I apologise peoples.  It’s been way too long to be amusing…

I’ve got heaps to talk about, but now is not the time… I promise within the next 48 hours I’ll have a corker blog for you to read, but as it’s 4:18am… I’m going to bed now…

Big loves… from the big dude.

I don’t know who I’ve told and who I haven’t so I figured I should just do a blog about it and then everyone knows…. COOL?  Are we all going to be OK with that?  Cripes Shirl, y’know I just try me hardest sometimes I do…

So Bleu (he who is King) was over mixing my ‘rekerd’ and he mentioned that there might be a little room on my album for some extra vocals and that when he first listened to the tracks he thought it was a little reminiscent of Chicago with the horns and what not… So, he asked his good mate Jason Scheff if he’d sing on ‘Salvation Jane’…

Now, Jason Scheff for the last 24 years… has been the lead singer/ bass player of Chicago…  CHICAGO people!!!  When Peter Cetera left the band in 1985 Jason filled his rather large shoes… and how’s this imagery for the analogy…  Jason’s toes have now poked holes in the ends of those shoes..   If you haven’t gotten into Chicago… basically I say to you…  WHAT?!?

My last car (I refer to ‘My Ex-Peugeot’) was called ‘Chicago’.  It was ‘Chic’ it was a ‘car’ and it could definitely ‘go’.  Not only that, for about the first 9 or 10 months of owning the car, the 6 stacker CD player in the boot ONLY had Chicago discs in it.  That’s how much I’m into Chicago.

So I digress…  Bleu has done a rough ‘Scheff’ mix of ‘Salvation’ and sent it up in to the WWW for some love from Jason…  WITHIN 24 hours that thing was back into Bleu’s laptop with some absolutely sublime yet distinctive Scheff harmonies.

Blown away is an understatement… understatement of the century…. uh? See what I did there?

Not only has Jason Scheff heard my material, but he’s SINGING ON IT!!!

A couple of days later, Bleu did the same trick again, this time we had the track back within 12 hours of Jason getting it…  unbelievable… I’m literally shaking my head while I’m writing this…

So ‘Second Best’ and ‘Salvation Jane’ both have Jason Scheff singing on them.  Which I think is just ‘killer’ as Bleu said all the time.

Can’t wait for you all to hear it.  I just hope everyone gets a chance to…  ‘Big’ being a REAL album and all.  Not some ‘one album wonder’ fluff that comes and goes by the CD shelves… I want everyone to know…

… I’m no One Album Wonder.

Love Court.

P.s. Buy my album when it comes out?

I wish I could draw.  My Dad is a great drawer.  Mum paints great, and I guess draws pretty damn well too.  So many people I know draw really well… I can’t draw to save my life.

My Grandma Coral was a wood burner.  We used to have one of her works hanging up in our house when I was a kid.  Do you know the poem ‘The Desiderata’? It stand for ‘desired things’ in Latin… anyway, this rather lengthy prose poem was calligraphically burned into a piece of wood, as well as a fantastic drawing of an old broken down cart if I remember rightly… man she could not only draw.. she could draw with a smouldering soldering iron in her firm little grasp.

So it can’t be that hard then in theory…  if my frail little grandma could do it… so could I surely?  Nope.

I’ve tried drawing simple still life stuff, going back to high school days.  Flowers and vases kinda stuff…  I SUCK!

Norman Rockwell…. I mean…. right?  RigHT?  That guy could draw…

Yep… a drawing of exceptional realism.  If I could draw, this would be the kinda stuff I would want to draw.  And you know what?  I’m sure there are people even in Australia that can draw in a very realistic way like Norman Rockwell… right?  Surely in amongst 21 million we’ve got someone who can draw realistic yet ever-so-slightly caricatured drawings of people and places in Australia.

I’m putting the challenge out there.  If you can draw pretty damn well, why not give this style of drawing a go…

I can’t do it.  Luckily I can write songs instead.  That’s a consolation prize I’m afraid.

Wish I could draw.

Love Court.

Sorry it’s been a while everybody.  I haven’t had time to blog.

As it is, I’ve been up for about 40 minutes, and I’ve just got a spare 20 before leaving to go pick Bleu up to go back to the studio…  crazy times.

Currently we’re 8 down with 3 to go.  The 3 we are yet to mix are ‘She’s Not One Of Those Girls’ ‘Margarita’ and ‘Forever Long’.  If we can get it all done in the next three days, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Every day I’m learning more while being in the studio… and how it’s SO different from being on stage.  I’m also learning how incredible Bleu really is…  He’s put down little extra parts where they were needed… he’s… well let’s just say, he’s made it sound like a bought one.

Yesterday we were in the studio for over 14 hours.  We didn’t leave the place until just after 3am.  It just blows me away this dude’s work ethic.  He was mixing ‘Epaulettes’ yesterday and I must say it’s just cranking along now… I added a little tambourine part just to ‘pop’ the chorus and 14 hours later… it’s in ship shape!  he he…

I’ve really gotta try and soak all of this in before it’s all over, but it’s really hard to write about it at the same time… I’m too close to it all.   I hope by next week I will have enough space from it to write a massive blog about our 11 days in the studio, but until then… I hope this suffices.

I really will try and blog a whole lot more… Shaun’s going to hook my iPhone up with the blog details so I can do it whenever wherever I want.  Oh yeah.

Big loves, and thanks to everyone who came to my and Bleu’s gig last Wednesday… We had an absolute blast, and it was heaps of fun to play for everybody, and show them the entire album in one performance.  And seriously how great was Bleu?!  He rocked it like Keith Moon y’all.

Love Court.

P.s. Gavin Miller is cool.  If you’re reading this and you don’t listen to him from 4-8pm weekdays on 96fm… you may as well hand in your brain… you don’t need it anymore.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen…

I’ve finished recording my album ‘Big’.  I’ve not been home 5 minutes from the studio and I had to jump on here and shout to the world how excited I am.  Bleu arrives on Saturday to get cracking on a mix… but my job is done.  The last harmonies went down on ‘Warning To You’… about an hour ago.  I thought it was going to be one of the hardest ones to pull off but Don and I decided it was probably better left with a lovely singular tender lead vocal.  So we just put down some very ‘backgroundy’ harms through the chorus… and then high fived each other.

How pertinent is it that as soon as we were done… the skies finally opened up here in Perth.  We’ve been without any rain for at least a month… probably a lot longer… and we’ve had rain threatening on the website for the last few days… but it just held out until the last harmony was sung… and let it fly.

The rain is now pouring onto my roof.. and I’ve never felt happier about it.

Now that the recording is over… I guess I can move on creatively now and start some new material.  I’ve been so blocked for the last 20 months while this project has been above my head.

All I can say is…  Woo Hoo.

Love Court.

I don’t get to see Jane much at the moment.

It’s not that I’m upset or anything… well I am, enough to write a quick blog about it I guess… it’s just that it sucks on my ‘off-time’ knowing that I’m a married man who lives with his wife, and sees her for less than two hours some days.

It’s crazy, one time about a fortnight ago we didn’t see each other for a whole day, like it was Monday night, and I didn’t see her until Wednesday afternoon.  I mean… I live with the girl.  Can’t be that hard.

Like now for instance, I saw Jane for about half an hour today, and here I sit writing this in my back room thinking… I’ll only see her for around 10 minutes tomorrow, and then about 2 hours on Thursday.

What a grumble bum… I guess it’s just a very long winded and rather public way of saying… I miss her.

Love Court.

We start mixing the album on the weekend.  So we’ve been absolutely under the pump to get the last remaining bits of recording done in time.  Harmonies mainly, but tonight I had my good friend Kat Kinley come in to put some pretty ripping Organ parts down.

That was only tonight… I spent the whole day working on harmonies for ‘Forever Long’.  This track is my mini-epic for the album; it’s made up of three parts… and we only finished parts one and three today…

I’m knackered just thinking about what’s left.  At 5:30pm we took a break for half an hour so I roared home quickly whacked on my boardies and sat out in the spa for 20 minutes… made all the difference.

Bleu arrives on Saturday.  Then it’s mixing-a-go-go.

Oh and if anyone is keen, I’m going to do a gig with Bleu at The Velvet Lounge in Mt. Lawley next Wednesday the 27th.  I’ll be featuring mostly the material off the new album.  …And if you haven’t heard Bleu before…

Holy crap.

It’s a show you just CANNOT miss.  He’s awesome.

Love Court.

I’m going to tell you a story about one man and how cool he is.

‘Bleu‘ or William James McAuley III is officially in Australia.  He touched down at some point today… not totally sure.  He flew in from Los Angeles.

I first heard about Bleu when I was living in a big shiny mansion during my Idol days.  My beautiful brother Kieran sent me a CD to make me feel a little less homesick over there, as well as enlighten me to the new music he had been listening to at the time.  Track five on this compilation disc was a song called ‘We’ll Do It All Again’.  I couldn’t listen past it.  I remember the moment I heard it… I was lying in my single bed, in between two other single beds occupied by my good friends Marty Worrall and Daniel Belle; and I was trying to get to sleep by listening to some music.

Every emotion I felt at that time was heightened and exaggerated by my circumstances…  including simple pleasures like listening to music.

By my third listen in a row of this amazing song… I realised I was in tears.  It wasn’t for any real reason that I can pinpoint… perhaps homesickness, perhaps missing Jane, perhaps the lyrics hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting… either way it was a really pleasant cry.

It was then I made the decision that if I had the chance, I would perform this goddamn wonderful song on Idol.  Luckily my chance came up not long after that.

About half way through the season, we had a show called ‘Up Close & Personal’.  Which was a completely NON-JUDGED show.  How perfect an opportunity it was… suddenly song choice was completely non-reliant on ‘playing the game’ and simply what I would love to perform in front of millions of people. ‘We’ll Do It All Again’ was to be that song.

A little time later, Bleu sent me an email saying that someone had put him onto the fact that I had performed his song… he saw a little clip if I remember rightly.  He thanked me and said I did a good job;  That meant so much to me I can’t express.

And then moving on a few more years later, the meeting was held to discuss who should we get to mix the album.  A few names were tossed around… most chaps I hadn’t even heard of… but I wasn’t going to have this incredible album I’ve been slaving over be messed up by a bad mix; and honestly… the mixing of an album is about 50% of the work.  Ridiculously important.

Then I thought ‘who would I WANT to mix my album’… instead of who could I settle for… and I thought of the gods like Jack Joseph Puig or Bob Clearmountain or even the god of gods Jeff Lynne.  That’s when it hit me… my ol’ mate Bleu had recently released a new album under the name ‘L.E.O.’ It was an album of original music but an homage in the production style of Jeff Lynne.  Genius.  get Jeff Lynne?      puh…     how about Bleu?

After a little negotiation, the promise of some kangaroo spotting, and some help in learning to say “as long as there’s no bull dust in my coldie, she’ll be apples”…in a perfect Aussie accent, Bleu agreed to be my hero and mix my album here in Perth.  He’d never been to Aus before and was keen to rectify this oversight.

So he’s arrived in the Eastern States right now, and I have 9 days to finish off the rest of my harmonies on ‘Big’ before he flies to the west coast to get cracking on mixing.

Deadline is nigh.

I’m going to hang out with one of my heroes in less than two weeks… and he’s going to be a part of my album.  I’m the luckiest guy around.

Love Court.

I’m done.  Put a fork in me… I’m done.

Too many times, I walk around this city and I see a sight that just confuses me yet makes me giggle.  The level of Bogan in Perth is getting ridiculous.  This is the first VERY subjective blog I’ve done, and I swear if I offend anybody… don’t hate me… get yourself your very own special blog and write about how MUCH you hate me.

Dudes walking around with Mohawks and Mullets… doodle cuts.  Trying to be fresh and trendy… inadvertently looking like a dick… with white rimmed sunglasses.  The one that makes me giggle the most is when you see this creature in the night-time… they’ll still be wearing their sunnies on their head, or … around the back of their neck.  Oh boy.

Then you’ve got the patriot.  These ‘lads’ are more often than not accompanied by either the Australian flag in the form of board shorts, or a Southern Cross tattoo somewhere leg oriented.  How fresh.. how novel.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my country too… but you’ll never see a bumper sticker on my car that reads ‘Fuck off we’re full’.  What a pile of crap that is. You can’t be serious with this stupid bloody sticker.  I’m certainly not the first to have a ‘cry’ about this controversial ’statement’, or I won’t be the last… but I just needed to make it clear that bigotry is a sure sign of a really low intellect as far as I’m concerned…

Some pointless decal of the Southern Cross on my Holden Ute.  You know the type…

I guess I’ve digressed from my original point;  White Sunglasses and a Doodle Cut.

I understand trends and the need for fashion conformity amongst young men with low self esteem; but seriously lads… who was the guy that came up with this new dick look?  Some fellow named Brendan or Wayne who just finished cleaning the toilet with his hair, and then rocked up to the pub with his little sister’s sunglasses on his head by accident and then one of his little clone mates named Luke or Damo or something just had to copy the new look.

I certainly didn’t mean to rant as much as I have done… I just get angry… no… angry is the wrong word… down… yep… down with the thought of the dumbing down of society.  Give it ten years, and all the teachers will be teaching the kids to spell it ‘Definately’.

…and you know what? if you just read the last sentence and wondered what was wrong with the spelling of ‘definately’… you could very well be part of the problem.

Love Court.

P.s. Happy go lucky blog next time, I promise.

I remember hearing stories of how when they came home they weren’t just spat at, they were verbally abused, they had pig’s blood thrown at them… they were derided.

My dad was in the Vietnam War in 1969.  It’s such a foreign word in my insular world.  WAR.  But sure enough… he’s got the broken down body to prove it.  He was in 5RAR, a battalion that I recognise by their ‘Tiger’ logo.  He walked through jungle all day carrying an M60 machine gun.  He was shot at, he was blown up. He did his time, day to day not knowing if he was ever going to see home again… he survived and came home.

As time marches on and we lose our precious ANZACS, so should we move on and start to recognise more and more the men who really didn’t get the recognition back when they needed it the most.

This Anzac Day, I’ll be thinking of those men.  I’m not shying away from the legacy of the WW1 veterans, or even our surviving WW2 veterans… but my day of honouring those who fought for my country will be spent thinking about those young men, going to a country for a reason they probably had little clue about… fighting simply because they were told to.  I may be out of line there, and if I am, I apologise.

I’ve seen the way my dad copes with life now; how it has affected him, and I think… there must surely be hundreds of men in this country that were never offered the support that they needed and deserved.  So many men whose kids have grown up into their late twenties and early thirties now, having troubles coping with stress and life, because they took on their father’s grief.

When you see a telecast of men walking down the street tomorrow… know that it isn’t a re-hash.  These amazing gentlemen deserve our support, respect and love.  My heart is filled with gratitude for the men that went away from our wonderful shores to fight so our shores stayed wonderful.

Tomorrow isn’t a day of mourning.  It’s a celebration… of men who lived and died for us…

…and I’ll bet you anything if you celebrate and honour these men tomorrow…

…you’ll see some diggers with pretty big smiles on their faces.

Love Court.