Day eight

Wednesday November 10

Mark:

First thing I send Maja the three versions I recorded last night and then hit the studio. Damn it’s hard. All the songs we’ve recorded so far I’ve gone into the studio and just laid the whole guitar part down first time. Or hit a minor bubble, started again and nailed it. I’ve even been recording multiple guitar parts for songs – the same part tracked. Again, in and out. This one, I just can’t get it to work. Either can’t stay on the metronome or forget how long parts are supposed to be, all kinds of stuff. It doesn’t help that. Oh, and having changed the chords from barre to open last night, the first thing I have to do is redo that simple recording concept I did last night before I can even get started.

By the time I’ve got that done and am taking a studio and screen break to get ready to go in again, Maja has other ideas for us. This very prologue thing you’re reading right now. She’s been writing her bits and pieces to get us up to date with last Saturday, meaning she’s now finished her parts covering the gig, and the next day and everything up to all that. And she’s been reconfiguring the website to include The Tour Diaries, and made whole chunks of the thing easier to use and more attractive to look at. It’s all astonishing work, not least because she’s done it while being preoccupied with surgery first thing tomorrow morning, but yes, she also wanted to get it done before then so that I could start contacting people and basically sending us out to the wider world. We’d already agreed that if she hadn’t got to this stage I would have just started running with what we have, but she has done it. So now she needs me to do a final thing myself which is to check her writings for English and to add any reactions I might have to what she’s written into the actual Diary. Once I’ve got onto that, we are done. We are ready.

Maja:

I’m just absolutely delighted I was able to finish writing the tour diary prologue, and update the website to actually feature it in a nice way. I also did a couple of improvements and I think the whole thing is becoming even more user friendly. I have a couple of more ideas of improvements I want to do to optimize usability, but I don’t know if they’d be doable without too much effort. I have a European tour to prepare for so my time is really limited.

Mark:

So what we have now is:

The Tour Diaries prologue up to and including our first gig.

The Diaries. Admittedly a long way behind, but they are there.

The website itself.

A whole bunch of different pitches written for different disciplines which can be easily personalised. 

A back of the book type presentation, which I’ve just decided I’ll give you in here in a minute.

Tracks recorded and up.

And a gig that went pretty well which really helps in the confidence stakes when I’m telling people what we can do.

Which, by definition means we have the set together to do a gig. It’s around half an hour with a few more songs in touching distance of being ready.

On top of that, we have our cards and beermats and a whole lot of merchandising ideas for stuff we can easily put together and transport in bulk in a car.

That back of the book thing

Maja’s life is falling apart. Living in Sweden, her marriage is crumbling along with her fledgling dreams of playing music professionally. 

Mark is an experienced professional musician living in lockdown London. He becomes Maja’s online music tutor and mentor. He has no idea of the turmoil in her life.

With nowhere else to turn, Maja confides in Mark who says, ‘You could come here.’

Exactly one week later they meet for the first time at Heathrow Airport. Before they arrive at Mark’s house they are an item.

Problems

Brexit. Maja can’t stay in England long term, and Mark can’t live in Europe.

Corona. Travel restrictions are in place all over the world, removing any other options.

Solution

Realising they can both live in Ireland, The Diaries move from central London to a tiny town in the Irish countryside where they set up their own studio. This becomes the staging post for songwriting and recording as they prepare for their next step – touring the world.

The Diaries series is a true, inspiring, and living story of love, music, and travel set against impossible odds, all told with an unwavering sense of fun and optimism.