, but I also played a house show which Ed live-tweeted.

November

November was a slow month but I grew a horrible moustache and also did an interview with Talenthouse. 

December

I finished the year with a tour of Germany and Sweden. Although it started badly with a back injury and a hospital visit, it ended successfully in the snowy climes of Sweden. So I wrote a blog about it. 

Tomorrow I’m heading to Bolton to play my last shows of the year. I’m not quite sure why the year has started and ended in Bolton, but it’s a beautiful thing and I’m happy that it’s happened.

As for 2013, I’m going to make some new music for you. Have a blessed Christmas and I’ll see you next year. 

Love from Luke

Sweden Tour: December 2012

I flew to Sweden last Wednesday to play some shows. And much like the last time that I went there, my heart hurt from the second I stepped off the plane from the utter loveliness of it all.

A man called Per volunteered to meet me at the airport in Gothenburg at 11pm and drive me to my host’s house. It was very kind of him to stay up late and battle through cold and snow. We chatted about all kinds of things and he really was very nice indeed. Per deposited me at Hanna’s house. Hanna was organising the Gothenburg show on Thursday night and she was also very kind. I ate some of her mum’s homemade pie and then went to bed.

Sadly I couldn’t go exploring in Gothenburg on Thursday (I’m not a full-time pop star anymore and I work for “the man”) but nevertheless I was able to do my work at the Frälsningsarmén (Salvation Army) where I would be playing that evening. Although I didn’t get to peruse the city, I was surrounded by genuine Swedes, which was nice. My general rule is to hang out with as many Swedes as possible, all the time.

So I did my work and then it was time to play a rock show. It was Santa Lucia Day which meant that in the morning, girls would wear white dresses and put candles in their hair, singing songs to wake people up. This didn’t happen to me (thankfully, because I was pretty tired from the flight) but we did do other traditional things like eating scones and lots of food. I tried to explain the scones/scones pronunciation issue to the Swedes and they seemed baffled. I guess it is baffling.

I was playing in the Salvation Army hall which had been set up like a café. It was a bit of a treat because there was a lovely grand piano to play. There were also some people there who I’d met at Frizon Festival in the summer. I ate so many scones that my stomach hurt, then we cleaned up, then we went back to Hanna’s place and talked about all the important things.

Friday was a bright and early 6.30am start. Lisa kindly escorted me to the bus station, where I caught a bus to the airport. Then I flew to Stockholm. I was met there by Pelle, who interviewed me on his chat show at Frizon Festival in the summer. He is a Good Guy. Our hunger statuses were the same (limited breakfasts) so he introduced me to the wonder that is Max. Max makes the best burgers. We ate them.

Today’s show was in Hudiksvall, the ‘north’ of Sweden. Most people call it the north because it is pretty northern compared to most major cities in Sweden, but it’s geographically in the middle (geography lesson). Pelle’s dad runs a church in Hudiksvall and naturally I leapt at the chance to visit the deep north, see even more snow, and possibly be attacked by a bear. So Pelle drove us capably from Stockholm to Hudiksvall, laughing in the face of snow, ice and boredom, and we finally arrived at Lindvall HQ. 

The Lindvalls are the loveliest. You know when you meet people and they are really, really, really lovely? That’s the Lindvalls. We ate homemade buns and Christmas biscuits. We drank coffee. Then we went to soundcheck at the church. The church was a converted dancehall that had been popular in times gone by. The conversion was amazingly beautiful, with a baptismal pool that doubled as a jacuzzi, and yet again I got to play on a beautiful grand piano. It reminded me of this old t-shirt design.

Soundcheck segued into eating lasagne at Lindvall HQ, then we drove to Ljusdall for a bonus show.

During the drive, the temperature dropped to -20. Serious. I played a few songs on an electric grand piano to some teenagers who were there for a Christmas party, then we headed back to Hudiksvall for the main event.

The church was super busy and it was the most fun show I’ve played in ages. We wound down with fika and tea. Then we slept. 

Then we got up early to drive to Stockholm. I found out that I was on the front page of Hudiksvall’s newspaper, which was strange but very nice.

Pelle and I were extra tired but we overlived the situation (Swenglish for ‘survived’) and Pelle dumped me in Stockholm, whereupon I caught the train to Jönköping. I slept. I dribbled on myself. And finally I arrived in Jönköping and hugged Marcus.

I played a show for Marcus earlier this year and he was one of the Best Guys. And we were reunited. I dropped my stuff off at his new house, played Lego with his son, Tiago, and then we went and ate food. I consumed my second burger of the day but that’s okay because I was on tour. Marcus sings in a band called I’m from Barcelona and they have a saying about this. It’s something like: “a burger a day keeps…” I can’t remember.

Tonight’s show was in IFB’s practice space, which is called Malaysia. They are very geographically imaginative/confused. There were giant balloons, tiny beers, and huge amounts of bunting. As a general rule, more bunting is better than less bunting. Bunt as much as you can. A guy called Peter Fransson opened the gig. He had an exquisite voice. You know - like a real singer. The kind of voice that makes me feel truly inadequate. But he played and was excellent, and then I played and tried my best. Marcus and I had been drinking beers together and Marcus had logged this on a fancy iPhone app that was made by the Swedish government for Swedes. It tells you when you’re too drunk to drive and refuses to log any drinks after a few beers. By the time I took to the stage, I was officially drunk. It really was a wonderful app.

I played my songs and it was really nice. Then we danced to hits from the eighties. Then I was so very tired and we went home through the snow to sleep. There were no more burgers at this point.

I woke up feeling headachy from the beer, which I don’t think is very fair because I didn’t even drink many beers. We went to the bus station and ate breakfast. I ate granola. Marcus and Anna-Maria ate toasted bagels. Tiago ate nothing. I then got on the bus and felt very sad to be leaving Jönköping. I did some work on my computer (Swedish buses are posh and have wifi that works). The bus arrived at Gothenburg airport. As each minute passed I felt sadder and sadder to be leaving Sweden. I felt the saddest as we were on the runway. I slept, dribbled on myself, and woke up in Berlin and went home.

Tusen tack, Sweden.

P.S. Photos by me, except the ones that I stole from Marcus and Pelle.

P.P.S. If you made it this far, here’s a new song that I played during the tour. 

New Season in depth | Part 3: It’s You

Every Monday for the next eight weeks I’m going to be posting an in-depth blog about a song from New Season. Here’s the third one.

Part 3: It’s You

‘It’s You’ is in the same key as ‘Have You Got Heart?’, and isn’t a million miles away in terms of tempo and feel, so I had to do something to make sure that it didn’t end up sounding too similar on the record. Whereas ‘Have You Got Heart?’ sounds quite bright and cheery thanks to the high guitar line, we went for some slightly dirge-y Weezer-esque guitars on ‘It’s You’ (listen to the start of ‘Buddy Holly’ or the chorus of ‘The Sweater Song’) to give it a bit of rock weight.

I’ve always felt that the verses are a good car-driving tempo and one of my favourite bits of the song is at 2:06 when the high guitar line comes in. To me, it sounds really American and like you’re driving on a long, open road, probably in a Cadillac through a desert or something. There’s also a killer shaker part at 1:46, which really gels the verse together. Never underestimate the role of a shaker.

My main concern with the chorus was worrying whether the hook was too basic (“It’s youuu, youuu, youuu, you are the one I love” was never going to win any awards for lyric writing). Whist it’s good because it’s super catchy and you can sing it after hearing it once, the danger with those kinds of choruses is that you’re sick of them after hearing them three times (mind, this chorus never gets old). Anyway, I tried to develop the chorus a bit and make it more interesting, but it felt complete as it was and I decided to risk putting an über-pop chorus on the album. Plus, I was super into the Gm7 chord in the chorus (2:40, for example) and there was no way that wasn’t making the album.

Other things I’m into on this track are the thick three-part harmonies at the end of each chorus (2:46 - the low part kills me), the way the drums play through the breaks before the choruses (0:20), the build-up at 3:31, and basically everything from 4:17 onwards (if I ever get to play a stadium show, this bit will be great). Although I do worry that we recorded the whole song too slow and that I didn’t sing the high bits very well. But look, I never claimed to be Freddie Mercury.

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Listen to / buy ‘New Season’ at lukeleighfield.com/newseason.

Watch ‘Seasons’, the feature-length documentary about the making of the album, at lukeleighfield.com/seasons.

Read ‘New Season in depth’ part 1 / part 2.

European Tour Spring 2012

Big thanks to Nicholas Stevenson for designing this lovely poster for my upcoming tour! The poster will be available as a limited edition A3 screenprint on the tour, which I’m very excited about.

If you can’t quite read the dates on the poster, you can see them here. There are still a few blanks left to fill so if you can help with a house show in Germany, Sweden or the UK, let me know - luke (at) lukeleighfield (dot) com.

Check out Nicholas’ website, follow him on Twitter, or listen to his music.

New Season in depth | Part 2: New Season

Every Monday for the next nine weeks I’m going to be posting an in-depth blog about a song from New Season. Here’s the second one.

Part 2: New Season

I love Aaron’s (drums) shout at the start of this song. I think he was shouting because he’d done a fair few takes of this one, or maybe he was just super into it, but either way I decided that keeping the shout would be a good thing. I love songs where you can hear something odd in the recording, like how you can hear a phone go off in the studio at 2:56 in ‘Steven’s Last Night in Town’ by Ben Folds Five, followed by someone laughing in the live room. Those weird things make a record more fun, in my opinion. And on this song, it helps to lift things after the album opener ‘Slow Down’, which I said last week was possibly a bad choice of album opener.

Anyway, ‘New Season’ is obviously the title track, and in some ways encompasses what the whole of the album is about: hope, triumph over adversity, being positive, etc. It’s the oldest song on the album because I released an earlier version of the song, which I recorded for a charity single, back in 2010 (listen here). The original had a bit of a dirty pop-punk vibe and was a bit ropey in parts, although was blessed with some lovely backing vocals from Jose Vanders and Sam Little. For the album version we basically took out the nagging pop-punk guitars, added some rippin’ Hammond organ, introduced a tasty drum beat in the second verse, and made the whole thing a bit more of a rounded, considered, pop-rock anthem.

We also changed the pre-chorus bits so that rather than breaking the momentum of the song, they now added more energy and led into the chorus (check out the killer drum fill at 2:10). The ending was perked up with some rich brass, and my favourite bit of the song is probably the backing vocals in the middle eight. From 2:38 onwards we layered up lots of parts with me singing in a nice girly falsetto, and also added some extra tasty falsetto parts over the “this is a new season” bits (see 2:44). There’s a nice choir moment at 3:20, which I love, and we made poor Ben play his guitar solo over and over until it oozed pure awesome, whereas on the original version I think Ben was still learning it, so it didn’t ROCK quite so much.

The writing of the song itself happened really quickly, which seems to be the case with most of my favourite songs, and I love it because it’s nice and summery, and provides a burst of pop-rock adrenaline to the album.

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Listen to / buy ‘New Season’ at lukeleighfield.com/newseason.

Watch ‘Seasons’, the feature-length documentary about the making of the album, at lukeleighfield.com/seasons.

New Season in depth | Part 1: Slow Down

Every Monday for the next ten weeks I’m going to be posting an in-depth blog about a song from New Season. Here’s the first one.

Part 1: Slow Down

‘Slow Down’ is the first song on New Season, which quite a few people thought was a stupid idea. Maybe it was. The song starts really quietly with an organ, and there’s no singing until 1:07 (the chorus doesn’t happen until the two minute mark), which isn’t really textbook pop writing, and probably isn’t the way that you’re supposed to open an album. However, I like the idea that the song forces you to slow down, as the title suggests, and I love how it grows over the six minutes.

The drum roll at 4:29 was Matt Reynolds’ (guitar/bass/assistant producer) idea (I had more of a military thing in my head) and I’m so glad we did it. From that point on I always get goosebumps. I love the sense of impending rock at 4:40, the way that the guitar feeds back at 4:51, and the huge release at 5:09 when the brass, choir and Hundred Reasons-y guitar line comes in. The drum sound on this song is probably my favourite on the whole album. The snare just sounds delicious.

Lyrically, it’s one of my favourite songs that I’ve ever written. It’s not complex or clever (this review said that the lyrics in ‘Slow Down’ were “embarrassing pre-teen attempts at poetry”) but the message of the song is something that’s been important to me over the past couple of years. It’s so hard to find time to be quiet or slow in this age of being constantly connected, with our phones buzzing all day long with tweets and texts and emails, but I think it’s more important than ever to make time to not be around gadgets, and have time to simply stop, think and breathe. Not that I’m very good at it!

If the message of ‘Slow Down’ is something that appeals to you then I would highly recommend Zen Habits, a great blog that I read every week (and which isn’t as new age-y and hippyish as the title suggests) or Less is More, a new book by Brian Draper.

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Listen to / buy ‘New Season’ at lukeleighfield.com/newseason.

Watch ‘Seasons’, the feature-length documentary about the making of the album, at lukeleighfield.com/seasons.