Vera Sandoe On Recording In A Church Hall

Vera Sandoe On Recording In A Church Hall

Vera Sandoe made her fourth record in a church hall in Millgate, in eleven days, with the heating off because of the noise it made.

She came in to see us this week ahead of the two autumn dates she announced in July, and she was cheerfully honest about why.

The short version

The studio she had booked fell through six weeks out. Rather than move everything, she asked around, and the hall she had learned piano in as a child turned out to be free in the mornings.

"It has a sound," she said. "It is not a good sound, particularly. But it is a sound, and you cannot buy it."

What that means on the record

Longer reverbs than anything she has done before, and a piano that is very slightly out on the high notes, which she decided to keep. There is a track where you can hear the door.

She sang standing in the middle of the room rather than in a booth, which is why the album sounds like somebody in a room rather than somebody in a studio. If you have heard Half A Mile Of Rain, that is the whole approach in three and a half minutes.

The two dates

The Corn Exchange in October, and a much smaller one at the Old Wharf in November, which she says will be the last time she plays a room that size.

What she is listening to

She named three things and two of them were choral, which will surprise nobody who has heard the record. The third was a compilation of session players from the sixties that she has apparently been carrying around on a phone for two years.

The full session, including two songs played live in our studio, goes out on Sunday evening at eight and stays on the site for a month afterwards.

She was, for the record, extremely polite about our piano, which is not in a state that deserves it.