Back in the spring of 1993, David and Andy were facing two months with no work in either of their diaries. Andy had just finished producing a project for Nine Below Zero, and David had recently returned from a tour of Japan and the UK with Julia Fordham.

 

A time spent meeting up regularly each week had resulted in a very productive period of songwriting, and so the idea was discussed of producing and recording an album of these new songs together. Part of the inspiration for this was to be able to provide a resource of new music for their local churches - Andy was at Holy Trinity Brompton, and at this time David was at St. Pauls' Onslow square, and both of them were involved in leading their church worship music teams.

 

And so it was that at the end of April, a small 8 track tape machine, keyboards, amps, samplers, computer, mixing desk and guitars were piled into David's flat in Earlham Street, Covent Garden WC2. There was one other piece of equipment that became the most-used and faithful part of the proceedings: a Shure SM58 microphone! It was used for virtually everything ... guitars, vocals, backing vocals, drums (along with one other mic, and AKG414) and mandolin. Andy's engineering skills coaxed some amazingly good sounds out of this wonderful microphone. Drums were set up downstairs in the front room; guitars and mandolins were played and backing vocals and lead vocals all sung in the same room as the tape machine. A little room piled high with equipment, song lyrics and chord charts ...

There followed an intense few weeks of recording. David used his tax money to pay for the musicians, tape and overall production costs, hoping that this was a wise investment, rather than a foolhardy act! It helped to augment the prevailing philosophy of necessity at the time - beg steal or borrow recordings!! (Nothing ventured, nothing gained). Eventually everything had been committed to tape or was safely recorded onto the (vintage!) Akai sampler, and the tracks were finally ready to be mixed.

 

Artwork was commissioned from Wilf Witty who was over in Notting Hill gate working for Chrysalis at the time, and he sent through the final designs which were to surprise so many people ... an album sleeve which was going to be individually fingerprinted by the creators. Your very own individualised, personalised copy. If Andy & David had known then that they would end up fingerprinting some six and a half thousand copies, there may have been some design changes! However, they could not afford a three colour print, so it was a great way of achieving two goals with a bit of ingenuity.

 

During this time there were a few sleepless nights, mulling over all that needed to be done to get the little album out to those who wanted to hear it. Should they take the album to an existing label? Should they release the album themselves on

their own label? And then a bit of inspiration. A little album made in a little room ... Little Room Recordings.

 

And so the idea for Little Room was conceived in the early hours of a sleepless night, and then put to Andy a day or two later to see if he approved. He did, and so the first Little Room recording was sequenced and then mastered by Denis Blackham while he was chief mastering engineer at Porky's' mastering rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue. The first cassette version was released in July 1993, and the CD in early 1994.