Janet Holmes
…and the
case of the failed hit single
I was first struck by how fabulous a voice Janet Holmes had
sometime in the early ‘80s when her band SOS were doing the
church hall circuit in what was then a pretty thriving gospel-rock
scene in Northern Ireland - a scene, incidentally, which could be
said to have nurtured the likes of current ‘Whispering’
Bob Harris fave Brian Houston, Ivor Novello-winning songwriter Iain
Archer (co-writer of Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’) and
cult neo-vaudevillian Duke Special.
Though I didn’t know her personally, I approached Janet in
1996 or thereabouts to see if she’d be up for recording a
song I’d written with Iain Archer and Rick Monro called
‘Be The One’. She was. The track had, in fact, already
been recorded in a centre of Belfast studio, garage-band style,
with Rick Monro and Susan Enan on lead vocals, Iain Archer on lead
guitar and all sorts of other people involved, most notably perhaps
Jonny Quinn, now drummer and bona fide rock star with Snow Patrol.
But I’d since taken it to a different studio, in the hills
outside Belfast, where, over Christmas, engineer Gary Aiken had
spotted some kind of potential and remixed it with added keyboard,
guitar and programmed drum parts. Rick and Susan agreed to come and
redo their vocals in line with the new arrangement, and the result
was, to my ears, fabulous. (This version eventually sneaked out
several years later on
The Wildlife Album.)
But Gary had
worked up various other possible treatments of the song, among
which was one that seemed to suggest an All Saints/Eternal kind of
girl-group sound. Did I know any world class girl
vocalists…? But of course! I got in touch with Janet, with
Tina McSherry, with Helen McGurk and with Gillian Pollock and we
all met up one memorable night in winter at Gary’s studio.
Tina, Helen and Gillian would record harmony vocals to
Janet’s lead and rock legend Henry McCullough was also there
to overdub some lead guitar. Janet’s brother Ivan Muirhead,
himself a guitar legend in these parts, and his neighbour Colin
‘Hillbilly’ Henry, had also turned up to hang out with
McCullough. Also present was McCullough’s wife Josie,
Tina’s future husband Cormac and production/arrangement
genius Steve ‘G Raff’ Jones - another gospel-rock scene
protégé, who’s since gone on to record and tour with Martyn
Joseph, Eleanor McEvoy, Ronan Keating and a host of other worthies.
It was quite a scene, and just as well that Hillbilly - an AA
member - had turned up, as Helen’s car broke down on the way
home…
I was convinced that, by chance alone, we had the making of a hit
single - if not for us, for someone else. And thus I dedicated a
couple of months to touting around among publishers and managers
the eventual Janet-fronted recording (ironically, with me on a
rather smooth, digitally cobbled-together lead guitar part rather
than Henry McCullough - whose visceral, as-live playing was as
terrific as ever but ultimately not quite right for the track). The
feedback was good, but somehow the timing was wrong, and my
track-record unknown.
The whole project had never been about money or success, and it was
only by chance that I’d somehow lucked into creating
something that seemed to suggest gold at the end of the rainbow.
After a few weeks of promotional effort I gave up and moved on. The
song appeared, in both Janet and Rick fronted versions, on a very
limited edition, privately circulated cassette album,
Nothing Is Easy, credited to
‘The Legends Of Tomorrow’ (tongue firmly in check,
obviously!) in 1997 and that was that.
But I’d heard Janet in a studio situation, had been blown
away by her lead and harmony vocal prowess and knew that if the
opportunity presented itself I’d love to record with her
again. A couple of years later, when Market Square Records agreed
to the notion of me organising a Bert Jansch tribute album -
released in 2000 as
People On The Highway: A Bert Jansch Encomium
- it
did. Janet fronted a cover of the title track, alongside myself
(guitar), Ali MacKenzie (bass), Colin Reid (lead guitar), Colin
Henry (banjo) and Conor Shields (percussion). The great Martin
Hayes added fiddle in Seattle. Once again, the ‘Legends Of
Tomorrow’ were in action…
And it didn’t end there: British blues vocal legend Duffy
Power, also a contributor to the album, heard Janet’s voice
and wanted to record with her for a possible comeback album. A few
tracks were worked on successfully, by post, before it became
logistically too complicated. Duffy’s album has yet to appear
- not for any want of quality, simply a case of the record
industry’s decline and consequent unwillingness to take
chance’s - but the process that led to my
co-funding/organising of Janet’s debut solo album,
The Road To The West (2004), was in
motion.
We ended up with
a double-album’s worth of recordings, from which 12 were
selected - running a pretty eclectic gamut of styles. From a
personal point of view I was delighted that Janet recorded six of
my own songs, with five of them making the album. Among these a new
version of ‘Be The One’ was recorded, once again up at
Gary’s place and once again at the very end of the rather
protracted recording process… and was yet again not in any
way a hit!
The track which seemed to go down best with radio stations was a
cover of Lyle Lovett’s ‘If I Had A Boat’ -
tellingly, perhaps, the one song on the album which probably
reflects best the kind of music that Janet is most comfortable
with, which we put out as a promotional single in early 2005 and
which she‘s performed on local TV twice to date. Aside from
originals, I’d brought in largely up tempo songs by the likes
of the Smiths, Anne Briggs, Leadbelly and Sweeney‘s Men, with
Janet bringing in generally slower material by Ralph McTell, Paul
Carrack, Lyle Lovett and Isaac Guillory plus one of her own.
The resulting album was pretty eclectic - largely my idea, to avoid
falling into an ’easy listening’ trap, which in
retrospect may have been over-thinking. There are, I believe, some
great performances and great tracks there - and from IMRO
six-monthly statements it’s clear that many are receiving
airplay somewhere on the planet - though perhaps at the expense of
cohesion. Janet has a wonderful, smooth easy listening kind of
voice and it took me, at least, a long time to realise that
fighting against this was probably foolish. That said, I do believe
the process of stretching herself to make a lot of disparate
material work was a valuable learning curve and I suspect that the
grit and imagination in arrangements that‘s apparent in her
recent hoped-for ‘second album‘ recordings - more
stripped down and more sonically ‘of a piece‘ than the
first album - is a product of having gone round the houses,
musically, in order to come back to the kind of music she most
naturally does best.
The recent recordings - songs by Randy Scruggs, Free, Steve Earle
and herself - have been made at Cormac O’Cathain’s
Belfast studio, with a very effective three-piece unit: Janet on
vocals and guitar; Colin Henry on dobro, guitar, banjo, harmonica;
Stephen McClintock on bass guitar, lead guitar and mandolin. Cormac
has added programmed percussion and may add piano. Certainly,
further recordings will feature a wider range of musical textures.
Meanwhile, one of these recordings - a cover of Matraca
Berg’s ‘Oh Cumberland’ - can be heard on
Live In Hope: The Wildlife Album 2 (2005).
While I’m
no longer involved with ‘Project Janet’ financially - a
case of simply running out of what little spare cash I had and
realising that however wonderful the music we were creating, it
would probably never recoup - I’m still part of the process
in terms of moral support and suggesting material to record. Of
course, now that I’m no longer in the syndicate no doubt the
Chairman of EMI will choose this time to come calling and the
lottery will be won! But I remain proud to be associated with such
a world-class talent, and however it happens I’d like to
think that talent will out. We shall see…
Check out Janet’s own website at:
www.janetholmes.com
Janet Holmes - The Road to the West