This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News
Mark Owen and Geri Halliwell go solo in sheds
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 10 April 2013
In these times of austerity, everyone has to make cuts. As a result, Mark Owen and Geri Halliwell are pitching in by recording their new solo material not in plush, multi-room studios, but in more modest surroundings. Owen in a “rabbit hutch” at the bottom of his garden, Halliwell in a “magic shed” in Wales.
Owen is busy working on his first solo LP since 2003, apparently. And, according to The Sun, work on the new record, ‘The Art Of Doing Nothing’, is being undertaken in the Take That-er’s back garden, in a state of the art “canvas”-clad studio he calls the “rabbit hutch”, so that’s nice and erm… ‘DIY’. Apparently Mark’s few available pennies have instead gone on paying Alt-J collaborator Charlie Russell and jazz artist Ren Harveiu, who – says a Sun spy – will both feature on ‘… Doing Nothing’.
Halliwell, meanwhile, has looked further than her own back yard and driven to Wales in search of the right spot to write some new solo material. Writing on her blog, the former Spice Girl said: “I drove through the rolling hills of Wales to a ‘ginger bread’ house, and was welcomed by a sparkling woman named Amy Wadge (imagine Ellie Goulding as a mother, who plays guitar and piano) with two little angels wrapped around her ankles. Instantly my doubt melted, her house was cosy, full of love and memories. We then went to the back garden to her ‘magic shed’ (this is where she wrote with Ed Sheeran – ‘Gold Rush’)”.
Actually, the songwriting done, Halliwell is now recording her new album in a plush studio, but admitting that would spoil the set-up of this story. Which means that not only has Geri refused to cut costs in these difficult times, she’s made this report factually inaccurate. Honest Geri, how could you?
