SOLO RECORDINGS

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I’ve been a ‘singer-songwriter’ of sorts since I was about 12 years old, when I first learned some basic guitar chords and started dreaming up songs, and in my later teens and early 20s I was usually the guitarist and lead singer in at least one band. (Sometimes I played a sideman role instead, on guitar or bass and bvs, but most of the time I also had my own band going at the same time)…

But I didn’t get around to putting out a solo recording of one of my own songs until 2016, when I released a single called ‘This Is Where You Need To Be’. It took me six more years to follow that up, and in 2022 I released four singles, which were instalments towards a debut album, which will be out in early 2025…

Why did it take me so long? That’s a question I could find several plausible answers to, but one is that I was always also working on other projects, usually several at once, as sideman, producer or something else. Spreading myself too thinly perhaps; or gaining invaluable experience…

I was also always in search of a sound, and never satisfied for long enough with any of my attempts to find it. Setting my sights too high certainly. I needed to relax and do what I could already do, at least some of the time…

Meanwhile however I wrote a lot of songs, and I was always recording, and I have quite a number of partially complete, in some cases almost finished albums that I intend to share with the world at some point. It’s an ongoing project to finish, and meanwhile to continue releasing new material…

[My version of ‘Shipbuilding’, the Clive Langer and Elvis Costello song that was originally recorded by Robert Wyatt, which you can find down the page, is an oddity here, because it’s a solo recording – everything on it is sung and played by me – but it’s part of a collaborative album, ‘Souvenir Of England: music from the stage production’ with Marianne DIssard; and to confuse things further it was released in between singles from my solo debut album.]