‘SO/LO’ new album from Li’l Chuck The One Man Skiffle Machine
SO/LO is the fourth album release from Christchurch based David Thorpe, the genuine One Man Band, AKA Li’l Chuck The One Man Skiffle Machine.
SO/LO is the first Li’l chuck release since MONO in 2019; an album recorded in a 1950’s studio in England with one microphone direct to 1/4 inch tape.
In SO/LO, the 14 original tracks are laid down in true one man band style with all instruments played and recorded simultaneously. In fact, SO/LO has been a 100% one man band project, Thorpe wrote, performed, engineered and mixed the whole album alone, well, ‘one man and his dog’ with the assistance of his faithful mutt Bo at his side in the studio.
Thorpe also created all the hand made artwork and filmed / edited the two videos for the singles You Need a Good Kick Up the Arse and Dog Tricks.
In the almost 5 year gap between recording Li’l Chuck albums David haven’t been standing still. He has recorded and released an entire instrumental harmonica album under the guise of David Thorpe – Harmonica. He has recorded and assistant produced an album for now Sydney based James Scott / First Time Caller, and he has been involved in numerous other recording projects, videos and band projects including The Skeatles.
“I wasn’t intending to do another Li’l Chuck album, I thought I’d done everything I could with my mouth, hands and feet but a strange thing happened…
I’ve been having longer and longer periods of feeling blue, blue enough to get professional help. I’d lost a lot of confidence and my identity and hadn’t written any news songs for ages, then it hit me. To write songs, I have to create the time to sit down and write, something I hadn’t done. I was busy with life and family and spent all my free time sailing on Lyttelton harbour.
One day, I decided to allow time to sit down and write a song to prove to myself I could still do it. By the time the kids got home from school I’d written 8 songs, then another 2 followed while I was noodling and practicing the 8. A mate challenged me to get the word Lenticular into a song, so I wrote another, that made 11. I had some others in my back pocket and that resulted in an albums worth.
The album has a few songs that are a little heavier than some may expect of me. I decided to have no instrumental boundaries and added electric guitar, snare, diddley bow and a few other bits and bobs to my usual set up of resonator guitar, kick, hi hat, harp and vox.”
