I met Maurice Macartney at the Crawfordsburn Inn for a pint this-afternoon. It was great to see the old badger after so long. He had been for a walk in the forest before I arrived, and had scribbled some lines down on a scrap of paper, including a line about a crow and its “ramshackle flight”.
It was part of a series of ideas that included this character; the “ramshackle crow”. I loved the phrase, the visceral image that sprung to mind. I’ve always had a thing for crows, so I suppose that wasn’t much of a surprise.
Having already started by swapping song ideas during my Italian trip, the next natural step was to suggest we up the stakes a little and work together on the whole record. Plans were hatched – he is up for it. I suggested that we use my project management system (Basecamp) to do it – we could trade and edit each other’s lyrics, upload song sketches, comment, develop, just run the process however we liked.