Week 41 – Clouds

by Frank Hamilton

Friday morning – 01:37am.

I’m sitting in the same chair I’ve been sitting in all day and I’m not going to move until I’ve finished this blog. Deep breath…

There’s so much going on that, as ever, I don’t know where to start. First things first I’m feeling a lot better which is good news. Thanks again for all your truly heart-warming messages (and I really mean that). There are no cats and no women in my life at the moment but you’re doing a grand job of filling the void.

Right, enough soppiness and let’s get back to the land of #onesongaweek… and WHAT a week it’s been.

Remember week 30’s blog? No, me neither – I had to google it. Either way I told you that I’d been working on a song that needed finishing and it’d been giving me a bit of a hard time. Truth be told the hard time continued for about 11 weeks (on and off) until Tuesday morning at around 2am when my luck changed…

Readers of #onesongaweek it gives me great pleasure (understatement of the century) to report that a healthy, baby chorus of a song that will almost certainly not be called ‘Issues’ was born to 3 proud parents… one of whom doesn’t know about it yet! More on that soon.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about the next 11 weeks. Here’s a little list of just some of the things to look forward to:

  • Writing a song with you lot (some great ideas sent into onesongaweek@mail.com already. Keep them coming)!
  • A song about football (sort of) that I wrote at 5am the other week and I’m trying to get a rap on!
  • A live show (on December 20th – put it in your diaries and sign up the mailing list for early-bird ticket news).
  • Collaboration with Ryan Keen (the song’s written but he’s currently on tour with Newton Faulkner!)
  • Something with Mark Grist (no ideas for this yet. Maybe he could get involved in the song we’re writing together? Would you like that?).
  • A new website (which you can ‘BETA test’ before it goes live by clicking the image below – let us know what you think).

It’s hard not to get really excited about everything and I’ve probably been guilty of spending a little too much of week 41 living in the future… With that in mind I had intended to piece together the football song or perhaps tackle ‘Standing On Your Street’ but then an idea fell out on Tuesday evening and I felt obliged to persevere.

 

The Blurb:

For some reason this weeks song feels like it should have been on the You, Your Cat & Me EP, which might be why I’ve grown to love it over the last 4 or 5 hours (I wasn’t sure this afternoon)!

I had been worrying about the lyrics a lot (standard procedure) right up until the recording of vocals but I feel like it’s all come together nicely. If nothing else there’s a strong element of truth to every line in this song… Some days I do feel a bit lost and some days I feel shorter than I used to. I’m constantly staying awake, waiting for the sun to call and most days I lock myself away, thinking of things to say and writing them down. They do say you should write about what you know, though I guess there’s some poetic licence in the choruses – my house really is warm but my diary is far from empty (not complaining)!

Production wise it’s been a tough one. I wish I was a proper producer (with a black leather chair and everything) but until I have a few thousand pounds to spend and lots of years to learn I’ll just have to keep plodding on. Needless to say I’ve given it my best shot and if I didn’t like the vibe then I wouldn’t have posted it… I just can’t help but wonder how incredible it would sound if it was produced by Cam Blackwood (massively talented Scottish producer who produced my first record)!

I’m going to keep this part of the blog nice and brief and get to bed I think… It’s now 2:30 and I’ve still got a list of tweaks to make on the song first thing tomorrow. Then I’ve got to deal with website, press release and merchandise stuff… and then get stuck into recording this song I can’t stop thinking about.

 

Favourite Lyric:

My favourite lyric is one of the following:

‘My house is warm and my diary’s empty’ or ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky when you’re nearby’.

It’ll be much more fun if you pick your own favourites though… Here they are (on my nice, new lyric-whiteboard).