"Shipmit!": Us Frail Gods, and starting a band again in my late 30s
Never too old to rock and roll, whatever your joints may tell you...
It started with Twin Peaks
Richey and I were watching Twin Peaks together. Not literally together. He lives 100 miles or so away near Birmingham, but as has been the case for our entire friendship, we communicate digitally and chat most days about this and that. So when he finally decided to watch my favourite show, Twin Peaks, we shared memes, screenshots and lines from the episodes as he made his way through the series.
Anyone who’s watched Twin Peaks will know, it’s a bit more than just a TV show. It’s a cultural phenomenon, it has it’s own unique aesthetic style. The music, the acting, the plot, the quirks (Log Lady? Owls as agents of darkness?), the coffee… all these things build an evocative world it’s hard not to want to visit.
Once he was through the series, Richey asked me if I’d consider writing some “Twin-Peaksy” lyrics.
A talented friend
Richey had at that time, in 2021, written, recorded and released around 10 albums. You can check out his impressive back catalogue here. I was flattered to be asked to write words for his art, and it was a surprisingly easy thing to do - knowing I wouldn’t have to sing anything, or play anything, it was poetry. I’ve always written poetry, published once or twice but primarily for myself. So it was no big thing to spill out some lyrics when a good friend asked.
I should’ve known his plan was far more devious than that; very shortly after recording the lyrics, and collaborating with me in arranging the music, Richey asked if we could push the idea out to a whole album. An album with a vaguely Lynchian, Peaksy vibe which we could both be proud of. I didn’t take long to decide - it sounded like great fun, and proved to be in the few short months it took to build an album’s worth of material.
We spent a while debating a name, and for reasons I won’t share (though they are linked to Twin Peaks), we ended up with “Us Frail Gods” as a monicker. 6 months later, we released our first album: “Leave It In A Dark Place”. I sang half the tracks, and played guitar on all of them.
Stepping back into my musical history
So what changed? I went from silent lyrical partner to musician and singer overnight? Well, not exactly. I had been in bands as a teen, always the frontman, singing and playing guitar. My guitar playing skills were… rudimentary, to say the least, but it was enough for the sort of proto-punk music we wanted to make. The one thing which killed music for me was the requirement to play live.
I hated playing live. I had enormous stage fright, a terror of being on stage and mucking things up. I used to drink myself into a state before going onstage, just so I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I distinctly remember one gig, drinking peach schnapps to the point of oblivion. Later, on stage, I dropped my plectrum. I unsteadily leant down and picked it back up, and resumed playing. God knows how it sounded, but it went down as one of our greatest ever gigs.
Anyway - the idea of even singing and playing on a studio album was not on the cards for me, and it started with me laying down my musical ideas for how lyrics could accompany Richey’s music. I was recrding on a Microsoft Teams branded headset microphone, and he asked me to consider singing one of the songs for real. It was a wrench, and it nearly killed the thing for me, but I did it. It took many, many takes, but I did it. And I realised, with a lot of effort, I could be a part of the music as well as the lyrics.
Accumulating gear
However, a MS Teams headset wouldn’t cut it. As it turned out, I had already bought an audio interface and condenser mic years earlier, following an abortive idea of recording some acoustic music. I dug this out of a cupboard and was soon set up for some reasonably semi-pro sounding vocals.
My guitars had spent 10 years in an attic, and most recently migrated to my ex wife’s garage, awaiting my collection in a damp and freezing outbuilding. I remember the day I brought them back - I remember playing them again and realising, I can actually play these things. I don’t know what it was about not playing electric guitar for 15 years, but it made me better. I picked up the instrument, tuned it, and played. Played on rusty, knackered strings.
You can hear a guitar solo I spontaneously played on those same strings that very night, on the song Seed (skip to 2:54), an expression of pure joy and freedom in having music back in my life. The track became our first single.
The freedom of making something
Freedom. That’s the feeling of that solo, and the feeling of having my guitars back in my hands. I had been in small flats since I left my ex wife years before, never expecting to be able to have a place of my own, never expecting to do more than just “survive” rather than truly live. But this was new. I was in a new house, which we’d managed to by thanks to the covid-granted Stamp Duty Holiday. It was a place big enough to dedicate one whole room to my office (which quickly became my studio).
It is liberating to be able to take something you care about, seriously. To take your hobby as an important part of your life. And our music expressed things which were non-verbal: sadness, memory, elation. The lyrics remained a key part of the process, and working together with Richey (with the inevitable arguments which come with working closely with anyone), producing something greater than the sum of its parts. I was in heaven.
When we finally released our debut album, in a flurry of self-promotion, it got nowhere and did nothing. Sure, it’s on Spotify, but that’s because we paid for it to be there. It sold copies to some of our friends and family, but that just about covered our costs, and not the hundreds of hours we spent making the thing, a The Postal Service style correspondent band.
The point wasn’t that the album “did something”. It was the making of it, and the fact that at the end, we had made something.
Assembling a home studio
As time has gone on, purchases have supplemented my original setup (work laptop, cheap condenser mic, cheap audio interface, decades-old guitars). I’ve bought a dedicated computer, many effects pedals, I used the leaving present amazon giftcard from my last job to buy a full-size keyboard midi controller. I used a small bonus from last year to get a bargain new Epiphone Prophecy Les Paul, which I’ve used on every recording since. I have been bought a bass as a birthday present, an amp as a Christmas present. I upgraded my condenser mic. It’s all coming together, and of course, there’s still much more I’d love to add to my recording arsenal.
More than this, it’s the knowledge that I can turn to music whenever I want, now. Whether it’s to get down a quick cover of a song I enjoy, or simply to mess around, or even to work on further Us Frail Gods material. When my kids are in bed, and we’re obviously in the house and unable to go out carousing, I can put on my headphones and get some composing done. When my wife went to visit her parents in France for a week last summer, I recorded demos for my first solo album. I’ve done nothing with them since, but it was a great project and something I expect to refine and grow in the months to come.
I have Richey to thank for all this. Richey who cajoled and bullied me back into this wonderful artistic space. Richey who patiently put up with my lack of musical theory and production knowledge. Richey who showed me that mere mortals such as us could make something brilliant. Thank you, brother. And thanks too to my family, who lost me for weeks at a time as I went up to record the 30th vocal take of The Right To Be Forgotten.
What next?
Since that first album, we have released a second, as well as a charity single for Ukraine which you can watch below:
We have too many ideas for Albums 3 and 4 already, and have discarded a swathe of demos already. And we’re in no rush. We have an idea for a side project making more instrumental, post-rock music. I think Richey and I both understand, we will be able to turn to Us Frail Gods for as long as we’re both capable of making sounds. And for that, I am extremely grateful.
Finally, why “shipmit”? When we agree a song is done, we both declare this, a mistyping of “ship it” which has stuck. May the shipping mitt never truly set sail; may Us Frail Gods elude the shoreline for decades to come. Let’s see.
You can listen to all of Us Frail Gods’ music on Spotify, and see our music videos on Youtube.
If you’d like to support our music, please visit our Bandcamp.