Tasker & Morton: Twilight Hotel, the single and the album. Check in
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Neil Morton
Forgive the self-indulgence and use of the ‘I’ word. But it is my website and I am allowed occasionally to blow my own trumpet, even if it is not a trumpet solo. My great friend, the singer-guitarist Ian Tasker, and I teamed up to produce an album on Bandcamp: his vocals, his guitar-playing and melodies built around my words.
Welcome to Twilight Hotel whose title track is our Song of the Week at herecomesthesong.com. Another indulgence, admittedly, but I happen to think our single should be playing on the radio, begging to be covered by a discerning band or someone with a bigger fanbase than just our friends and families.
I was reading one of Michael Connelly’s Bosch-Ballard novels called The Waiting on holiday, and one of the chapters ended thus: ‘A hundred miles to go, and nothing more to say.’ The line had to be used in a song. It fit perfectly into this tale of a romantic reunion gone wrong, a road trip back to a happy place at a happy time that disintegrates into ‘a silence that almost screams’. The fact that Connelly borrowed the title of his book from a Tom Petty song made me feel less guilty.
Checked into the Twilight Hotel
With only the baggage of old
Rooms once laden with hope
Now all mirrors and smoke
We were blind to the scope
Of the distance between
A hundred miles to go
That song the radio won’t play
A hundred miles to go
And nothing more to say
I was so impressed when I heard Ian’s early interpretation of the lyric. There was drive, nuance and mood changes that convinced me of its hit potential, if you’ll pardon such a quaint observation. Even more so when the bridge arrives, with Ian invoking his inner Graham Nash or Jackson Browne…
All these trails are going cold
We’re running out of road
We’re running out of road
I love his treatment of the final verse, and its closing doom-laden images:
Neon blinking at the Twilight Hotel
The only sparks of a lonely night
Back at the wheel by first light
Crunch of leaves and leftover dreams
Fragments forgotten beneath
The silence that almost screams
Follow that. Which Ian does serenely. He gives When Did The Dark Invade Your Heart, about a certain despotic world leader, the right degree of menace I was seeking. It’s the first of a number of politically-charged songs that include Spiral Of Life, Middle Way and All Talk.
Loose lips and motor mouths
Turn the sound of yourself up loud
If you were still for just one minute
You might find reality within it
The perils of social media and power of the tech giants are tackled in Algorithm & Blues (‘World ruled by an acronym’) and The Silent Days, which features one of my favourite lines: ‘Anger is all the rage’.
With Lennon we imagined
With Joni we sang the hymn
Peace and love forsaken
We let hate win, we let hate win…
Screaming at the TV
Shouting at your phone
We’ve even violated
The sanctity of home
Anger is all the rage
Anger is all the rage
Anger is all the rage
Take us back to the silent days
There are love songs too, the standout for us being Lift Me Up, sweetly sung, beautifully crafted and sparsely produced. Optimism elbows its way through the bleakness.
The wayside’s become a crowded place
With friends from the best of times
We keep raising a glass to memories
Yours is always fuller than mine…
Don’t blame me for loving sad songs
They can stir the spirits too
But you have the heart of a dancer
It’s time I fell in step with you
You and your hope, lifting me up
You and your hope, lifting me up
As Ian remarked in the liner notes of his 2021 debut album, Losing Track Of Time, what took us so long to collaborate? We met nearly 40 years ago as fellow sports journalists who spent as much time discussing musical favourites as we did football, cricket or tennis. My band days with Breakdown and About Time on Merseyside in the late Seventies and early Eighties remain precious memories but even though a career in journalism took me overseas, the songwriting continued, albeit intermittently, until retirement.
It was during the pandemic when an idea for a song about a world that could not touch began to take shape. Ian had sent me a couple of demos of songs he had reworked and revitalised from his own Seventies/Eighties back catalogue, convinced he had enough material for an album. Make that three albums, and counting. It was an exciting project, and it fired my imagination too. Little did I know that one lyric would lead to an album’s worth.
Love at a distance, how cruel the glass
Longing for laughter, for this fear to pass
We’ll open the door, welcome every face
And embrace, embrace, embrace
Memories have never meant so much
Leaning on the past like a crutch
Touching moments
In a world that cannot touch
A world that cannot touch
Ian rediscovered those musical treasures – most of them written with old friend and drumming bandmate Peter Montieth – in a carrier bag when he was clearing the loft. The Basement Tapes? Listen to the Attic Tapes (or rather Ghosts In The Attic, as he named his third album following Losing Track Of Time and It’s Later Than You Think).
Ian’s musical talents, particularly his guitar work , flair for melody and harmony and imaginative use of Logic Pro, have transformed my lyrics, and I feel honoured to have contributed to his fourth album, Twilight Hotel, in the twilight of our musical lives. From World That Cannot Touch, our first alliance, to Lift Me Up and the anthemic Forever Song, our latest offerings, I hope you enjoy a joint venture that might just inspire a sequel.
How to stream and the buy the album: iantasker.bandcamp.com
The title track is available on my site too: neilmorton.bandcamp.com
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