After several months of writing, recording, mixing, mastering, designing and duplicating in the summer of this year, it's great to be able to announce that my third album "While we sleep tonight" is available to buy. I know lots of people already have the album and I'm really grateful for the kind words of encouragement about it.

All my good intentions regarding blogging lots in the process didn't come to much, so I thought I would fill you in on some of the stuff I meant to tell you at the time!

Records like this are really all about the songs, and I think it's the songs that I'm most proud of. Some of the songs on this record have been around for a while - songs like "Extremists of love and grace" and "What you're gonna do today" have been in the live set for a year or more. Others were brand new, and I'm having to "learn" them to play them live now. Once I'd decided to make the record, new songs started to come, up until the very last moment.

Over the next few months I'll do a series of "song-by-song" posts, so look out for those...

When it came to recording the songs, it was a different process to the previous records again, and lots of fun. I'd set myself a deadline of the August Bank Holiday weekend to get the finished CDs back, and we just made it.

It was early June when I set up the mics and recorded guide acoustic guitars and guide vocals for 14 or 15 of my best songs. As I've mentioned before on the blog, I enlisted the help of producer Phil Baggaley as an extra pair of ears in the production process - I really appreciated his attention to detail and input on what each song needed. It's good to have someone else to bounce ideas off, and I'm not decisive enough to go-it-alone.

Having chosen the 11 best songs, and stared at the diary, we made some calls to check out the availability of the players we wanted to use.

I called my regular drummer, James Middleton, who'd played so well on the last couple of albums, and often plays live with me, but we couldn't get the dates together in the tight window we had available, so we put in a call to Terl Bryant - a great session drummer and percussionist, who's worked with John Paul Jones, Iona and many others. He even played on a "Louise" album I remember listening to growing up (you can probably hear the influences...). We booked two days with Terl, and the next week Phil and I were set up in his barn, having him lay down rhythm tracks for 10 of the songs.

Here's me and Phil in Terl's Barn studio:

While we were down South, we grabbed the only available full date for months with keyboard player Mark Edwards, who was about to go into a run of shows at the National Theatre that would keep him busy all summer. Mark played some great hammond, accordion, glockenspiel, piano and other interesting noises, and his creativity and sensitivity to the song added so much. As Phil often says, he's a genius, and it was just fun to watch him at work.

Then I went off on holiday for a week, which was jolly nice! (While I was away recording, my lovely wife packed everything for the holiday and looked after the kids, which I'm very grateful for - I couldn't have done it without her).

On our return, it was back down to Eastbourne again for another half-day of keyboards. The Monday morning traffic around London was terrible, and despite leaving at 4am, Phil and I didn't get there until gone 11. Mark finished off keyboards for the album, and we took our hard disk upstairs to bassist Mark Prentice, who played on my first 2 albums as well as countless other recordings. I love Mark's playing - creative in all the ways you want a bass player to be creative, with little lines and interesting chord substitutions, but without getting too busy. Always has a great tone too.

We headed North, leaving Mark to play his bass parts and send them to us over the interwebs.

Next was acoustic guitars, and Phil and I spent three days here laying those down. First job would be to lay down the "main" part - the one I normally play when I sing the song solo, and then to layer up a few more. I was surprised to find my Taylor guitar being used on most of the songs, but it sounded the best on those days. We added some slide acoustic, and Phil's 100 year old banjo, which sounds great but needs tuning every take.

Then vocals. These days I probably see myself as a songwriter first, then guitarist, and then list singing somewhere down my list of abilities along with cooking and riding a bike, so it was a bit daunting to stand up in front of a studio mic and sing - I hadn't done it for a long time (my last album was recorded live). I was struggling with a sore throat and a cold, and so honey, lemon, vocalzone, hot water were my friends those few days. In the end, we got there, and I'm really pleased with the vocal sound on this album.

Then it was electric guitars - again, I felt my electric playing was a bit rusty, but I'd recently bought a new guitar and was itching to try it out on the album. It's one of the new Tyler Variaxes, which probably has gasps from purists, but I love it (apart from I think it looks pretty ugly, but that doesn't much matter for studio stuff). I ran the Variax through my usual rig of pedals and through to my Orange AD15 in the next room. We ended up using a lot of Gretsch sounds from the Variax, as well as some Tele ones, and changing to a baritone tuning on a couple of songs. We used my actual Tele too on a few tunes.

For a couple of tracks, I set up my laptop rig and played the Variax straight into that. Got some good tones that way too. I dialed in the "Jazzbox" setting and a clean Fender sound and had rather too much fun on "They go together".

For backing vocals, we packed up the laptop and headed to Lincoln to record vocalists Hannah Holland and James Middleton (who has a great voice as well as being a great drummer). They're brother and sister and their voices blend really well. Hannah's voice is featured heavily on a couple of later tracks, and adds another texture to the songs.

Then there was one more day of recording - a "bits and bobs" day. The song "Making Good" still didn't quite sound finished, and we hadn't had chance to get Mark and Terl to play on it, so I played a bit of shaker (a beer-can shaker in fact) and some accordion (which is pretty difficult, to be honest, and only sounds OK through the magic of Pro Tools), then some mandolin. Three things I never play, unless they're being recorded for the album.

Then Rob Bullock mixed the album in Derby, assisted by Phil, while I worked on the album artwork and got everything ready to send to Breed who were handling duplication. I opted for a "Da Vinci File" case, which is like a little record sleeve. It feels a bit more special than a plastic case, and is better for the planet too.

A quick trip down to Essex for the mastering session with Nigel Palmer at Lowland Masters, and then back home.

Many hours, many miles, several gigabytes and it's finished! Really grateful to those who've already bought the album. And now you can listen here: