Beautiful You is the result of a two-year collaboration between John Illsley, the bass player for Dire Straits, and Irish singer-songwriter Greg Pearle.
John:
After the gig in Les Baux I discovered that Greg had been writing songs for some time and was keen to record them. That’s when we started working on his songs together with the help of Guy Fletcher – the Straits keyboard player. We recorded the Beautiful You album at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove and Guys studio in Sussex.
It was great to be involved in the creative process again. I felt very connected to what Greg and I were doing. Making music is all about how musicians respond to each other, what you leave in -what you take out – and which tracks fit with the overall atmosphere.
The aim with Beautiful You was to make a record that you’d happily let run to the end.
Guy was brilliant in not only his engineering skills but in helping with the overall feel of the music, Paul Brady played some beautiful whistle and provided some unique backing vocals ,Jamie Lane did a magnificent job on the drums, Chris White arranged the brass and played some memorable sax, Danny Cummins played marvellous percussion, and I got to play the bass again and also have enormous fun playing lead guitar .
Greg has been around the Irish music scene on the sidelines for years , but I really believe we have here not only a great talent for writing songs , but a brilliant live performer as you will see if you manage to catch the band live. We’re playing at Bush Hall on Uxbridge Road on the 7th October at 8pm. The album is out on the 13th.
English