Why I did it. . . .

I grew up in a musical family, both as consumers and as makers. But then everyone was in those days. A piano in the parlour, guitar at Christmas,  dad and uncles singing for beer in the local on a Friday.

Initially, I was heavily influenced by my dad and uncles who would sing post rock’n’roll close harmonies together. In particular my uncle Rod, who could pick up a tune from a record, and play it practically at first listen. He was such a brilliant guitarist  I didn’t stand a chance. He was rumoured to have been in the first rock’n’roll band in the town I grew up in, and this was like living with a celebrity.

I really took up song-writing so I could have control over my own stuff at least, and because I felt so hamfisted playing others’ music in comparison to Rod. I still do. In nineties I was in a rising indie band in the UK, but left before our debut album was released. A footnote of history.

Various other things happened to me. I stopped writing songs.

I started writing seriously again after a break of ten years. Shock and horror. I had to relearn everything I thought I already knew. More shock and horror. I never really learned how to in the first place.

Now, ten years on, I’m cranking out songs with reckless abandonment, publishing on Bandcamp, hassling people on facebook and generally being an uninvited and annoying presence in other peoples’ lives. I love it.

Someone once said to me (and I took it as a challenge, from someone who was suggesting I only do this song-writing lark for a pose) “First you have to work out why you want to write songs.” Because that’s what people do isn’t it, demand that an artist justify themselves. Like if one has a hobby like woodturning or stamp-collecting would they be told: “You have to work out why you want to collect stamps”. They just do it because they like doing it! Isn’t that reason enough? B

But any-way….

I’d already been writing songs for thirty years when this advice was offered, so I thought “Well, it can’t hurt to wonder..”  and I went away and thought about it.

The result was: “I write songs because I have a number of stories to tell, and feel that putting them into songs is the best way to tell them.”

All of my songs are a form of reportage. Stories. I don’t consider a song completed until it has a narrative I can relate to and understand.

My songs are vignettes of life. Often informed by autobiography, they work on the premise that if I’m feeling something, then others out there must have felt similarly about something, and well, they might relate to this song or that.

My songs are the antithesis of ‘cool’ They are ‘anti-cool’. I’m not interested in making music which has to subscribe to a some notion about what is ‘cool’.

In fact, tmy songs are mini-anthems (often) about people who aren’t cool, and who are perhaps uncomfortably aware that they aren’t.

My songs are ill-crafted brocolage (that’s D.I.Y. in French – it just sounds more polished like that). They are produced on a shoestring while I regularly attend the naïve school of art, hoping to one day qualify, and get a grown-up job. as a real musician.

Some will find my stuff decidedly unfashionable. But  I don’t write it for people who are hung up on fashion. Some may find it too romantic. But the world is full of people ‘keepin’ it real’. Some might feel my music does not speak their language.

Well, as long as people have ears to listen with, I’ll just keep plugging away. It’s just what I do.