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New album “All That Counts” Out Now

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New Record Coming Soon!

I am making a new record, my first solo one for ages as I've been busy working with The Housekeeping Society and writing stuff for other projects. I am super-excited about it and it will hopefully be in your ears very soon. It's a five track EP that's all piano and vocals and is to be recorded live over two days in December and should be out early next year. If you would like to follow me in the process of making it, or if you're a glutton for punishment with time on your hands then you can listen to a little 'making-of' documentary that I've been recording. The first few episodes are available on soundcloud. (or by scrolling to the post below) I will of course keep you up to date with developments.

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(via https://soundcloud.com/ricneale/its-time-for-me-to-brush-my-teeth-feat-amy-thompson-and-chris-hannon?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

I’ve just finished a rather enjoyable commission for The Wakefield Theatre Royal in which I had to write a song and do some incidental music for a show for kids. The show was to promote the idea of the kids looking after their teeth and starred Chris Hannon (from Cbeebies “Topsy and Tim” and Amy Thompson who hosts Channel 5′s Milkshake).

The tricky part was creating a song that was really catchy so that the kids could singalong, whilst making sure the message was accurate. I’d put in a line about brushing your teeth "up and down” which had to be changed at the insistence of the oddly named “oral health team” to “back to front” (turns out I’ve been cleaning my teeth wrong last 40 years).

Another challenge was to try to make the song exactly 2 minutes; this was my own stupid idea. One of the aims of the piece was to get kids to brush their teeth for at least two minutes twice a day, so it made sense to have the song be exactly that length. It proved pretty tricky, but I chose to do the song at 120bpm which would mean that each bar was exactly two seconds long and I worked backwards from how many bars I could use.

The show went out on tour and there was a special performance at The mechanics Theatre a few week so go. It was a really interesting challenge and there are already plans afoot to work with the theatre again on a different project.

So, keep your teeth clean folks…

Here’s a nerdy video from an upcoming series of them called “HOW I WROTE” about some of the songwriting stuff I used - probably for nerds only...

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Surf Aid

A few weeks ago I was involved in a charity gig in London where I played a few solo songs, and performed as part of a Beach Boys tribute band. 

Below are a few videos from the sets I played, as well as a fun one of me and the guys doing some harmonising at the pub afterwards. They are all videos from the audience so the sound is a bit dodgy and there are a few heads bobbing in front of the camera occasionally but it still shows what fun afternoon it was. Enjoy...

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45RPM on tour

The track I was involved in creating for visual artist Pete McKee’s Thud,Crackle,Pop exhibition is continuing it’s national tour. The track, created by The Housekeeping Society and Ralph Dartford will form part of Portmeirion’s Festival No.6 and has been specially curated by Tim Burgess.

You can hear the track here and watch a little ‘making of’ vid that i created as well.

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The Housekeeping Society at The IPO

We were invited to play at The Cavern Club in Liverpool at the prestigious International Pop Overthrow Festival for the fourth time this year and Ivan and I had a great time joined by special guests Danny Christiansen and Rob Reed.

You can see more here...

http://thehousekeepingsociety.tumblr.com/post/119015648311/this-years-ipo

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The Dancing Bear

I was invited to be part of Jamie Fletcher’s new show “The Dancing Bear” which began as a scratch performance a few months back. I had to co-write some songs with Jamie for the project and musically direct a very talented bunch of musicians.

The hope is that show will be extended and performed again on a tour in the early part of next year - fingers crossed... heres a trailer pieced together from the scratch show. you’ll hear a bit of the music we wrote as well as seeing me look self conscious on stage.

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New Housekeeping Society Albums!

Myself and my Housekeeping co-conspirator Ivan Mack have just put the finishing touches on some new albums. read more here..

http://thehousekeepingsociety.tumblr.com/post/99242742826/two-new-housekeeping-society-albums-released

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Some Music...

I've recently made this compilation of some of the songs I've written; it features some of my old solo material as well as some of The Housekeeping Society tracks that I was pivotal in creating. You can also find on here a few of the songs that I've written with one of my collaborators Jamie Vizard, that placed in the top ten of last year's Great British Songwriting Competition. I made it to form part of my online CV but you are welcome to have a listen. Enjoy...

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New Housekeeping Society Taking Shape

Ivan and I are very close to finishing the new Housekeeping Society album "Wilderness". For this record we have taken inspiration from the the great outdoors and developed music and stories about characters lost in the wilderness.

Here's a bit of a taster in the form of a video of us rehearsing one of the new songs "Yours Sincerely" joined on bass by our friend Danny Christiansen.

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45RPM at Thirty Three and a Third

Recently I did a commission with The Housekeeping Society that involved working with poet Ralph Dartford to create a soundscape for one of his pieces. The finished article will feature in an exhibition of Pete Mckee's artwork entitled "Thud, Crackle, Pop".

Here you can see a video of me discussing the project;

And you can listen to the trasck in full here

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Jason Donavan

So it’s true, this happened, it was a real thing that actually happened, for real, honestly, no word of a lie, it actually happened. Truth be known I get asked more questions about this brief bit of work than pretty much anything else I’ve done in my highly glamorous and illustrious career.

I, for a time, played guitar with Australian heartthrob/actor/singer Jason Donavan. And what’s more I enjoyed it a great deal.

This bizarre union came from some session work I had been doing. Some friends of mine had been writing songs that they had been trying to place to artists, my job was to go in and sing them and add all the guitar parts. It so happened that one of these songs took the fancy of Jason (yeah I know, first name terms eh) and he came up to Yorkshire to record his vocal where mine had previously been. As a result I was invited to come and help out. The other reason he was up norf was to do a personal appearance at the opening of Robin Hood airport at some posh hotel. After we met and chatted for a while he asked if I could play guitar for him in his set.

He asked if I knew any of his songs and I was entirely un embarrassed to admit that I knew quite a few. We ended up playing Sealed with a kiss (complete with gaffer-taped on key change at the end) Everyday (absolute beauty of a minor third key change into the chorus) and Nothing can divide us (truly a stock Aiken and waterman classic).

The thing that’s interesting about his biggest songs (the ones that were s,a,w anyway) is that they are incredibly complex harmonically; their key centres shift all over the place and there are some pretty juicy chords on display. There is an understanding from many people that ‘teen pop’ is incredibly easy to write compared with more credible acts, when the truth is there is more harmonic invention and theoretical trickery going on then in pretty much all of the Oasis or Coldplay back catalogue put together. Anyway as a result getting reacquainted with these tunes and trying to make them fly on just acoustic guitar and vocals was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge. Just watch the quite frankly terrible video for the song "Everyday"; harmony fans will notice that the verse is in A major and the chorus shifts beautifully to C major creating an awesome resolution. remember getting the chorus of this son stuck in my head as a teenager and that bit of harmonic trickery is why.

Jason is quite simply a lovely man. Not at all starry, and in the times I hung out with him, possessed a lovely sense of humility - despite having topped the charts a number of times in a number of countries would always defer to my musicianship. He was realistic about how lucky he was to be able to make music (something he clearly loved) but was also aware that despite being a good performer with a decent voice, he was not a natural musician.

We did around about 8 or 9 gigs together over the period of a year or so which culminated in the last one; a massive gig at the London Astoria when it hosted G-A-Y. Jason had just come out of the jungle thingy “I’m a celebrity get me out of here” and as a result his profile had taken quite a bump (I personally think his increased popularity was entirely down to my acoustic guitar arrangements). We were even joined on stage by his fellow jungler David Gest who came on and sang with us on one occasion. It was a pretty crazy night and it was featured on the TV show “This is David Gest” - I have searched YouTube but can’t find the bit with me in unfortunately. See below for a photo with my legs in, and the bottom corner of my guitar whilst something else weird goes on...

Shortly after this he started a U.K. tour with a full band which I couldn’t commit to alas, and so ended our exciting union. Still, it was very much a feather in my cap for a while; it certainly allowed me to see a bit of a different side of the business we call show as people’s reactions to him when they saw him were bizarre - it was a nice change for me, but to live your life that way must be strange. I am not impressed by celebrity and don’t really follow anything that’s going on. At one of the gigs backstage I met a nice young lad who was impressed by my guitar playing and we got into a nice chat about songwriting; I do teach it after all, and was giving him lots of advice about different ways to approach some new songs he was working on - half an our later I was told by someone else that he was out McFly.

Anyway, this was a few years ago now and soon after the gig at G-A-Y Jason got a tour with a full band of which i was alas not part. The musical director had his own guy and since then Jason has done a lot more theatre stuff. Bottom line it was a bizarre, but thoroughly enjoyable little job.

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Let Bygones Be by The Housekeeping Society

The Housekeeping Society and myself were invited create an original soundtrack to a contemporary dance film that was being put together by the arts organisation CoActive. It was a really challenging process that allowed us to experiment more than we ever had done before. It was great to create music that we didn't need to then go and turn into traditional 'songs' and instead let the structure be dictated by the film.

Here's a video trailer for it that features some footage of us in the studio with our friend Gary Chilton.

And you can listen to all the audio here - it's pretty crazy but was a real opportunity for some experimentation with sound.

Listen/purchase: Let Bygones Be: A Soundtrack by The Housekeeping Society

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The Perfect Lyric Interview

I've done a fair bit of work with a brilliant organisation called ELFM. They are an arts charity that work with young people to create music and art projects in and around East Leeds. One of the many things they do is produce a radio show. I was invited by the lovely Peter Spafford (see picture below as i balances a melodica on his shoulder) to do an interview about creating the perfect song lyric. In this chat we listen to a few of my favourite lyrics and talk about why i like them.

You can listen to the interview on the ELFM website here

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This is a video about some strings arranging/recording I've been doing for the new Housekeeping Society album. Lizzie Hussey played violin and viola and Gary Chilton engineered. You can listen to a particularly pleasing an excerpt below. This will eventually end up in the track "The Coast is Clear"

Strings section for "The Coast Is Clear" by RicNeale

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Joe Simpson

I have an incredibly talented friend by the name of Joe Simpson. He is frustratingly gifted, funny and young (in fact his only flaw is his refusal to drink lager from bottles, preferring instead some namby pamby glass). He has a new exhibition down in that there London in which he has done paintings of lots of different musicians including Brandon Flowers, Mark Ronson, Paloma Faith, Maxi Jazz, David Gray and Jamie Cullum.

Anyway he is a brilliantpainter and visual artist who I have had the pleasure of working with a couple of times. Not only did he do all the photography for my second album "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time", but he also invited me to be part of his amazing "Almost There" project. For this he did a series of 12 paintings that had the loose story of a road movie, he gave each painting to a different musician or band for them to create an original song. I was one of these artists along with the likes of Nizlopi and The Voluntary Butler Scheme.

Above you can see the painting he gave to me. As you can see it's amazing. he also gave me some source tracks as inspiration, most notably "Over The Hill" by John Martyn - which is a great track. I came up with the song "Dotted Line" which is also the opening track from my third album "Someone Else's Home".

Above is a vid of me and the lads doing a performance of it. The project was one of my favourite songwriting experiences and, in truth, was the first step that lead to the work I'm now doing with The Housekeeping Society - this was one of the first times where I was challenged to write a song outside my own experiences - a theme that has continued with our first album "This Way to Power", and is progressing on to it's seaside based follow up. 

Anyway, he's generally great so London based life forms should go and support his new exhibition.