Haunted.

Jamie Hartman and Ben Montague.

Jamie Hartman (now finding great success with Rag and Bone Man) and Ben Montague collaborated in the writing of ‘Haunted’ and I produced the track as part of Ben’s album ‘Overcome’. But I had a surprise for Ben. We had been talking about recording live and how exciting it must have been back in the day when the singer recorded live in front of an orchestra for the first time. I thought that’s how we should record ‘Haunted’. I worked on an arrangement that would have only three elements, Piano, String ensemble and voice, to highlight the highly personal lyric and vocal skill that Ben possessed. John Metcalfe and an expanded version of The Duke Quartet (of which John was leader at the time) came to the studio with a string arrangement which, although I had co-written it with John, I had never heard. I had never played the piano on ‘Haunted’ and Ben had never performed the song with this arrangement before. We put Ben in the middle of the studio, turned the red light on, and what you hear on the finished mix is essentially our second take! Just like ‘back in the day’!!