5 years of "At The Cold Stores" - in pictures
Whilst looking through some old photos today, we realised that a special anniversary had crept up on us without anyone realising - today (26 Jan 2025) is precisely 5 years since the first recording session for the album that would become At The Cold Stores. It was a really special day for us for lots of reasons!
First of all, it was the first time that we had ever gone into the studio with our "Orchestra" line-up. We had recorded loads of times in our smaller All-Stars line-up, but never with the expanded band featuring more horns, percussion, and strings (in fact, it was only the second day we had ever had a string section play with Down for the Count).
We picked lots of special songs for this session - none more so than the iconic Frank Sinatra classic I've Got You Under My Skin, as arranged for him by Nelson Riddle for the Songs for Swinging Lovers album and performed here by Callum Gillies.
The studio we chose for this recording was The Cold Stores in Kent (where we had also recorded Swing That Music a year or so before) - and it's fair to say it was a tight squeeze! At The Cold Stores is essentially a live album - we were all playing in the same studio on the same day, and most of us were in the same room (the drums were in a separate booth, and the vocalists in another). We nearly had a calamity when we ran out of chairs to sit the musicians on, so had to improvise and turn a few flight cases on their sides for musicians to perch on all day.
We weren't just recording remakes of swing classics - we also had some original arrangements too, including my arrangement of When I Fall In Love which we had premiered at our first Orchestra show the previous July. Here it is sung by Hannah Castleman, featuring a tenor sax solo from Alex Western-King and guitar solo from Sam Ainslie:
The session was a huge undertaking and we couldn't have done it without the amazing studio engineer Ben Thomas (who you might have seen on TV playing guitar for Adele) and our very own sound engineer Jack Childs, captured here in this fabulous arty shot by our bassist John Rixon.
We've all been on quite a journey in the 5 years since this session. Just a few weeks later, we would all be in lockdown - and it would be over 8 months until we'd get to play together again. We had always planned to have a second recording day, but had hoped that it would be just a month or so after the first. When we did return to the studio, we had to socially distance - so recorded the the horns and rhythm on one day, and the strings the next. Even despite that, we'll never forget the second recording day - after the first run-through of the first song we all felt a bit emotional getting to play together again after so long.
At the time of the session, we had only performed one concert in our Orchestra line-up but now have notched up nearly 100 performances. The Orchestra continues to grow, and whilst some people who were there at the first session have moved on to other things, new members have joined us and become a part of the Down for the Count family which now tours up and down the country.
It's been quite a journey - thanks to everyone who has been involved in it, and of course to everyone who has purchased the album. We hope you've enjoyed listening to it as much as we enjoyed creating it - and can't wait to share our next album with you, whenever that may be!
Purchase the album on Bandcamp
About the author
Mike Paul-Smith is the musical director of Down for the Count. He formed the band in 2005 and since then has directed them for performances at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, Cadogan Hall London, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, The London Jazz Festival, Twinwood Festival, and at countless other theatre and jazz club shows.
