Steve Skaith | Latin Quarter: Bare Bones

The idea for this album was to take some old LQ songs back to the state when they were first written and demoed: just a guitar, a voice, a bit of harmony, a touch of keyboard colour and hey presto! Obviously to do this in my bedroom on a porta-studio in the 1980’s is different to now doing it in a proper studio with Steve Jeffries producing and providing that keyboard colour. But trying to capture the spark, the heart of a song with a simple arrangement, is still the same great feeling. I think I have always enjoyed this part of being a musician more than any other.

Obviously there are changes apart from the sound quality. At times we approached the songs with a completely different energy. We changed some rhythms. In one case we changed a chorus. But one thing we haven’t changed is the lyrics. At times I wondered why I was singing songs about situations that passed many years ago. In the case of ‘No Rope as Long as Time’ the lyric is actually wrong. Apartheid was dismantled without a war. But to remember where we were, or where we thought we were, can help to remind us where we are now. What has changed and what has not.

I tried out a number of songs before settling on the ones here and then we got lucky. Becky CJ, Steve Jeffries’ daughter, had just recorded her version of the Latin Quarter song ‘Wounded in Action’. It sounds great and is exactly what we mean by ‘bare bones’ so we are very pleased to include it here and we know LQ fans will agree.

Arranged by Steve Skaith and Steve Jeffries.
Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Steve Jeffries.