The Housekeeping Society in the wilderness...

Written by Spence

The prospect of a musical weekend away has been on the cards for a couple of years, but in November 2009, with the newly named Housekeeping Society in the initial phase of writing their debut record, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make the suggestion a reality. The plan was simple – three blokes, a load of instruments, one isolated location and plenty of supplies.



For two-thirds of the Housekeeping Society, Hurst Green (near Clitheroe) in Lancashire may as well have been Timbuktu. Fortunately, being driven into the village by someone with local knowledge (Mr Mack, in the car with the whistling roof-rack), who could navigate the narrow bridges and locate the lodgings (having detoured via the pub to collect Ric who, in all honesty, didn’t have a hope in hell of finding the cottage on his own), images of being stranded in the middle of nowhere thankfully didn’t eventuate. And while the cottage we were staying in wasn’t quite the isolated out-house I’d pictured, in darkness it might as well have been the only house for miles. Stepping out for some night-time air (translation: off to the pub), torches were essential, the solitary streetlight only shed its guiding beam so far.

So, a little village in the glorious countryside; similar (well, a bit less industrial) I presume to where our record’s protagonist would have been living. He possibly wouldn’t have been faced with the dilemmas of what to choose from the The Bayley Arms’ generous lunch/dinner menu however. Not such a fine choice of ales, but fortunately bottled supplies of Leeds Best had come along for the ride (should Leeds Brewery be looking for a band to sponsor/mentor, the Housekeeping Society would be interested in entering into negotiations).



Fellow musicians to whom the tale has been told have responded wistfully to the concept of finding a location out of the usual comfort zone and setting out to spend a weekend working up new songs from scratch. The reality was blissfully just that – setting up the instruments in the living room of the cottage, playing through what we already had and jamming up new material, either from ideas we’d individually brought in, or pulled out of thin air. Ric brought along a Korg, which was the biggest sonic development. It single-handedly transformed my initial ideas for a song called ‘Civic Pride!’ (I’m hoping the exclamation mark makes it to the final cut), which started out taking our March Greens hit Cinders as stylistic basis before undergoing transformations that turned it into a 60s-pop pastiche. It’ll be one for the kids in the front row at the gigs fo’ sho’. Ric brought in an idea of a song that switched liberally between 3/4 and 4/4, which baffled and (almost certainly will continue to baffle) all three of the band at various points. It goes without saying that it’s a fine tune – indeed, one thing which everything adheres to is a fine sense of melody. Even the Korg-led instrumental that sounds like something Air foolishly left off Moon Safari has the kind of nagging refrain that’ll set up camp in most peoples’ minds. Air, I hear you say? On a concept about 1880s millworkers? Yeah, well, we’re pushing the eclectic side of things here, so aside from that, we have some Billy-Joel-70s-singer-songwriter-piano tunes, a ukulele-led ode to the industrial revolution and the afore-mentioned Monkees moment (among other things).

Lots of rough recording and video footage was captured, nothing especially incriminating, you’ll be disappointed to know. We were even quite respectful while doing a spot of recording in the church, leaving out our Muppets covers and focusing instead on the barbershop-trio stylings of Same Old Same Old (with Ric on church organ, no less).

Many important issues were discussed and put to rights, including confirming once and for all that the north of England is better than the south, the joys of watching plane crashes on Youtube, and the most pressing matter – configurations should the Housekeeping Society chaps ever be presented with the girls from Friends. These issues matter, dammit.

We returned to our respective homes the other (right) side of the Pennines with the knowledge that we have a good EP’s worth of material under our belts, if not more. That dream of a concept double-album may not be so unlikely after all. Our 1880s millworker would be proud.

The Housekeeping Society in the public eye...

Written by Ivan

On 2nd November, 2009 The Housekeeping Society played their first public gig. Given that the new material mainly tells the story of the son of a Victorian Mill owner it seemed appropriate firstly to be playing in the Victorian model village of Saltaire, and secondly to be playing at the opening of an exhibition of contemporary fashion and fabric based art.



Magic Number Three, was full in equal measure of familiar faces and some new would-be devotees to progressive folk pop. The set contained three of the new songs plus classics from Ric and Spencer’s recent work. Given that probably no more than an hour of collective rehearsal had gone into the new songs they felt good to play and half an hour flashed by.

In conclusion, Saltaire’s fashionistas are clearly not fazed by the odd nine minute prog folk odyssey. Where will the Society strike next?

Who the hell do The Housekeeping Society think they are?

Written by Ric

Hello, my name is Ric Neale and I am in a band called the Housekeeping Society. We thought it would be a good idea to explain a little bit about who we are and what we’re trying to achieve in this new musical project. The Housekeeping Society came into existence in the summer of 2009, but the three members had already formed a strong musical alliance long before that…

As well as me the band features Spencer Bayles. Spence (as he is lovingly known) had been the main songwriting force behind Leeds band Last Night’s TV http://www.lntvweb.co.uk/ for many years and I started to work with him when we met, bizarrely enough, on an internet chat forum. Despite being warned off going out for drinks with men I met on the internet by friends, I persisted and we went out on a “man-date” that consisted of us going out for a few pints and talking about music. It was pretty clear that we had a lot of musical heroes in common and so I asked Spence to come and play bass for me as part of my solo project http://www.ricneale.co.uk/ . I had just finished my second album and was doing a few gigs to promote it. Spence was not initially a bass player, preferring the acoustic guitar and vocals but he acquitted himself admirably. Spence and I went through a number of band members before finding the third member of the Housekeeping Society; Mr Ivan Mack.

Ivan has played percussion as part of the Ric Neale Band for about three or four years. We met via an ex-girlfriend of mine and then shared a few gigs when I played on a bill with his previous band; Bradford based Rent, who have since disbanded. In fact the first gig I played with Ivan was when I deputized on keyboards for Rent and we became firm friends, and drinking buddies, from then on. Ivan started playing percussion with me and Spence, along with Stu Hudson from the band Loqui (who me and Ivan have both been in at one time or another) and we started to record my next record “Someone Else’s Home” all four of us worked really hard on the record and over time Stu’s other commitments took him on to pastures new and three of us were left to add the finishing touches to the record.

At the same time as recording my record, Spence began working on a new EP under the name “The March Greens” http://www.themarchgreens.co.uk/ and he invited Ivan and I to take part. Three marvellous songs were recorded and released on iTunes around about the same time that “Someone Else’s Home” was released. It was around April 2009 at this point and the three of us went out to celebrate our respective musical ventures. Whilst very drunk one Saturday night at North Bar in Leeds, the idea of us joining forces to become one band was tabled. This idea was further discussed on the following Sunday over lunch where a number of issues were talked about – all of us had been in bands before and had had similar problems with people not pulling their weight or the way that labour was divided. We agreed that we were all a bit/lot older now and we had been working together long enough to know that we would not let one another down. The unanimous decision was reached – we had become the least impressive super-group of all time.

Having decided that we were going to start creating music together rather than just get one another to play on our separate pieces we set about trying to find a theme that we could write about. We all decided that if we were going to make an album together we shouldn’t just write separate songs about our own lives or experiences, we wanted to create a group of songs that hung together under one consistent theme. We discussed at length various ideas by talking about the things we had in common. All three of us have moved away from our home towns to go to university and have ended up making so many friends and contacts that we ended up staying where we studied. This made us think of all the good, and bad things about this. It made us think about how things have changed, as in the past what we have done was simply not an option for many people. We started talking about the big mill towns in the north of England and the way that mill owners built mills, and then surrounded them with affordable housing and schools to attract workers. This all meant that many generations would naturally carry on living and working in the same place as their parents. This interested all of us and we got thinking about how different our lives would be if we had stayed in our home towns doing the same jobs as our fathers, and grand fathers.

A bit more research was done before the pub quiz at the Midnight Bell in Leeds (which we miraculously won) and we started to solidify our idea. We would write a group of songs about the experiences of a community working in a northern Mill town in the late 1880’s. We chose that period as it was the time when ideas started to spread more freely via the development of cheaper printing presses making newspapers and magazines (in fact the first edition of “Good Housekeeping” came out in 1885 from which we got our band name), the record player and the first cars were coming in to wider production.

The songs we then began to write were not specifically about working in a mill but were, instead based in broader themes inspired by our concept – songs about longing, about feeling trapped, about realising that there might be a different world out there. Musically, this project was also a bit of departure for us. For starters I am playing piano and keyboards rather than guitar as I have done on all my solo stuff. Also, Ivan is taking far more control of samples and drum loops he’s been building out of found sounds. Spence and I are sharing lead vocals and all three of us are doing a lot more complex harmonies.

All of us have been very excited in our early rehearsals and we can’t wait to start recording some of these new tunes and see where this project takes us.