Some songs decide to grow outwards in all directions. The new track ‘Marie Kondo’ sprouted lots of little stories. The kind that connect you in a hidden way to the people you can’t be with: a cohort which recently includes pretty much everyone we know.
But before this was the case, I was advised by Marie Kondo (author of ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying’) to have a chat with a dress before throwing it away. It was meant to help me let it go! Although, I didn’t manage to declutter my wardrobe that day, I did write a song – and named it ‘A Single Thread’ (after a line in the first verse). When another bestselling author, (my favourite in fact) Tracy Chevalier, published her latest novel: ‘A Single Thread’, I thought it a welcome piece of serendipity. But when I read the novel (and it’s brilliant by the way) my mind attached the title stubbornly to the book only. So the song acquired the working title ‘Marie Kondo’. A zillion labelled audio files, emails and messages later, the title stuck!
The ‘thread’ is still there though, as in the dress itself and the story it tells. But a solo dress became an ensemble of inanimate objects, when I asked my collaborators to bring an item of their own. Something that they couldn’t throw away. This is when Debbie, who sings beautiful harmonies on several of the album tracks, segued effortlessly into knife-sharpening:
“I have in my kitchen draw an old bone handled knife and its paired sharpening tool.
I have a strong sound triggered memory when the knife hits the sharpening steel of 70s Sunday lunches , my grandpa standing at the head of the table and performing a sharpening ritual prior to carving the joint of beef.
As a child I had no idea what he was doing but knew that this sound meant yummy food.
The knife is well past it’s best but every time I have considered throwing the set away I have given it a quick sharpen and realised that nothing sounds the same.”
— Debbie Harris
And what an awesome sound it is! We had fun recording a stereo ‘stroke’ across two mics. And, we prayed she wouldn’t get stopped by the police on the way home with a carving knife on the passenger seat! It’s a precious ‘audio’ memory of hers – and now ours. So I’m thrilled to include it.
Neil also threw a little bit of history into the mix, with a table that represents the emergence of his drumming self:
“When my dad sold our family home where I grew up as a kid, he had no space for this collection of coffee tables in his new place. I’m unfortunately a bit of a natural hoarder and given I had spent so many happy hours using these tables as bongos, to my parents constant annoyance, I couldn’t bear to see them on ebay or in a skip. I think they are actually quite a fancy make for their time but I just remembered them for the great sound they make, so had to keep them. They’ve been hanging around our house for years now, never quite having a place to fit in, but definitely found a place to fit recording this track!”
— Neil Hooton
You can see that the first rehearsal was al fresco due to the lockdown. The table is neatly complimented by a waste paper bin and brewing bucket to form the ‘Marie Kondo’ cocktail kit! The plumber fixing a pipe on Neil’s roof that day, considered our efforts a very unusual pastime.
Adam chose a delightfully versatile item, also from the 70’s!
“Made in France, bought from a petrol station and given to me by my mum. These wine glasses are the epitome of the 70s drinking style, when my parents were ‘cool’. When we smashed all our wine glasses, from clearly having too many parties, my mum gave them to me, saying she had no use for them any more. Frowning, I accepted and soon realised that ‘they don’t make them like this any more’….I still have them all apart from one which we smashed during the recording of Marie Kondo. I don’t like them. They still serve the function they were designed for. I can’t throw them away.”
— Adam Nabarro-Steel
I’m not sure Adam would agree but I love the glasses even more since they featured in the song! Not only did they sound great when skilfully tickled with a chopstick, they also led us to debate the respective merits of using water or real wine to create the perfect wine pour track. Finding out (it was tough job) led us conveniently on to a rather boozy Monday lunchtime, but I digress:
The dress that inspired the song doesn’t really make a sound, but when we needed to beef up the bass drum (no offence to the brewing bucket!) I picked up my beat-up old busking guitar, its lack of strings making it no less a candidate for the job, and thumped it! The poor guitar had already sustained several injuries through the teenage busking years. But nostalgia wins. It will NOT be thrown away.
The point of this is not that we’re hopeless hoarders, but that the track is laced with unusual objects which hold the stories of the people they belong to. Though we saw each other very little throughout the year of recording (2020) these snatched moments of relative closeness are sadly now the subject of nostalgia themselves. And the folks behind the memories, are exactly what make them so precious!
Oh by the way, wine poured into a glass sounds more like wine than water does. We checked! Repeatedly.
Marie Kondo is the 4th release from my forthcoming album: Softly Loudly. You can hear it on all platforms, watch ‘Making Marie Kondo’ below and buy the album here:
Emma Nabarro-Steel 