Stuart Townend's Blog

Today is the final day of recording the band tracks for the new album. We have Terl Bryant on drums, Andy Hamill on double bass, Matt Weeks on electric bass (not at the same time!), Dan Wheeler on acoustics and dobro, myself on acoustic and banjo, and of course the amazing Mark Edwards on piano, piano accordion, glockenspiel, harmonium etc etc. It's been fantastic fun, and the band are sounding amazing!

We've kept things pretty acoustic throughout, with lots of room for whistles, fiddle, brass, string quartet and so on. But I think we've pushed it out beyond the mainly folk sound of "Creation Sings" to incorporate a lot more musical influences, so it's going to be distinctively different.

I have a few days off now before I go in and do vocals and guitars, and we start working on all the other overdubs. It looks like we have Ruth Notman doing some backing vocals which we're really excited about as well. Folk fans may know that name - she's definitely worth checking out.

All the songs on the album are co-written - not by design particularly - and it's been great working with others over the last couple of months. I’ve written with Keith Getty as usual, and also Gary Sadler in Nashville, Busbee from LA, Mark Edwards, Phil Baggeley (from Phil and John fame), and Simon Brading from Brighton.

I took a few photos while we were recording – take a look below.

My son Eden getting some tips of Andy Hamill

Mark Edwards doing his stuff