Cherry Beat - Recording Sessions (Part Fifteen - The Band's First Reunion)

September 1998
Fourteen years after the band Cherry Beat split up, the leaders of the band Peter McDonald and Sam Whitby got together to discuss a possible band reunion. All those past years without playing together as a group had certainly seemed to ease the tensions that had happened between them in the late 70's - early 80's.

While they knew that a band reunion would not be easy, they felt that it could certainly be possible, provided they were willing to work together, and provided they were able to get some additional musicians to play, unless either Torquil Dohrn, the band's longstanding lead guitarist, or Devon O'Connell, the band's longstanding drummer were willing to rejoin the band.

Both fellow ex-members of Cherry Beat were invited to rejoin the group, but both Torquil and Devon turned down the opportunity to rejoin. With Gregory Dogan back as the band's producer, and Chudley Maron - who was also the band's original producer - back as the band's music supervisor, the band knew that until they could find more band members to join, they would need to either play all the instruments themselves via overdubbing, or employ session musicians.

8th September 1998
With Peter McDonald and Sam Whitby back together as a group, the band held their first recording session in over fourteen years on this day. As a warm up, they recorded a couple of cover versions on this day, instead of original compositions.

The said recordings were a cover of a Rockabilly song "Rock This Town" written by Brian Setzer and originally recorded by Stray Cats. And an old 50's song "Judy Drownded" which was written and originally recorded by Irving Burgie.

"Rock This Town" was completed on this day, while future overdubs would be needed to complete "Judy Drownded".

The main reason "Judy Drownded" wasn't completed on this day was because the band was unsure exactly what instruments were played in the original recording, and they felt that to record a decent recording of their own, they needed to use a similar lineup of instruments.

Luther Canup and Percy Duncan, two session musicians that had previously performed on certain past Cherry Beat recordings would play on the band's recordings of "Rock This Town" and "Judy Drownded".