Rhubarb City by Greenheart

Greenheart's first attempt at recording their music. We drew on local talent and were very much inspired by nature in the making of this album. Using dijeridoos, vocals and guitar loops with sounds of nature, we produced this record of Greenheart in their first phase of development. This is what we said back then in September 2009...

Greenheart formed late 2007 and started by doing some recordings which we put on MySpace. We’ve been wanting to put an album out for a year or so and decided to try and get something finished in time for the Edinburgh Fringe this year where we were busking and playing a couple of shows. Stuck for a name for the album we named it after the place where we live and work.

The only dijeridoo I’d ever heard before I heard Scotty Moorhouse play was on Kate Bush’s The Dreaming tune on The Whole Story, and of course Rolf. I didn’t like either, so I was knocked out when I heard him play – I’d asked him up to the studio do some dij on a soundtrack I was doing for Darren Conway’s short “The Slip”. Something about it grabbed me and we soon found out we could work together really
well and so formed a band. Initially it was a really fresh and basic sound; me on acoustic guitar, him on dij. .


Later I heard about KT Tunstall’s looper and in my usual way just went and tried one out and bought it. This was at a time when the 95 pounds were a fair amount of cash to me so I must have liked it. It expanded the sound as I could do several guitar parts, rhythmic, clicky parts and bassy parts. I had a nice guitar on loan, an old pre-CBS Fender Strat that sounded really good looped. Next day we had our first recording session, and came out with the album versions “Spanish” and “Bone”. We just sat there in studio playing whatever felt good and with Cubase in record. Listening back later it was obvious what was good and what was shite. I added the drums using Nian’s kit (Nian was Milltown Brother’s drummer and is a good friend to both of us). The drums were a bit tricky, (no hihat stand) but we improvised. We put the two tracks up on MySpace. It was Feb ’08. Oh yeah.


Next session of note was at the end of March. Djalu was the dij and there must have been an enchanted evening in the studio because about half the basic tracks on the album were recorded that evening. I think we were trying to record a few tunes to get a gig at a Lancaster vegetarian café called “The Whale Tail”, who never got back to us. “The Sirens”, “Walk in the Park”, “Rise and Shine”, “Banjo”, (next album hopefully), and “Round the Fishtank” just seemed to materialize out of thin air that night. These were also posted on www.myspace.com/greenheartsongs too, in April ‘08 probably.

That’s all we’d done with the MySpace till recently. It was only a couple of months ago that we decided it was time to make an album. We decided that we needed to take some CDs to the Edinburgh Fringe to sell as we were busking and gigging up there, but also just so we could have a deadline important enough to get on and get something finished and made. So we went back to the MySpace tracks and finished them properly. We also added a couple of new things – Lemongrass and Waggawagga. We also did some recording with a local female choir, “Dot Crotchet and the Raging Harmonies” and “Garai Pano” was too good to leave off.

Most of the natural sounds on this EP album were recorded round here – the birds in Lemongrass were from the canal at Deep Cutting on the Galgate – Lancaster stretch of the canal; the water sound is a little brook near the wind turbines on Caton Moor. The gulls at the end of Round the Fishtank and beginning of The Sirens are from Tarnbrook Gullery above Abbeystead, and the geese and waterbirds on Waggawagga are from Leighton Moss. These Waggawagga geese must have had an argument and we inadvertently recorded it, they did seem grumpy. But then again it was early.

Rhubarb City is a good album we think, and we are very proud of it.
There are several local musicians and artists who make the album sound the way it does – special thanks to Richard Young – drums on Rise & Shine and Lemongrass; Mia Wilson – posh vocals on Bone; Lee Hilton for her brilliant and completely spontaneous performance on Lemongrass, Dot Crotchet and the Raging Harmonies for singing up and Justin Murray for additional engineering, energy and chimes.

James & Scotty
Rhubarb City
Sept ‘09

Greenheart, UK Trio creating Live mesmerising Guitar looping, amazing Didgeridoo grooves,
Big drums all topped with thought provoking heartfelt lyric 💚