Behind the Music

a grassroots artist’s experience
writing songs and making records…

Defence Cuts

The songs on this disc were composed during a period of rehablitation. It was like making a suit of armour before re-entering the arena of life. I tried to move the music on to a new level following the inconsistency, over-complication and plain weirdness which characterized my formative songwriting years.

All the songs were produced, and most of them arranged, by Dan Simmons, who I met some years earlier in the Suffolk Youth Jazz Orchestra. Dan was coming from the percussive, musical, rhythmic angle, while my area was more conceptual, verbal and melodic. The end product is as much his work as it is mine.

I had just dropped out of music college and inevitably regained my interest in music. I was still working at my jazz piano and singing and playing mandolin at folk sessions in rural pubs. Most of the songs were written on mandolin or piano.

Away from this, I was studying philosophy, which had some bearing on the lyrics, and working at a motorway service area. This was a good way of keeping my feet on the ground while my head was in the clouds.

Warm and Normal

In January 1992 I boarded a full-size aeroplane for the first time and landed in New Jersey, where I was to be an exchange student. I enjoyed the ‘coffeehouses’ they used to have at William Paterson College, which featured poetry, spoken word, jazz and songwriters.

After my second stint in New Jersey, I went to Toronto, where I started busking on mandolin and playing at open stages. It had less of a ‘beat’ feel to it than New Jersey but there was a supportive community which encouraged many of us to write and play songs. One poet, Vince McNeil, who used to perform at open stages, let me put one of his pieces, ‘Money’, to music.

During the summers of ‘92 and ‘93 back in England, Warm and Normal was recorded. Dan Simmons did 3 funky arrangements, some East Anglian Londoners contributed to the folkier songs and the tracks Pandora, 605, I Don’t Like Money, Army Song and Coast Away were given a rock setting.

Warm and Normal was used as my ’special exercise’ at the culmination of my Performance Arts degree at Middlesex University in 1994.

Bahaudin

During a visit to Iona, where the Christian missionary St Columba founded a monastery in 563, some spiritual (or so I thought) songs emerged, which were to form the nucleus of my first venture into CD production.

These were recorded as demos in the music room of my folks’ house by Dan Simmons. It was sort of like the old days, except there was to be no synthetic backing, it was gonna be ‘rootsy’ (meaning it would have real instruments).

There then followed an expensive, protracted but worthwhile recording process at Frog studios in Warrington, Merseyside featuring some highly-skilled people. I didn’t come up with any more spiritual songs but I did the best I could and the writing styles were nothing if not varied.

Me and a friend went on a photo shoot at the time of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in parts of Britain. I remember standing in the Yorkshire Dales dressed as a monk and a vicar getting out of his Land Rover and shouting at us to get off the grass!

Armed with plenty of plush new product, I went on another holiday (3 years after the Scottish trip) and played in New Jersey, Syracuse and Toronto, fighting off headaches all the way and playing new stuff on the old mandolin.

A while later I heard from a fellow whose name really is Bahaudin (pronounced BA-HOW-DIN). He’s an economics lecturer in Florida and he found me while looking for his name on the internet. He recently told me there’s a ‘city of Bahaudin’ in Afghanistan. The original Bahaudin, who died in 1389, was the founder of a branch of Sufism.

If You Want Love (Have Mine)

From 2000-02, I contributed some lyrics and melodies to music composed by Mike Pierce-Goulding, who I knew from Middlesex University. Only 2 tracks saw the light of day, Miserere, which was on my first myspace playlist, and Altitude. I included the latter on the EP ‘If You Want Love (Have Mine)’. Most of the songs from these sessions will never be heard.

Another collaboration, this time with a lyricist who I never met, yielded what I thought were 4 good songs. I made a plan to record them locally with ex-New Model Army member and Bradford grassroots music activist Robb Heaton but then fell out with the lyricist so once again the tracks didn’t see daylight.

I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t come up with some upbeat accessible lyrics and write music to match, so 3 songs were written to be used as a demo and also as a self-contained EP. These were supplemented by the afore-mentioned Altitude and an alternate version of the title track with an electro backing.

Kill or Cure / An Orphan’s Song

Following a series of fairly challenging gigs encompassing West Yorkshire, New Jersey, Toronto, London and Suffolk in 2006 I stopped performing and did some in-depth listening to recorded music by the likes of Joe Canzano and now-defunct East Anglian band The Score, with whom I shared a bill in Ipswich in May 2006. I was getting a lot of pleasure from independently-made CDs, which eventually brought me round to the idea of recording again.

Classes in Buddhist meditation made me aware of the ‘negative states of mind’ which seem to govern a lot of human activity. I wondered if it could be therapeutic to describe all the different kinds of bad mental states I had experienced, as well as the migraines which seemed to be a permanent fixture, and the possible treatments and antidotes to them. Hence the next album title: ‘Kill or Cure’.

Another good reason to record was the potential involvement of great musicians I had played with (and their talented friends!). So guitarist Patrick Naylor from London and pianist Kevin James from Leeds, both of whom I had known since the 80s, played and did some arranging in the sessions held in those two cities. My former bandmates in Daylight Dog Oli Arditti (bass) and Dale Barker (drums) played on a session in Suffolk and, along with many other virtuosos and engineers previously unknown to me , helped to sprinkle some ‘magic dust’ over the whole project.

At the same time as this recording was taking shape, I had a go at setting someone else’s words to music for a change. The writer Stuart Ross from Toronto had passed on many of his books to me over the years and I got into the habit of converting some of his more structured poems into song format.

Unlike the process of composing words and music from scratch, there was absolutely no suffering on my part during the writing of the CD ‘An Orphan’s Song’. It was Stuart who had to dredge up all the emotional stuff. All I did was the music, which made it a worthwhile project, as did the enthusiasm and skill of one of my long-time supporters Richard Ashrowan, who recorded and co-produced the disc.