After Hall Aid the previous year, I started to devote more and more of my time to making music. Both Lucky and Carenza had decided to carry on, and I'd also joined a covers band with Shawie, the drummer who'd played a few practice sessions with Carenza in the run-up to the Hall Aid. I was still on my year out so, as mentioned earlier, I didn't have much to do other than play guitar. It was PHENOM.
Initially Carenza were my main focus, but we were seriously hampered by the fact that we still didn't have a bassist or drummer and we'd also lost the use of the Drama Workshop at Morley High now that Hall Aid was over. We practiced a few times at Cherrytree Studios (sometimes I'd be in there five times a week with different bands), but nothing much came out of the sessions. With Lucky starting to regularly practice twice a week, and with University poking it's mortarboard over the horizon, by May/June '98 I knew that I wouldn't have time to devote to more than one band, so I made the decision to leave. I felt crappy, particularly as Jamie had been one of my best friends growing up. We'd also finally got a bass player, Dec, a few weeks before, but I wanted to put all my energies into writing and performing original material, and that didn't look like it would happen with Carenza. The singer Chris left shortly after I did, but Jamie and Dec carried on playing together and eventually found a drummer and another guitarist/songwriter, and gigged for a few years in Leeds, first as Cloudburst, then as Freewheeler. They were pretty decent, and had a proper ace song called "Time Of Our Lives" on their second demo.
The covers band only lasted a few months. We never played a show and didn't even have a name by the time we split. Shawie mostly played drums, but also sang and played a bit of guitar. A guy called Soggy played rhythm guitar, and we had a lead player called Glynny, who'd unfortunately overdone it on the recs a few years earlier but was still an amazing musician. I played bass again, but at least the songs were more interesting than the root-note-tastic Oasis covers I'd performed with Lucky. Our set included "Drain You" by Nirvana, "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses and "2000 Light Years Away" by Green Day amongst other things. It was all good fun and I've always thought it was a shame we never gigged.
Things had changed dramatically with Lucky since Hall Aid. Firstly, we were no longer called Lucky (thank The Lord). After a serious amount of discussion we decided on 'Watershed'. I can't remember who came up with the name, but I think it was either Leigh or Winny. It wasn't spectacular, but at least it wasn't embarrassingly bad.
We set to work transforming some of Leigh's acoustic songs into full-band efforts immediately after Hall Aid. This was fun but also bally frustrating. Just as we'd spent our first month or so together playing through Radiohead's "Street Spirit" in preparation for Hall Aid and never quite getting it right, we spent weeks and weeks trying to get to grips with a (simple) tune of Leigh's called "Running" when we started working on our own material. Maybe the problem was that we'd never arranged a song before and were relatively inexperienced - it was bloody annoying whatever the reason. Eventually I suggested that we put in a key change to the relative minor at the end of the tune (a rather cheesy device also put to unmemorable effect by such musical geniuses as Westlife), with a guitar solo over the top. Jonny worked out the chords and we finally had A Complete Song. Unfortch, this ended up bringing about our first line-up change...
Outside band practice we'd been hanging out a bit, playing pool, writing songs and going to the pub. A bit of friction had developed during this time and things came to a head when Leigh and Jonny had an argument at Jonny's house about songwriting credits. Jonny claimed he should share a credit with Leigh for "Running" because he'd written the chords at the end, Leigh disagreed and said all he'd done was transpose the song's chords into the relative minor. Either way we weren't exactly selling out the world's freakin' stadia, so it was a bit of a pointless debate (we'd not even played a gig at this point and only actually had two songs). Ricky and I sat around like a pair of lemons while the two of them argued outside. There'd been disagreements before so I was expecting things to calm down at our next practice. Leigh had other ideas though - he'd had enough and didn't want to be in a band with Jonny any more. Balls.
We arrived at Cherrytree a few days later and Leigh told Jonny how he felt. I was pretty sure this meant the end for the band and tried to patch things up, without any success. Under the circumstances Jonny was fairly magnanimous and left the studio without much of a fuss. He did have a chat with Winny outside as he was leaving though, and I felt certain that even if Ricky and Leigh wanted to continue, we'd be looking for a new drummer. When he came back in, Winny said that Jonny had asked him to leave... but he wanted to carry on with us. BOOM! Not only that, but the rest of the guys said that I should switch from bass to guitar. TOTES AMAZEBALLS!!! I did feel bad for Jonny, especially as he was the one who asked me to join, but I was also stoked that the band was still together, and that I would have more of a role in the songwriting now that I was playing guitar. The experience brought the four of us remaining Watersheds together and we stepped up our work over the next few months.
Well, I say we stepped up the work... Watershed practice sessions fell into a bit a routine. We'd arrive at Cherrytree at around 6, spend the first 20 minutes setting our gear up, then play some shonky Oasis or Radiohead covers. Eventually we'd go through one of our own songs before taking a 45 minute tea break. During this time everyone would rinse me for taking three sugars in my coffee (hilariously I only take one nowadays), and we'd play through some more Oasis and Radiohead songs, this time on acoustic guitars. We'd then work quite hard in the last hour to make up for our slackness during the rest of the night. For some reason we videoed one of these practice sessions in September '98. It's clear from the tape that, although we all look to be having fun, Leigh was pissed off with us for messing about so much; playing 'comedy' versions of "Parklife" when we could have been working on his songs. He had a point.
Watershed practice session, Cherrytree Studios, Morley, 2nd September 1998
Tea breakz
Practicing "Yes I Can". Clockwise from top left: Me, Ricky, Leigh and Winny, Leigh, Ricky letting it all feedback maaaaaan.
After several months we had three songs together and booked a recording session at Cherrytree with the owner; a guy called Dave who chain-smoked rollies made with liquorice papers. Recording our own tunes was stupidly exciting. It was much harder to get decent results from home recording at the time (even if we'd have known what we were doing), and 'going into the studio' felt like a BIG DEAL. Even if 'the studio' was the same place we practiced every week.
We ended up 'laying down' eight tunes - the three poppy rock songs that we'd been working on, another two that we got a basic arrangement for in the studio, and three acoustic tunes (including "Sleeptalker", which we'd played at Hall Aid earlier in the year). The first day was spent getting drum tracks. The band played through each song, with Winny being wedged into a soundproofed room on his own.
Things went quite smoothly for the most part. One of the rockier songs, "Find A Way", had a pretty elaborate drum fill at the end which Win messed up a few times. As time was short, he opted to 'punch in' to fix the mistake rather than record the track again. Because a drum kit consists of so many different parts (cymbals, toms, snare &c.), Dave was skeptical that this would work, as Win would have to match his original take exactly, otherwise the join between the old and new recordings would be noticeable. But he managed it on the first try (as we were recording to tape he only had one attempt). There were also a few problems with the drums for "Weakening", one of the acoustic tunes. The drum part was the same all the way through the song, and Win found it tiring to play the same thing over and over again for five minutes while trying to stay in time. But he managed it in the end.
The rest of us then began overdubbing our instruments/vocals on top of the drums, to build up the tracks. I put some out of time wah-wah on a song called "Come Clean", which ruined the track. Doh. My solos on "Running" and "Yes I Can" were more successful.
As we didn't have a bass player anymore, I played bass as well as lead guitar. I already had a part for "Running" but I had to make the rest up on the spot. Leigh wanted me to play a bass line that sounded like a heartbeat on "Weakening", but I couldn't really get my head round the idea, so I ended up playing bog standard root notes. I was quite chuffed with my line for "Yes I Can" though. Dave thought it was so good that he suggested I should play bass in the band instead of guitar. This did not thrill me.
It's fair to say that we were overly ambitious in trying to record seven songs in two days. We ended up only finishing "Running" and "Yes I Can" in the weekend. We went back to Cherrytree the following week to mix the two tracks and re-record one of Leigh's vocal takes for "Yes I Can" that Dave had accidentally wiped (!!!). Although we'd recorded with Dave, we mixed the songs with his son Stephen, who also fronted a kind of kooky Tori Amos-meets-Mansun band called Plasticine. Ste was much closer to us in age and had more up-to-date production ideas. He didn't have a lot to work with with these early songs but he did add a cool reverb effect to the bridge sections of "Running". Which was nice.
Watershed - Running
We considered "Running" to be our best song for a long time. Note my hackneyed bass parts and 'that' key change, which ultimately lead to Jonny's departure.
Initially we were MADE UP to receive our own copies of the songs on cassette. I remember driving round Morley town centre in Leigh's car, listening to the tracks over and over again with the window down. We were UN-STOP-PA-BLE!!! Or something. We considered "Running" to be our best song for a long time. Note my hackneyed bass parts and 'that' key change, which ultimately lead to Jonny's departure.
We went back into the studio a few weeks later to add overdubs to the remaining songs. I got in touch with Mike (the son of the guitarist in my Dad's band, who'd played bass with Carenza on the first night of Hall Aid), and asked him to come to Cherrytree with us. Mike was studying music technology at a college in Huddersfield at the time, and knew infinitely more about recording than the rest of us. Although we had enjoyed our first session, we felt that the difference between, what we perceived as Dave's old fashioned ideas, and the more modern ideas of Ste's, was marked and we hoped that having Mike with us would result in some more contemporary sounding results...
I put down some acoustic guitar on "Weakening", but I mainly worked on "Find A Way". I was never happy with the arrangement - Ricky and I both played the same chords all the way through, and I thought it sounded a bit dull. To try and add some interest I got up early on the day of our second visit to the studio so I write a new guitar part - playing along to a rough mix of the original recording that I'd got from Dave. I came up with an elaborate, if slightly ham-fisted, John Squire-esque line that weaved through almost the whole song without stopping. Dave thought that the track needed "more space", but I was really happy with it, and "Find A Way" certainly sounds more 'professional' than "Running" and "Yes I Can". Unfortunately that was the only time Dave really paid attention to us. Mike helped out with guitar sounds, but Dave ignored his suggestions as well as those of the band. Hmmph.
Watershed - Find A Way
"Find A Way", featuring my Roses-bothering lead line. We had a problem with the distortion sound on Ricky's guitar, so we had to put it quite low in the mix. If you can spot the join at the end where Winny 'punched in' with his drums you win a cookie. Poserbs.
Watershed - Weakening
We never played "Weakening" live as a band, but it's probably one of the better songs we worked on in our first year together. When we first started we were really influenced by Oasis and Radiohead, and this is one of the tracks where the Radiohead influence is apparent, particularly in the lyrics.
After a few weeks we picked holes in the recordings and vowed that we'd take a bit more time, and exercise a bit more control, when we next went into the studio. We thought the drums sounded kind of artificial and that the mixes as a whole were really flat. We abandoned plans to finish the handful of songs from the initial session that still needed work and decided to start again next time we booked the studio.
In the meantime we continued our search for a bass player. We'd put up an advert up in the studio but hadn't had a response (hardly surprising - you'd only be at Cherrytree in the first place if you were already in a band). I thought I might find someone when I went to uni, but my flatmate's Chris and Chem were the only people I met who played an instrument. And it wasn't the bass.
Our 'Bassist wanted' ad, as seen at Cherrytree Studios, circa Autumn 1998. I cannot BELIEVE we got no responses
Towards the end of 1998, the band went through some pretty big changes. As I mentioned earlier, we'd got to know Ste from Cherrytree when we were mixing our songs. His band Plasticine gigged regularly, and he said that he'd pass our demo tape on to John Trueman (a.k.a. Flatnose John), a promoter at the Duchess in Leeds. He liked the tape and offered us a gig in February the following year. We were made up, and thought that we were ALL THAT & A BIG OF APPLES for being offered a show at such a prestigious venue when we'd never played live before (we conveniently ignored Hall Aid). Of course this meant we seriously needed a bass player, so I suggested Mike. He came down before Christmas and played on a few songs. We all got on pretty well, so we asked him to join permanently.
We had a complete band for the first time in about six months... or we would have done had Ricky not decided to leave shortly after Mike joined. Rick had threatened to leave a few times but we'd always persuaded him to stay. I think part of him thought he wasn't a good enough player, part of him was scared to play live and part of him was frustrated that we didn't work on any of the songs he wrote. But this had begun to change - we had a tune of his called "Find A Place" in our provisional set for the Duchess gig, and he'd seemingly grown a bit more confident since he last said he might leave. Five or six years later Ricky finally joined another band, 5 O'Clock Charlie, and did a few gigs. The recordings he gave me were quite basic but pretty decent. I really liked Rick's songs and was pleased that he'd finally got something together, but he left after a couple of shows. The band carried on with another singer and a new name...
...Speaking of which. Leigh called one night and told me that Flatnose John had rung him to say that we needed to change our name. Apparently another band called Watershed had been booked to play the Duchess that night before our show. Awesome. We had a few hours to come up with a new name before the posters were printed. We frantically tried to think of something else and eventually Leigh suggested 'Novacain'. I wasn't that taken, but at least it was better than 'Lucky'. 'Novacain' became our fourth name in less than a year.
Things went well with Mike, and Leigh started to mature as a songwriter. His early tunes had been written for acoustic guitar and were quite difficult to transform into 'full band' songs, but newer tracks like "Slipstream" and "Airflow" worked much better. Leigh had taken over rhythm guitar from Ricky, and we'd started to think about arrangements a bit more. We booked another recording session for the middle of January, and were determined to get the results we wanted this time.
We reserved three days for our third studio session, and chose just five songs to record. As well as "Slipstream" and "Airflow", we recorded a slightly older track called "Thank You", and three acoustic songs; "Cyanide", "Too" and "She Keeps Me". The latter was my first co-write, and the first time we'd recorded a song that hadn't been entirely written by Leigh.
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| Leigh and me recording "She Keeps Me" |
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| An early appearance from Mikey C |
Novacain - Slipstream
"Slipstream" was the first song we worked on when Mike joined the band, and it's one of the few tracks to feature his bass playing. It sounds a touch cheesy now, but the production is much more sophisticated than the earlier tracks we recorded at Cherrytree.
Novacain - Cyanide
Another song that we never played live as a band. I always liked "Cyanide", although it does sound a tiny bit like {shudder} The Beautiful South.
A few weeks before the gig, Flatnose John asked us to meet him so we could pick up our 'tickets'. John operated a system where bands were given flyers to hand out. These flyers gave punters £1 off the (extortionate for the time) £5 entry fee, and allowed Flatnose to gauge how many 'fans' each band had attracted. We met John at North Bar in town. We asked for him behind the bar, as we'd never met him before. The barman replied with a rant about Flatnose being smelly. We later found out that this sort of response was normal whenever John's name was mentioned. When he arrived it quickly became clear that he expected us to listen to his delusional ramblings about how he ran the Leeds music scene, and buy him a few drinks, in return for our poorly photocopied flyers.Another song that we never played live as a band. I always liked "Cyanide", although it does sound a tiny bit like {shudder} The Beautiful South.
Eventually the day of the show arrived. Winny picked me up and we headed to the Duchess of York with our gear. We had a bit of trouble parking, and even more trouble getting in (the Duchess was shut for a few hours during soundchecks), but, at last, we'd MADE IT. Almost a year's worth of practice sessions, line-up and name changes, had been leading up to this point. We had a short, and rather nervy, soundcheck, then I got a pint of reasonably-priced Carlsberg and surveyed the surroundings. I felt privileged to be in such a famous place, especially as it was closed to the public for a few hours, but my view of the venue as a GLAMOROUS HOME OF THE STARS was rather at odds with the reality - a grotty L-shaped box, with black walls and frayed chairs, that smelt of stale cigarette smoke and sweat. It was still an amazing place to be though.
Note the appearance of the 'other' Watershed the night before our gig. Funnily enough the headline band on that night was Poontang, featuring Matt Sladen who would later produce a couple of EPs for my next band, The Voltaires. Some group called Muse also played a couple of weeks before us. Whatever happened to them eh?
I sat with my flatmates while the opening band, Velvatone, played. They were slightly Brit-poppy with occasional 'music school' tendencies i.e. they over complicated things. And they were also pretty good. They had an insanely catchy song called "In The Wrong Place, At The Right Time", which my flatmates and I sometimes found ourselves singing years later, having only heard it once at this gig. Bizarrely, when I was doing research for this blog I found a live video of the song on YouTube, from this very show. It's rather odd to think that somewhere behind the camera, my drunken teenage self is watching.
Velvatone - In The Wrong Place, At The Right Time (Live)
Before we knew it, it was time for Novacain to take the stage. As this was, to all intents and purposes, our first gig, we wanted to make a real impression... So we decided to open with an instrumental jam that we'd 'written' a few days before. OMG. This was in part inspired by a Noel Gallagher quote I'd read, where he said that Oasis had played the instrumental "Swamp Song" as their first track at Glastonbury in '95, so that the sound engineer could "set the levels". Obvs third on at the Duchess on a Friday night in February was up there with playing Glasto, so it stood to reason that we should do the same. Give the audience what they want. Assuming that the audience wanted to hear a poorly rehearsed, three chord bash, with a pissed 20 year old guitarist widdling over the top, then that's exactly what we did.
We'd front loaded the set with our older songs so we could finish with, what we thought was, our strongest material. Unfortch, by the middle of the set it was clear that Leigh was having trouble hearing himself in the monitors. Well, it would have been clear if I wasn't hammered at this point. Which I was. We ended with "Slipstream", "Thank You" and finally "Airflow". The latter gave me further opportunity to widdle, an opportunity which I firmly embraced.
The crowd were ok, but we didn't get the rapturous ovation I was expecting. Rather than being swamped in a Beatles-esque explosion of worship, we were told to shift our gear from the stage so the next band could go on. My flatmates offered their congratulations, but they didn't seem blown away. Even my Dad seemed only mildly impressed. I looked towards the door, but Mr Big's record company Rolls Royce was nowhere to be seen. Apparently being in a band was harder than I thought. I later found out that Leigh had sung out of tune for a lot of the set, because of the issues with the monitors. But this was only one of the problems - the main one was that we weren't as good as we thought we were. Damn.
I managed to miss most of Phluid's set, as I milled around the Duchess, talking to various people who'd come to see us. My Dad tells me that he remembers them wearing black leather jackets though... so, er, yeah.
My friends from uni were keen to head back to the Union, and I didn't want to miss out, so I ended up dumping my guitar amp with my Dad, and rushing off when Plasticine had only played a couple of songs. Which was probably a bit snide given that they gave us the gig in the first place. It also meant that I didn't get to hang out with the rest of the band. It was probably a bit of a lame thing to do, and I remember Leigh and Win being a bit pissed off with me. But we'd got through our first gig together and, importantly, Flatnose had offered us a gig the following month as soon as we got off stage. He mentioned the issue with the vocals, but said he thought we were one of the best young bands he'd seen. I suspect he had one eye on his bank balance - the tally sheet at the door would have told him that we'd brought around 50 people with us...
We'd front loaded the set with our older songs so we could finish with, what we thought was, our strongest material. Unfortch, by the middle of the set it was clear that Leigh was having trouble hearing himself in the monitors. Well, it would have been clear if I wasn't hammered at this point. Which I was. We ended with "Slipstream", "Thank You" and finally "Airflow". The latter gave me further opportunity to widdle, an opportunity which I firmly embraced.
The crowd were ok, but we didn't get the rapturous ovation I was expecting. Rather than being swamped in a Beatles-esque explosion of worship, we were told to shift our gear from the stage so the next band could go on. My flatmates offered their congratulations, but they didn't seem blown away. Even my Dad seemed only mildly impressed. I looked towards the door, but Mr Big's record company Rolls Royce was nowhere to be seen. Apparently being in a band was harder than I thought. I later found out that Leigh had sung out of tune for a lot of the set, because of the issues with the monitors. But this was only one of the problems - the main one was that we weren't as good as we thought we were. Damn.
I managed to miss most of Phluid's set, as I milled around the Duchess, talking to various people who'd come to see us. My Dad tells me that he remembers them wearing black leather jackets though... so, er, yeah.
My friends from uni were keen to head back to the Union, and I didn't want to miss out, so I ended up dumping my guitar amp with my Dad, and rushing off when Plasticine had only played a couple of songs. Which was probably a bit snide given that they gave us the gig in the first place. It also meant that I didn't get to hang out with the rest of the band. It was probably a bit of a lame thing to do, and I remember Leigh and Win being a bit pissed off with me. But we'd got through our first gig together and, importantly, Flatnose had offered us a gig the following month as soon as we got off stage. He mentioned the issue with the vocals, but said he thought we were one of the best young bands he'd seen. I suspect he had one eye on his bank balance - the tally sheet at the door would have told him that we'd brought around 50 people with us...
Set list (Novacain)
- Untitled Jam
- Find A Way
- Running
- Yes I Can
- Slipstream
- Thank You
- Airflow
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