Blog
Background to Our Songs: King Henry’s Tears, KHT
Written by Jimmy
Yep, this is the title track. And we kinda like it.
Lyrics: Sophie and Ed have a friend. He challenged us, while we were down in Spain in the sunshine, to write a song about why the English love to be miserable. Jimmy took a cut, focusing on how much fun it is to love the rain and love grumpy relationships because you could rightfully complain. We felt that fit the notion of ‘King Henry’s Tears’ – someone crying over the misery they alone create for themselves and others.
Music: This song is all about Mike, playing a Moroccan Lamp, embellished with a San Miguel beer can and a shaker. He makes the song and the video. Ed supplies the riff and the backing vocal. Sophie excells at the ‘base’ (cello) and Martyn the harp. We’ve had two separate vocalists on this. Gus is on the video and Andy is on the album. Both enjoy the romp. Here’s the video that shows Ed desperately trying to shepherd Martyn through the song – lots of call outs. In the studio, we had slightly less than that because we held a big white board up to Martyn to keep him on track.
Mixing: The challenge in this song is that we had done the song outside straight to video. It was fun, and the recording was pretty good, but was a ‘typical’ live recording on a breezy day. We then had to try to ‘bring it to the studio’ without losing its mojo. Andy did most of the recording in the living room of the villa, which is a big noisy room. Wanted it ‘tight loose.’ The trickiest big was that Andy’s vocals were ‘too good’ (according to the band) and he had to take them again. He didn’t much appreciate that feedback.
Recommendations: If you like this, you like Mike’s percussion first and foremost. Go to Angel of the Dark from our Third Album to hear more of Mike’s drumming. If you like Andy’s singing on something fun and silly, listen to TWIRL off the same album. And we supposed if you really just like beer can percussion, we’ve found something for you…
That’s it.
Jimmy