Aynsley Lister - The Official Website

Radio 2 and other interesting stories!!

Posted by Aynsley on Thursday 26th July, 2007.

Hi there everyone!

As usual not enough hours in the day…! With the new album it’s all been pretty crazy recently. The radio stuff was all great fun – especially the live Maida Vale session we recorded for Radio 2. That place really is something else. Although I’d been there before for last years ‘BC’ project, this time it was all the more relaxed for some reason… maybe because we didn’t have to rush off to a another show or something!

Well, we arrived nice and early and loaded in to studio 3, which has a huge live room capable of housing a full orchestra. On this particular day, we left the violins and cello’s at home. Next, we met our hosts for the day, namely Paul Long who is the producer of the Paul Jones Show and our recording engineer – a chap called Mike Harding. Completely unaware and oblivious (as usual!), it wasn’t until Spoons pointed it out that I realised who we were actually being recorded by: Mike was the guy who recorded all of the Led Zepplin BBC sessions aswell as more recent works like the live U2 / White Stripes sessions. In fact it should have figured sooner when he was telling us how one of the White Stripes had set off the fire alarm the day before with a cigarette resulting in the entire building being evacuated!! ….But he was such a nice guy!!! All a bit surreal really but then I suppose I was just a bit taken back to think we were working with this guy. Needless to say he was pretty damn good!!

So with Paul in the producers chair and Mike at the desk once everything was miked up, we let rip. After a quick jam around, we all ventured into the control room to see what it sounded like. OK, so this guy records live bands all day long. It showed. So, off we went back to work recording four tracks for Paul’s evening show.

From start to finish, it really did fly by. We never seemed to be under any time pressure and at the end of the day we loaded all the gear back into the ‘Bluesbus’ as it now affectionately known and headed home armed with a CDR of our day’s work. Did we listen to it? Well actually, no! We resisted the urge to have a quick listen and instead decided to reward ourselves with some well-earned food…

So, feeling quite happy with ourselves we stopped off for some hearty English cuisine. OK, call me old fashioned but the lure of a Burger King when you have been tucked away in a studio all day is just too much to resist!!….

…Into a side street we pulled and off we ran in the pouring rain over to the restaurant of choice……. It was only on our return to the bluesbus that reality kicked back in and brought us all back down to earth…. We were still in London… the city where parking attendants lurk in the very depths of street corners hiding away ready to pounce on their prey….

There on the windscreen was a nice big ‘documents enclosed’ package. “Huh… we’ve been done!!!”

Oh well, never mind… the fact we’d gone all day and managed to avoid one (normally a miracle in London no matter how carefully you park your bus!) meant it was too good to be true. So once again, London Parking persons had got another sixty quid out of me!

Aired on July 2nd, we had some great feedback so thanks to all who tuned in… especially those who liked it enough to venture out to a gig for the first time ;0)

Other breaking news since then is that I have begun working with ARM Management. This is all very exciting for all involved. ARM has worked with many successful artists taking them on to fantastic opportunities. Previous success stories include The Hoax and more recently Eric Bibb. I’m really looking forward to a fun working relationship with these guys.

Right now, plans are being put into place for the next year or so. More news on this shortly!

Other new stuff includes a whole new batch of merchandise. For those of you who have logged onto the merch page, you will have seen the new designs etc. We should be taking delivery of the first lot in the next couple of weeks…. We’ll let you know when they’re here!!

Last but not least, a huge thank you to you all for your comments and involvement in the new site… keep them coming in and get your friends to register. We are just tidying up all the databases and getting them synced up so you should hear from that side of things very soon.

See you all soon,

Aynsley