After a gestation period of some years, the album “All My Friends Are Here” by Fairholt is released.? The Band penned the following, you can? listen to the title track??“All My Friends Are Here”?while reading.

“In which? 5 mates who were London students together back in the day?make a lot of noise and some of it is actually in the same key as each other. Brought to you care of a few grands’ worth of recording equipment and the annual budget for a Pacific State in alcoholic purchases? “All My Friends” unashamedly mines a late 70s vibe whilst managing to stumble into the smog of the 21st century. Using for much of the album a novel new way of recording, five people playing a chuffin’ song together in a room. Interrupted only by Ade and Pete’s frequent visits to a pub of slightly dubious reputation and the Rose & Woodbine where a faggot and pea batch featured on the menu,? “All My Friend Are Here”, dragged kicking and screaming from the psyche of 5 professional wasters over a period that actually amounted to three weeks. Which isn’t too shabby given when we convened this little escapade we had all of 3 songs, two of which we totally changed the arrangements of and a couple of ideas. With the odd exception, dropping a line in here and there, what you hear here are complete performances be they live or overdubs. For instance “Just The Same” features the scratch vocal only, it took a while to find the words for the final verse so that is the only overdub with the rhythm track a ‘first take’.?

Which brings us to the question of why? Well this is the bit that’s never easy to write. Bottom line is Ade,? the drummer and keeper of the flame of “The great monster movie” was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. I doubt you need me to point out that this is serious shit and the album sees Ade’s final performance with being able to play a real drum kit. As such, all profits from the album release will be going to the charity for MND research. That’s not to say this is some “vanity project”, there’s some damned good big arsed rock songs and few more reflective ones amongst the dozen tracks. in short if you are/were a fan of band such as Free/The Faces/The Rolling Stones then this might well hit the right nerve.

Finally, a big thanks to Paul Sampson without whom this might well have never happened. Paul acted as referee and generally booted us about and into shape. The song “Skyscraping” was the last song recorded by a complete live band at Cabin Studios in Coventry, here’s hoping it did the history of the place justice.

So there you have it folks. “Fairholt”; “All My Friends Are Here”; “Please buy and enjoy. Tell your friends too!

Fairholt March 2017

Buy “All My Friends Are Here” from?https://fairholt.bandcamp.com/album/all-our-friends-are-here

All sales proceeds will go to MNDA East Kent to support people living with MND and research into a cure.