How Long

Since 1974, I'd say

Hello Dear Reader

Since I last troubled your inbox a month ago, a lot has happened and I don’t just mean with regards to global affairs. In fact, I very definitely don’t mean global affairs. I don’t look at those anymore because as far as I know they’re still sucking giant balls and until someone comes along to tell me otherwise, I shall remain oblivious. No good comes from reading the news these days. So I’ve stopped. 10/10, would highly recommend. I’m slightly sad I’m not currently au fait with the latest goings-ons in Brooklyn Beckham’s busy bank-of-Mum-and-Dad-rolled life or the latest update on The Big Orange ManBaby, but I’ll live.

My second jaunt in a month to Scotland was a dream - thank you if you came to the show in Irvine - and the two shows at The Bowes Museum in County Durham were wonderful too. I’m a lucky, lucky lady.

If you came to these Shows at The Bowes (I’m a poet now, too) you will have heard me tell a story about my Paul Carrack Christmas. It behoves me to repeat this story in this context.

I think perhaps over a decade ago now, I don’t know for sure, as this all happened when I was in the thick of raising a toddler and my recall of the years 2010 - 2015 is a gin-stained, sleep deprived haze of just about keeping the wheels on the bus going round and round with the soundtrack of Cars and Frozen on a perpetual loop. (My Spotify algorithm has only just recovered from the battering it received and it has been a whole two years since it last threw up Baby Shark when I least expected it.) Anyway, a few years ago, I got a call from some telly producers asking me if I’d like to do a song for their Christmas special, and if so, how would I feel about it being a duet with Paul Carrack.

Christmas AND Paul Carrack? How could I refuse. Imagine then my excitement, on a blisteringly hot July day when I arrived at the studios to find not only Paul Carrack - of whom I have been a huge fan since childhood - but also Martine McCutcheon, who was hosting.

It was wonderful. Martine was as adorable in real life as you’d hope, Paul and I covered Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, I wore my favourite festive red satin dress with little Christmas horses on it, and I left those studios feeling I had made two new besties I could call on any time I needed a friend. Okay, so neither of them had given me their telephone numbers, but still. I saw a giddy future of dropping my new pal Martine a text whenever I happened to catch Love Actually (approximately once a week from October onwards) and meeting for the occasional girly cocktail where we discuss all The Perfect Moments in her life etc. Once I’d gotten to know Paul a little better, maybe he’d share some Hammond and Wurlitzer tips with me; was he a Leslie fan? And just how much tremolo did he think was too much tremolo? There was so much to look forward to now!

Fast forward a few months later, or maybe it was a year - as I said, those toddler years did more damage to my memory than my youthful party years did - and I find myself on the same bill as Paul at a festival in the Kentish sunshine. I cannot wait to ambush him in catering. I know he’ll be thrilled to see me.

I spot him near the salad table and amble over, the guitarist in my band in tow.

‘Come on,’ I say to Tim, the guitarist, ‘let’s go and see Paul. You’re gonna love him! He’s so cool!’

Tim has known me for a long, long time and miraculously still tolerates my childish enthusiasm with the weary patience of a benevolent caregiver.

Paul is deep in concentration, possibly debating the merits of coleslaw over couscous. Maybe he’s not really a salad man, but it looks safer than the alternative which is something trying to pass itself off as lasagne but which looks suspiciously like Pedigree Chum, I can’t be sure.

I gently tap him on the shoulder.

‘Paul!’ I say, or more likely, squeal, ‘How wonderful to see you!’

He looks at me, his face genuinely blank. A few moments pass. His eyes are searching my face.

‘I’m ever so sorry,’ he finally says, ‘but I don’t think we’ve met before?’

In this moment I realise I won’t be getting any Wurlitzer or Hammond tips from Paul any time soon. Tim puts his arm around my shoulder and gently steers me away from the salad, and says no more about it. He’s good like that.

I am sharing yet another tale of my ongoing life of social embarrassment for good reason. As I look ahead to this very extensive tour in the autumn into winter, I thought to prepare myself, I’d learn a song written by someone from each of the cities and towns so that I might tailor sets to each place. It’s also just great fun, and as someone who had a bread and butter gig singing covers before embarking on my own recording career, covering songs is hands down the best way to learn how to write songs. In the same way that all the good authors say they learnt to write by reading whatever they could get their hands on, and then copying their favourite passages line by line to truly feel what it might be like to write like Dickens, for example, or in my hopeless case, Raymond Carver - so it is with songwriting.

I won’t tolerate this rampant snobbery I hear from people dismissing TikTok cover stars. Those people are doing exactly what anyone who wants to be a songwriter should be doing. One of my most treasured possessions is a bootleg I found at a record fair of Elton John before he was famous covering Nick Drake. I live in hope that I’m wrong, but I’m not sure anyone is going to write a song better than River Man or Your Song, and yet what harm could it do to learn those songs inside out, backwards, forwards, until they are imprinted on your heart and in your blood and so embedded in your musical DNA that one day you might write a song with just a tiny speckle of that magic dust that makes those songs so transcendent?

When I saw that Sheffield is close to selling out, I thought I’d make that the first city from which to pick a song. Imagine my delight when I found out that it is the birthplace of Paul Carrack (and that he is a fellow Taurean, his birthday being only a few days before my own). It was a no-brainer. I didn’t need to learn this song - it’s one of those I have been playing my whole life, a song I’ve been influenced by my whole career. I don’t remember when I first heard it, but I close my eyes and it’s some time in the late seventies and I’m in the back of my mum’s little orange VW Golf and we’re bombing along the country lanes of Jersey singing along at the top of our lungs. From those opening bass notes, I am perched, waiting for the journey to that magnificent chorus, wondering who those fancy friends were and why the object of the song is being influenced by them and not Paul, because obviously Paul is the hero of this song and we are all rooting for him and whoever this feckless lover is he’s singing about.

When I found out the object of the song was actually a bass player who had been moonlighting with another band, I rooted for Paul even more. We’ve all been there. The only thing more traumatic is when the drummer cheats on you.

Speaking of drummers, I don’t have a drum kit set up at home, so had to program the drums on this cover. Everything else is real. As I say, the key to covers is to get under the bonnet of a song in every way. Every song is a world worth exploring. Sometimes I like to dismantle a song completely and take it back to its bare bones (like my cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart) but in the case of How Long I just love it so much I want to close my eyes and imagine it’s 1975 and I’m in the band and get to marvel at that voice every time Carrack opens his mouth to sing. I added only a few little flavours of my own - a slightly busier bass part, acoustic guitars and an homage to a certain song from 1972 by my favourite band - see if you can spot it.

I can’t promise that all subsequent covers will be this involved or that there will be a dependable cadence to them - I’ve a book to finish, a couple of paintings on the go and an album to record - but I’ll see what I can rustle up in coming months.

All that remains is to say a huge thank you to you for buying tickets to the tour - quite a few places are almost sold out even with almost six months to go. And to wish you a great week and month ahead.

With love as ever,

Nerina xxx