Eagle-Eye Cherry – Living In The Present Future

This album represents one of the highest points of my musical career.

The Preacher Boy album Crow had been released. The touring was over. The missus and I were moving to the wilds of Western Ireland.

En route, I played one solo acoustic show at the 12 Bar in London. The next morning, I found myself signed to a top-shelf booking agency.

A handful of weeks later, via a payphone on the Coast Road, I was asked if I wanted to go on the road supporting Eagle-Eye Cherry, whose song “Save Tonight” was at the time the most popular song on the planet. I said yes. Within days, I was in Paris, walking out on stage at the famed Olympia all by my lonesome, to face a crowd that didn’t know I was on the bill. I got an encore at the end of my set.

Fast forward a year or so. Eagle-Eye’s manager calls. Did I want to write a song with Eagle-Eye? I did. Turns out, Rick Rubin wanted to produce Eagle-Eye, but Eagle-Eye hadn’t had a chance to write hardly anything new—he’d been on the road for two years. I flew to New York, settled in with Eagle-Eye in a Tribeca apartment, and tried to write a song.

We wrote 6. Rick Rubin wanted to hear them. He wanted to come over. Eagle-Eye was so nervous, he asked me to leave for a while, until he know how it was going to go. He called me later and said it was going great, could I hurry back? I hurried back. We played all 6 songs for Rick Rubin while he sat on the couch. He loved them all.

Fast forward a few days, and I was at The Magic Shop. The Magic Shop! With Rick Rubin producing. With Eagle-Eye and the band that had recorded Save Tonight. The band I’d toured across 17 countries with. We recorded all 6 songs. Plus 6 more. We were at The Magic Shop. It was magic.

I am so grateful to Eagle-Eye for this record. For everything we did together. I am so grateful.

~

In case you don’t recognize the cover, the album was released in the US in slightly different form, as “Present/Future.”