The Story of Ghosts and other Stories

It was one of those many nights in 2020, waking during the witching hour, unable to let the mind rest. That's when I would fumble in the dark to find my earbuds and listen to some music. Every now and then I might not have something currently taking up all my listening hours and I might listen to scraps of voice memos for song ideas or old demos, not the best way to try get back asleep and it has resulted in having to get up and start writing! But on this night it was a demo that Keith had made of Ghosts of ‘83. A song we had been playing for years in many different ways but never really settling on it. It was included on the original list of songs for the album in 2019 but was not expected to be the driving force behind the record. But we were now in different times, where sitting in a room playing and writing songs together was now no longer allowed to happen. When I listened to that demo something stabbed me in the gut as I lay there. Hearing a song, which i had heard and played so many times, suddenly feel like a brand new song. Recorded on this cool old style guitar Keith had inherited and played into a crappy laptop microphone you couldn’t get much more low-fi but that's what made it so striking. It was like being back in music college or one of our bedrooms playing new songs to each other all those years ago. I couldn't be in the same room with Keith because of what was going on, but this demo, this song, brought me back to that place.

As soon as the world reopened I knew all the songs we had ,which we were so proud of and hope to bring to the world one day, were not the right songs for our album. We suddenly had a chance to be in a room together again and that buzz and excitement of new music was what we needed. So instead of going through all the songs we had planned to record we played what we had been working on while separated and then wrote some new songs together. The banjo, which Keith had messed around with until lock down (where he went full Jedi with it!) became a much bigger sound to the album and we worked to bring the most important element of our band to the forefront of the album, our harmonies. 

On top of everything in the world going on a lot happened during this time with family loss and these new songs are probably some of the most personal we have written. We are so proud of how its turned out and we are so excited to get it out there into the world…its been a long time coming but its finally here now to share with you all. Ghosts of ‘83 gave birth to this collection of songs so it was only right that it became the heart of the albums title. So this is now ’Ghosts and Other Stories' was born.

Bren