Category: Music

The album that nearly never was

If you heard our practices you’d probably wonder how we ever managed to learn any songs because quite frankly the laughing often outweighs the singing.

Some of you will know that for many years I have been part of a singing group called the Kettle Girls. One third in fact, for we are a trio of ladies who sing three-part harmony a Capella. And yes, we have long felt that now being grown-up women the ‘Girls’ part of our name is perhaps stretching things a bit, but once you have had a name for a long time it becomes quite difficult to change.

We began many, many years ago, before we actually began. Let me explain. The Kettle Girls are me, my mum and my best friend but we began singing together in a very different way before this. Let’s scoot back an horrific amount of years to the early nineties when my mum ran a church youth singing group where she somehow herded a large group of children through songs to perform at various church events. As is often the case, we children grew up, turned into disinterested teenagers and the group eventually ebbed to a close. 

If I’m honest, I can’t really recall the transition time but from one to the other mum, bestie and I found ourselves continuing to sing together, sat at mum’s kitchen table – but this time we went folk. It’s not surprising really seeing as I come from a lineage of folkies on both sides of the family and so had been steeped in shanties, finger-in-ear tuning and nylon string strumming my entire life. And so, we sang – pretty much mostly in the key of D to begin with.

As the years have gone on I have to say I am very proud of what we have done. We managed to break out of just folk to embrace a multitude of genres, we’ve performed at an amazing array of different events (including once having to do battle with an ever-encroaching bagpipe band) and have made three albums. I’m glad to say we also now span a much wider singing key, although as we’ve got older it is generally now Bb.

CUE BIG PLUG HERE

I can’t be backward about being forward here, yes, this piece is very much to let you know our latest album is ready to buy – but it is an album that very nearly never was.

I promised you a piece of writing that was not entirely about cancer, but, seeing as that is what my daily life contains I can’t give you a blog without any mention at all.

As I mentioned above, we have moved on from just folk to a wide variety of genres but I think we have perhaps become best known for our comedy songs when performing. Even though we always tried to curate sets that included a little bit of everything, knowing how well the more amusing pieces went down we perhaps erred on the side of a few more of them; they were certainly the most requested. But this meant that we increasingly had a collection of beautiful songs we have nurtured into being and loved that weren’t necessarily getting the attention they deserved. So we decided to put them on an album. (To the mild horror of our Long-Suffering sound engineer.)

Life though has a funny way of throwing a few spanners in the works and in this case it went full on for it with an extra crowbar and screwdriver too. First up: The songs we had amassed seemed to fall into two categories: lullabies and sea-based songs and it soon became evident that these genres often and largely are about death and dying. Now, that made for interesting practices when you have not long found out that your cancer is now considered incurable. I believe the amount of cognitive dissonance the three of us must have executed for months must be some kind of record. But, the songs are beautiful – we were determined.

Now the really hard part – finding a time that the three of us and Long-Suffering sound engineer could all be available to record. We began looking at the beginning of the year (2023) and eventually found a date in October. That was it. Our one chance. As the date neared events conspired against us once more so that by the weekend of recording I had not only cancer to deal with but had just begun chemotherapy again – and had Covid (although the tests hadn’t confirmed that at the time so I thought it was just a cold and I was just struggling with breathlessness because of everything else.) To cut a long story short we did record but goodness we gave L-S sound engineer the worst possible scenario to work with – a maximum of two takes per song, some not even that.

He is some kind of sound wizard with the patience of ten-thousand saints because – WE HAVE AN ALBUM! We are particularly proud that this album contains some of our own self-penned songs too.

We would normally take our CDs out with us to the places we perform but, and I promise not too much more of this, we are unable to do any gigs as I just do not have the stamina because of my cancer and treatment but also I have only half a voice now and no lung capacity. I have found in the past that for some reason chemotherapy did make me lose strength in my voice but over time I managed to mostly get it back. This time is a little different as I had radiotherapy to my neck area and this can and seems to have damaged my vocal chords. In short when I sing now I can no longer guarantee if anything will come out or what it will sound like if it does.

It is a strange thing to happen to someone who has been singing in one format or another for their entire life. I am determined to view it as temporary still and that with time I will get my voice back again. We still get together to sing each week and I am very much in favour of giggling at my cracked or missing notes rather than getting upset by them.

This leads me onto my final thoughts about the Kettle Girls. We say it often and it could not be more true; we are more than a singing group. We are family, we are a support group, we are friends and a whole thing bigger than three voices. If you heard our practices you’d probably wonder how we ever managed to learn any songs because quite frankly the laughing often outweighs the singing. And we share a lot of food and drink too – dreadful for singing, but wonderful for bonhomie.

I believe that life is filled with love stories. Not just romantic love – all of the loves, and finding something like being part of the Kettle Girls is one of the love stories of my life.

This album may be our last if my voice does not manage to recover (so you better get yourselves a copy – hey, hey, unsubtle nudge). Or it may not. If I get my vocal chords back in order one day I have a feeling the next album will be of our more amusing songs (I’m sorry (not sorry) L-S sound engineer.)

Until then our new album Drifting is available to buy (£10 plus p&p where applicable) by contacting a Kettle Girl.

And to entice you, you can have up to three free listens to one of our self-penned songs, ‘Softly Come Sleep’, just click here.

Drifting is a collection of sea songs and lullabies either written, or chosen and arranged by the Kettle Girls to create a beautiful album of gentle listening. Whether you close your eyes and drift away on the ocean, or softly let go and drift off to sleep, let the soothing sound of this album take you away.

thekettlegirls@gmail.com

f @thekettlegirls

A Christmas Tale: From the Hearth

What do you get if you cross a small rural church, three kettles and a persistent fly?

A Christmas tale – of sorts.

Gather round and let me tell you a story From the Hearth.

Once upon a time, there were three Kettles: Heather Kettle, Ilona Kettle and Jenny Kettle. These ladies were the best of friends and sang together in a close harmony a cappella group. For many a year they would entertain audiences at Christmas time with carols and festive tunes and often would be asked, “Do you have a Christmas album?”

“Alas, we do not.” They would say.

But the time came (it was February) when the Kettles decreed: “This will be the year! We shall make a Christmas album.”

They searched the land far and wide (well, quite close to home, actually) and found a sound engineer with qualities true and patient (very patient) and recording began in the bleak and dreary month of February.

But, disaster befell: coughs, colds, snivels and illness took hold and the Kettles wheezed and sneezed too much to sing and so, almost as soon as it began, recording was halted. But trying times prevailed for between the Kettles and their gallant sound engineer, there was not one date upon the calendar they could get together – until October!

As the year passed by, the Kettles found their hearts and minds were changing. In a world full of filters and fake news, auto-tune and pretence, they wanted to capture something that felt real and true. And so it was that when the October date drew close, the plan had changed. (As mentioned before, the sound engineer was patient – very.)

Now it was that to a small and very rural church the Kettles did go and with one day only to complete the task ahead, they recorded their album – live. Many was the time they had to stop for a car, helicopter or cow to pass noisily by. Enjoyable chats were had with people popping in to sit and listen as they sang. A local farmer stopped by with his dog, a lovely man (but Jenny Kettle had to bite the inside of her cheeks to stop from laughing when she noticed Heather Kettle inadvertently  say, ‘do you come by here often,’ to said farmer; the language association of which tickled her far more than it really should have!).

As the day drew on and the light was fading, with the cold creeping in and the Kettles and their sound engineer starting to tire, one last challenge was set upon them. A fly. A large and very noisy fly began to dive bomb the microphones. Twenty minutes ensued of Kettles and engineer alike clambering about and chasing down said fly to rid themselves of the noise-some pest. This was a funny sight to behold – for a while, but soon lost its amusement for the group.

When at last the sun began to set beyond the fields and trees surrounding the small church, the day was done and the Kettles knew that what they had recorded may not be classed as ‘perfect’ by a world that tweaks and presents a false representation of itself, but it would be true and real and was made with love in a beautiful place with lovely people all around (and of course a very patient sound engineer).

And so good people, From the Hearth was made and if you would like a little bit of true Christmas thought and feeling, you can buy a copy of the album direct from The Kettle Girls or by e-mailing thekettlegirls@gmail.com and paying by Paypal.

You can see the trailer here

From the Hearth is £10 + £1 postage.

With huge thanks to Semi-Echo who recorded and mastered this album.

Happy Christmas!

Jazz in the morning

Just before Christmas, I think I was starting to send MOTH slowly insane with terrible jazz in the morning. This wasn’t in any way a purposeful thing, there was no dark plot to unsettle his mind and to be honest, my own sanity was beginning to become a little twitchy-eyed.

The reason for this be-bop ambush was because I had decided that I could no longer take the onslaught of utterly depressing news that seems to dominate radio, television and social media.

I find there is a very thin line between being aware and knowledgeable about what is happening around the world (which I do believe is important) and being so overwhelmed with it, that it has a negative impact on your mental, and then following that, your physical health.

It’s been a while now since I realised I could no longer stand PMQ’s, Newsnight or Question Time, What should be an opportunity to gain insight into what the people heading up our country really think, is never anything more than a verbal bar brawl. It seems that no-one ‘in charge’ is working together, it’s all finger-pointing, blaming, shouting and lies. These programmes leave me tense, sad and angry and this is not a good way to then toddle off to bed and try and get some good sleep.

I am not a fan of ‘gritty’ TV either. Why on earth would you want to put into your life some of the most horrible things you could imagine, if you don’t need to? There’s enough real and bad stuff out there, I see no need to actively choose to invite more in. Even the blinking Archers (not that I really ever listened, honestly) went all gritty and led me to switch off: I don’t need that aggro whilst cooking tea – seriously, what was wrong with the biggest worry being the sheep getting wet in an unusual amount of rain?

When I was going through cancer treatment last year, there were days I couldn’t do a lot and this left far too much time for the mind to start churning. I decided that I needed to only give attention to positive things. For my physical, emotional and mental health, I made it my job to focus only on thoughts and feelings that would be beneficial to me. Some days, this was such hard work, it was honestly all I was capable of doing. One thing I did though, was to make a list of all the positive words I could think of. I looked on-line, in thesauruses (thesauri? thesauree?), I looked at synonyms and positive phrases and picked out everything that was good. On the bad days, I would read this list over and over, which may sound a little bonkers – but it worked.

And here’s the thing, it would seem I am not alone.

MOTH and I have wonderful evenings with a pair of good friends: there is much food, much talk, much laughter and yes, often, much booze. Two of us (some glasses of wine in, perhaps), quite regularly come back to the idea that we need a Nicer News station, feed or platform of some kind. Somewhere where you get to hear of good things that people do, where encouragement is rife (without ulterior motive) and happy thoughts are shared without the cynicism that so often follows in multi-user spaces.

The more I talk about this, the more people I find that are doing and feeling the same. Only yesterday, the lady on the checkout at our supermarket said that she no longer listens to the news in the morning as it is too depressing. I know many others who have stopped reading newspapers or putting the news on for the same reasons and as far as social media often is concerned – perhaps the less said…

It is a strange thing that us humans are very good at allowing negativity to become the norm and are terrible at making positivity our default. It takes work, I don’t know why, but it does. The way we think very much affects our health in all aspects. So, this is why I have stopped listening to the radio in the morning and started putting on music. I like jazz (I know many don’t) but I didn’t own much and so I was working my way through terrible selections that were available on-line. Perhaps it was the cheesy Christmas jazz compilations that were the final straw, but for Christmas, MOTH gave me some very good jazz CD’s.

Now, each morning after my shower and whilst getting dressed, I will bop around to an upbeat tempo (quite possibly looking completely insane) but you know what, my days are much better for starting with a smile, not a sigh, and I very much recommend this to all.

Focus on the positive…