1998 Pockets On Fire

In 1998 Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention invited me to record my songs with Woodworm Records. So started Pockets On Fire with the Fairports on it. Mark Tucker was the engineer and he, Peggy and I produced the album. 

Message from annA rydeR to everybody Autumn 1998

Hello, everyone!!! I’m just here to tell you something about ‘POCKETS ON FIRE’ on this website – so here it is …..

‘POCKETS ON FIRE’ is my new CD which will be on general release from Feb 22nd – available from Woodworm Records by mail order from Feb 3rd – see their website.

The album is 12 of my songs with Fairport Convention playing superb backing on 8 of – some with a full band and others with musical touches. The album also features two great brass players Chas McDevitt and Chris Knibbs on 4 of the tracks.

I’m playing guitar, piano and French Horns and harmonising with myself.

It’s been engineered and co-produced (with Dave Pegg and me) by Mark Tucker who is an absolutely fantastic sound-finder-maker-keeper whose ears work long after everyone else’s have failed to notice the difference between a cement mixer and my French Horn playing! (yes, I know what you’re thinking – perhaps that’s not
surprising! Ha! Ha!)

If you were at Cropredy this year, you’ll’ve heard 2 of these songs (Sliding Into A Dream & Freedom Hymn) on the Saturday night with additional performers!! It was a highlight for me to perform the songs we’d been working on over the past few months with an excellent and huge sounding band at such a massive festival.

And thanks to those of you who managed to catch my 45 minutes which kicked off the whole thing on Friday lunchtime – I hope you enjoyed it – I certainly did. If you joined my mailing list, you should’ve
received the dates for the Winter Tour by now.

‘Pockets On Fire’ was made at Woodworm Studios and it was a great excitement for me as not only was I able to record these songs which everybody kept asking could they get recordings of, but ALSO I was able to record them with a brilliant group of people who made them come alive but kept the original feel of the songs which have always been performed solo. And I had the time to take my time over it. Fairport are such good musicians and the secret of their success may be something to do with not being stuck in their ways and always being interested in the new and unusual.

This is the kind of album I’ve always wanted to make and my next aim is to take these songs out with a band …. And then record all the songs which didn’t make it onto this CD.

Anyway – I’m doing the support for Fairport on their Winter Tour 99 and by then you may’ve heard the CD which is available to you from Feb 3rd.