SAS: We had learned so much from making our debut album, but there was an overriding sense that we had made the album exactly how we wanted it, so why not do that again? We had no concept of the outside world of an audience, record companies, etc.

There was a rush of song writing for me and lots of travelling time that allowed it to flow:

Mistakes, A night in, Talk to me, Travelling light, it seemed there was a song a day for a while. The new studio in our new house, there was always something cooking. David left a piece of writing lying around after a trip to the launderette. I read it and said to him – You should do something with this – It was My sister and a little while later he had sketched out this musical setting for it. The last song I wrote before leaving for Conny’s was She’s gone.

I remember playing it to Neil and asking – Can you play this on acoustic guitar , but double speed? – This moment was to haunt him for the next 25 years. The song became a live favourite and to play that song gently at that speed night after night is tough, he has suffered! I wrote and recorded the piano for Cherry Blossoms in that house, my first fumbling attempt, I have only revisited the piano to write a few times since and I still own that old piano.

We went to Conny’s with what felt like a bunch of ideas to demo / explore, we came back with what felt like a bag full of diamonds, just a week later. Now we needed the strings (a dream), the brass, voices, all the other colours. I had spent so much time listening to Morricone’s ‘ Once upon a time in the West’ one of the first thing on my mind was to find the sound of the Dulcimer on Vertrauen 2, everything was cranked to the hilt, feeding back, the living room windows shaking.

My love of Tim Hardin shines through on this album and not just in the song writing (No more affairs, She’s gone..). The extreme panning of the mixing is also testament to Tim Hardin 1 and 2. In fact the live recorded Tim Hardin 3 still provides a template for us as a live band to this day.

Also a great influence at this time was The Cowboy Junkies’ ‘Whites off earth now’ – I was a little obsessed by these 1 microphone band recordings. We made a plan to record ‘Sleepy song’ in this way but it needed a big space. We had a memorable night in Abbey Road 1 making this recording – Playing the song, into the control room to listen , moving people, amplifiers around, trying again. Gradually we reached take 22 and we had it, beautiful and finished completely in a moment. The organ is so special in this recording. With incremental moves it ended up some 25 metres away from the band at full volume.

The first album was written over many years and those 21 songs only left 1 song – A country ballad, Tiny tears, that was written years before. I didn’t like it or think much about it. David always had a feeling for it and one day said – We should try it again, but slower in 6/8 – I wasn’t so excited and I never loved the version on this album. But the rerecorded version we made for the Nenette et Boni film score a year later was something special.