Henley Square
Before Fergus Maximus, there was Stumbletrip. And before Stumbletrip there was Sideways Glance.
It started when I wrote Henley Square as an entry in a SCALA competition for songs about parts of South Australia. I got together with my friend Grant Shillabeer and he figured out those awesome chords. The song ended up being a co-winner in the Adelaide category and we had the opportunity to go into Mixmasters Studio and record it. Unfortunately, the session dates ended up being when Grant was away on his honeymoon (this was 1997/98, back in the previous millennium). We didn’t have any control over the recording session so I ended up recording the track with my brother Mark (who wrote the killer arrangement) and some members of Spank You Very Much, one of the many bands he was playing in at the time (Damien Steele Scott on bass, Andrew Bignel on kit and Dave Innocente on guitar).
It sounded great but I’ve always regretted listening to the producer tell me I needed to change the chorus. The song as written only mentioned Henley Square at the beginning of the first line. I caved and rewrote it as suggested and I’ve never been entirely happy with that.
Anyway, Sideways Glance the band formed out of that songwriting session. After a while we enlisted our mate Jamie Harrison on bass and the road toward Fergus Maximus really began. But that’s a story for another day.
Last Friday night at Woodstock Kym, Jamie and IÂ pulled Henley Square out of the folder and blew the dust off it. A wonderful, balmy night was a perfect setting to reminisce:
Henley Square, 10pm Tuesday, still over 30 degrees …
This is where I belong
Ferg