Newcomers may like to start with the 2005 studio album “Fear of Height”. It’s available all over the place (amazon, iTunes, spotify etc.). Listen to a bit of it and you’ll get a feel for the multitude of styles and influences that I like. 

I wrote everything, I played all the instruments, sing (singed? sung?) all the songs.

Following its dramatic success, I lost faith in making records and tried instead to focus on the music and songs which would entertain an audience. Humor, rhythm, spontaneity, drama, lyrical, musical.  Every time would be different, every time would be unique. For a recording is a facsimile, not the truth, not real, but with good musicians and a good audience, music is as it properly should be, a shared and special experience. 

So now I concentrate on playing live. I can perform solo original material or work with other musicians to produce original interpretations of a wide variety of material (call them covers if you prefer). I like all styles, though some people have described my acoustic guitar work as a cross between flamenco, punk, jazz and folk all rolled into one. 

Currently my instruments include electric bass (upright) and acoustic guitar and also guitar synth. I've been re-discovering the tres recently and have enjoyed a few evenings mixing things up with it. At previous times I have also played mandolin, banjo, french horn, trumpet, any number of percussion bits and pieces, and finally, and of course, kazoo!

Also, I have a mobile recording studio. Which I'm aware contradicts the point I made earlier, but which gets us back to this website and the contents of this page.

Because recordings are necessary for us to share. We cannot all be in the same place at the same time. (hey, maybe we can - but that's a different story to be told in a different place). 

Some recordings are, of course, marvelous. The engineering and production arts are musical instruments in their own right. But for me it is a laborious chore, so I don't spend a lot of effort on them.

Therefore what follows, my patient friend, is a chronological list of some of my original songs (with a few odd covers) that I've recorded in an ad-hoc demo fashion. They are not polished studio recording, think of them as demos, or tatty old copies of stuff I wanted to make a record of, share with friends, work out harmonies, add some instruments or just send to my mum. (Who is my biggest fan and also my greatest influence. And if you think that's a bit cheesy, is not your mother these things also?)

I started doing this in December 2016, and it takes a while to get round to adding things. 

Monday, 7th May 2018

Is it true... Only the Poor pay taxes?

Everybody knows PowerPoint.

I've uploaded a rough recording of Dancing Girls and also an old recording of The Medusa's Song.

Is there is a place for us?

I've recorded and uploaded "I Wish I Were a Dog". This was written ages ago (~2014), but was never recorded. However it's popular at live gigs, so I've added it here.

Here is "Theresa Won't Go". Woke up on Saturday with this going on in my head... or maybe it was in the mix of radio and sleep. Another mike-in-a-room recording - but I put it in a video!

Added my contribution to political discourse in advance of the forthcoming election: "Fire". A produced recording. i.e. harmonies, bells, whistles etc.

"The Generic Revolution Song of 2017" is my take on the way the world seems to be going. Written to be inscrutable on any side of the current argument. Didn't work though, I think my leanings are fairly clear.

Here is a version of "The Enchanted Poppy Boys", sung in A and roughly recorded. I'm going to do a more produced version later this year.

This song is called "Still Life, or A Lament for 2016". Let's hope 2017 turns out a bit better.