Clare Teal: A launch and a lunch meeting with a music legend

Jazz clubs, not to mention jazz musicians, lose a bit of their sparkle in the glare of daylight.

However, the upstairs room at Ronnie Scotts looked great. Two huge raised glass windows in the roof let in the beautiful sunshine.

Last Thursday, we had the media and industry launch for Hey Ho (the new record). I hate album launches, mainly because they never feel real. Singing your heart out in the middle of the day to a bunch of hard-core, world-weary music-industry types, who are often more interested in the quality of the canapés and the quantity of the wine than your new record, can be frankly terrifying.

This time round I’m thrilled to say it was very different. We asked Sir Michael Parkinson if he would be kind enough to introduce me, which he did most eloquently and warmly. Radio 2 were out in force and made lots of encouraging noises.

We kicked off with a samba version of Moloko’s Sing It Back, then segued into Try A Little Tenderness written in 1932, before bouncing back to the present day with Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars, finishing with a New Orleans-style rendition of Ray Noble’s, Love Is The Sweetest Thing with special guest, saxophone legend Pee Wee Ellis.

We then played the new single, and the rest of the record, loudly over the PA.

People stayed on chatting well after the sausages on sticks were all gone, which I took to be a good sign.

I was made up to see Rod Argent, founder member of the Zombies, in the audience.

Odessey and Oracle is one of my all-time favourite records, and I was proud to include our version of Care Of Cell 44 on Hey Ho.

Having made a respectable career singing songs of the 1930s and 1940s, meeting the writers of said songs isn’t something I’ve had much experience of.

Thankfully, he liked it but it’s not always the case; a friend of ours received a written critique from one of his song-writing heroes detailing in no uncertain terms all the bits they didn’t like about his attempt. Nice.

Hey Ho.