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Recording Thommy Kletsch’s Mandolin and Fiddle parts on Serve with Tears…..Thommy said the teddy bear did most of the work. I reckon the chocolate biscuits helped. Taken during the recording of Second Skin, solo album by Kathy Freeman April 2012
Kathy Freeman performing her song Serve with Tears live at the 7 Stufen (now the DoDo) Berlin
still crying.
MY SONG “SERVE WITH TEARS”.……THE RECIPE:
“I’ll make you a star!” One of many promises made to me at some point in my life. By all kinds of people – parents, teachers, journalists, movers, shakers and heartbreakers…….. probably all meant at the time, with varying expiry dates.
But I was too preoccupied with living to reflect on those old forgotten promises and I guess my grinding disappointment was effectively subdued. Until one night when I was dozing in my bed, trying to ignore the coming dawn. Bizarrely, the soundtrack of “Scarborough Fair” started running through my semi conscious brain. “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme….. that must have triggered a subconscious leap into “recipes” – not hitherto top of my interesting themes list – and I woke with the spark for the chorus lyric:
Take a bunch of broken promises and throw them on the fire – Add a drop of sorrow as you watch the flames grow higher -Sweeten with oblivion, serve with tears – That’s the recipe for all my wasted years.
And if you listen to the studio recording of the song on my CD Second Skin, you’ll hear some fine country fiddle and mandolin from Mr Thommy Kletsch and sweet sweet harmonies from AndFriendsBerlin. Be prepared to weep into your beer.
Why I love country: check out Ruby, don’t take your love to town -you can deliver the darkest sentiments coated in a deceptive candy of sweet strings and harmonies – take a closer listen to hear what Kenny Rogers would have done to his woman if he hadnt been paralysed in that Asian war.
I’m in full hibernation mode, surfacing only to secure vital supplies and refill the bird feeder…..Let’s hope this brooding winter darkness helps the creative groundwork for a new recording….
In the Pipeline: Preproduction for six shiny new tracks from those three rockin’ musketeers otherwise known as Kathy X Preproduction? That’s yakking over cups of teas about what someone just bought on E-bay, or about next Saturday, interrupted now and then by frantic musical activity
To be followed by This-is-it Production…..where it all gets exciting and I might even post little pictures of the studio on Facebook
Playing OK UK in the legendary East of Eden bookshop, Berlin 2009.
Born in a green and pleasant land – but it didn’t work out
Looked at my music stand the other day. The one I paid over 50 Deutschmarks for when I first moved to Berlin, because – unlike previous music stands – it looked like it wouldnt fall over if someone breathed heavily. I digress. There was the music for Santa Baby next to Paranoid Am I stretching myself too far? I thought. Naah ……just keeping my options open. Apart from keeping up to speed with a lucky dip bag of covers, I’m happy to say that my trusty psychobilly trio Kathy X is planning a new recording this Spring – watch this space.I’ve promised quite a few folk to say something about my songs, so here goes:
STORY BEHIND MY SONG: OK UK …….Late 90s south London….. Some guy coughed in the street and was murdered because the killers thought he wasn’t showing the right kind of respect. Flowery tributes by the side of the road for a little girl killed in a bungled drugs bust. My neighbours on one side harassed day and night for being lesbians. My neighbour on the other side burgled – not from the street, but with apparent collusion of the occupants of the building behind her flat …..
The winds of chance – that had previously blown me out of the quiet rural haunts of my childhood and into all kinds of exciting places – dumped me right here. And then stopped blowing for the next 20 years. House prices and high rents scuppered my dreams of relocating to the coast. I was working for the man 6 days a week, treading water to stop from drowning.
I left for Berlin in 2000. And a few months later I could put down my feelings about leaving in OK UK, which was followed by all the other songs I could never have written in late 90’s south London
for a FREE download of the Kathy X studio version “OK UK” with lyrics join my mailing list (by the end of February)
Between Rock and a Hard Place 