Domestic Departures by Bernie Hayes Quartet

Domestic Departures is the long-awaited follow-up to Bernie's debut album. Every Tuesday, Sometimes Sunday came out in October 1999 to across-the-board acclaim and strong record sales. On this new album Bernie will be 'sharing the stage' with his Quartet; every track of the album features the band - John Encarnacao, Bill Gibson and Jess Ciampa - who have been playing live with Bernie since the release of Every Tuesday, Sometimes Sunday.

Bernie: "The first solo album was a chance to record songs that I'd coveted for a long time, as well as recording my own stuff. Initially I was quite open to the idea of using a similar format this time around, but when I thought about the songs I'd written since the first album it seemed to me that they all belonged together."

Unlike its predecessor, which was acoustic-based and had songs spanning twenty year's worth of songwriting, Domestic Departures is given the full band treatment and features twelve songs, the bulk of which have been written over the last three years.

Bernie: "I guess a whole lot of things had to fall into place. Having the right songs was definitely an important factor, but I guess it took that long to gel in my mind that I wanted to make a band record and for it not to be the same approach as the last album."

Domestic Departures was co-produced and recorded by Genevieve Maynard with help from Peter O'Doherty and includes the previously released single Your Green Light (hac98) which was co-produced by Nic Dalton and mixed by Paul McKercher.

Bernie: "The last album started as a solo project and sorta metamorphosed into a multi-guest extravaganza. This one is the result of playing with the same group of people for three years now and really having an easy understanding of what we can do together. John, Jess and Bill have been so brilliant live I really couldn't contemplate leaving out their contributions to the music. I've found a group of people who really are able to get the best out of each song, who are creative in their own right, who aren't just doing the paint-by-numbers thing."

Bernie: "Heading off to the airport to do some shows in Melbourne we drove under the Domestic Departures sign and I thought: yes, that's what the album's all about. It's about romantic departures and life travels and deaths and goodbyes...A friend told me the second album is always an on-the-road record. Well, hopefully there's more than that here but certainly that's an element."

Half A Cow is an independent record label from the East Coast of Australia. Run by musician Nic Dalton, Half A Cow has been releasing music since 1990. More releases can be found at https://viasatellitedownloads.bandcamp.com

halfacow.com.au