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Medhin finished her vocals and left for Milan today. God, this is getting long! The more we record stuff, the more it seems there is even more stuff to do. Peter is now working extra hours, and the album grinds its way towards the end, The end of the recordings, that is: we still need to mix, master, design a cover, take new publicity photos, shoot a video… But I am not in panic. I’m pretty confident, really. I’m not in panic. I SAID I AM NOT IN F@%%% PANIC, RIGHT?

Medhin is here, and singing her own verse in Strade d’appennino as I write. We were missing some highland Eritrean-Milanese flavour in the album… though, of course, Medhin’s already done most of her work: that’s on the programming, before we even came to Rubiera to record.

I had not seen her for more than a month, and I was really missing her. I can see that LJ, too, is happy that she’s with us. It feels good to be reunited.

Our album is being transglobalized as I write: Hami, the rhytmic engine of legendary border-crossing, ground-breaking band Transglobal Underground, is here and kicking beats. He’s worked with Peter before (on a Simple Minds album), and we’ve bumped into each other a few times while on tour last year, so here he is now. And he has brought along with him new some TGU stuff that he wants Lady Jessica to play on! We are deeply honoured, as we really follow and respect that band.

He flew over from London this morning and played some brilliant grooves on Non di sola andata and he is now tackling a set of instrumental traditional tunes that we call Dai e dai for want of a better title. See where this gets us!

Nice coincidence, that Peter thought of adding a (low) male backing vocal in the chorus of Strade d’Appennino just as my old friend and former bandmate Cisco Bellotti was hanging out at the studio! I simply called him in, and five minutes later he was singing:

Strade d’appennino, strade di casa
[Roads of the apennines, roads of home]

Cisco and I played for nearly ten years in Italian folk-rock band Modena City Ramblers, which I quit six years ago to start the FF project. Now he’s quit too, and it brings back a lot of (mostly) good memories to have his voice in the album! He sounded a bit moved too… old friends should stick together!

Ho appena finito di cantare una delle canzoni piu’ belle del nostro disco, inutile dire che sono tutte davvero belle, ma questa mi ha emozionato moltissimo. “Strade d’Appennino” il suo titolo,
nostalgico il suo sapore, verde e rosso i suoi colori, la grappa mi ha aiutato ad alleviare il suono nasale causato da un brutto raffreddore. Ho riso, ho pianto ho bevuto.
Grazie Jessica, grazie Alberto, grazie Peter e grazie Marino.