I was a drummer in a couple of signed bands when I was in my twenties. Both bands were eventually dropped from their major labels, and I lurked in the musical wilderness while the guitarists from each of those former bands went on to huge success. One had a global hit with "Unbelievable" - which he wrote - the guitar riff becoming one of the Top 200 Riffs of All Time - and the other joined The Pretenders, at one point playing onstage with Paul McCartney. I carried on playing, but didn’t want to move to London, so was working crappy jobs and struggling a bit with the sense of failure. Too many years later, I started playing in a band with George. Our friend Dan was writing and singing the songs. When Dan had to quit to follow a very different career, things dried up again, but fast-forward a few years and George and I started to write songs - always remotely, as I liked to take my time to get the lyrics right. Eventually my self-confidence was returning. I want to thank George for seeing the quality I was capable of. I still play drums now and then, but I draw vastly greater satisfaction from writing. I’ve always written a bit - The Smiths producer Stephen Street once produced one of my songs when I was with one of the signed bands - but it wasn’t a great song and didn’t get released. And I couldn’t even approach what I’m able to do now. I just didn’t have the life experience or the maturity. Also, I’m not great at writing the music part. George, however, is brilliant. So the songwriting partnership has given me back all the joy and confidence that I had lost. Major deals are a thing of the past, but I already feel I’m successful in the sense that I’m happy that I’ve found what I really love doing, and am getting better at it the more I do it. Yes, recognition would be fantastic, but I’m enjoying the process very much.

I learned the piano from the age of 7. Despite my teacher being really competent I didn’t enjoy it particularly and I remember that I experienced a lingering disappointment each time I was given a piece to learn that I wasn’t able to play the music I imagined in my head (big lush soundscapes). It didn’t occur to me that I could compose my own music until much later. I gave up lessons at 16.

Around the same time I had raided the loft for my mum’s old nylon string guitar. I didn’t know what notes strings were tuned to so I tuned it to CEGCEG; C Major and made up my own shapes. I didn’t have any plectrums so I used to break up cassette cases and use the broken bits to strum which wrecked the strings very quickly. Eventually my mum offered to loan me £250 and took me to Rock Bottom in Croydon to buy a a brand new Aria brand acoustic guitar.

I cut my teeth musically in a middle class Anglican Church. To begin with I was invited to play chords on Roland Juno Alpha synthesiser in the church band - the string patch on those synths was lush. I was always rubbish at sight reading music so my anxiety reduced when I discovered that the church songbook had guitar chords written above the score.

This was how I worked out the patterns and relationships between different chords in songs and how to play inversions. I still notate all my piano compositions with guitar chords to help me remember structures and the language in my head as I play the piano is infused with relative chords and their inversions.

I did a fair bit of leading the singing and playing acoustic guitar in church services. I never felt my singing was up to much though so I began to focus more on recording. I would borrow the church’s mixing desk, outboard and microphones to record my guitar and vocals combining those live with a Commodore Amiga to MIDI sequence drums, bass and synth parts.

At the same time I started playing guitar in a band with school mates playing songs by artists like U2, INXS, The Cure, EMF & Depeche Mode at parties for our friends. Little did I know that I would end up making music with the drummer of the band that was the prequel to Ian's Dench's next band EMF. After school I went to university to study Art I spent all of my student loans on music tech kit that included a 4 track cassette recorder, mics, a reverb and a compressor and spent pretty much all of my time making DIY records of the songs I would write. I formed a band playing original songs mostly at student battle of the band shows. We naively sent out demo tapes to all the prominent labels of that time but unsurprisingly none of them bit.

My first job after university was at a post-production studio in London sticking labels on cassette tapes. I got a small taste of the music business, drinking in a pub around the corner after work with colleagues and meeting a variety of different people who worked in London’s record industry. I didn’t fit in, everyone was so competitive and ambitious and at times things could be quite spiteful. Eventually I was offered a role as studio assistant at Eastcote Studios which hosted acts such as Kula Shaker, Suede and Blur, so it was a good opportunity but I declined. It seemed exploitative to me (basically an unpaid internship where I was expected to fraudulently claim the dole) and I wanted to marry my girlfriend who was from Cheltenham so I left that world and got a job as an admin officer and saved up to pay for our wedding.

When I moved to Gloucestershire it took me a long while to establish a music practice. In 1998 I married my girlfriend and the next year we got a mortgage and bought our house. Just over a year later I quit my job at the local council and built my own little recording studio in the cellar. In 2000 I was commissioned to lead a young bands development project by the local arts centre and for 8 years I spent my time recording and putting on gigs with over 150 young local bands. Off the back of this I was able to develop a reputation as a community musician with a broad portfolio of music leading work in theatres, art centres, schools and community centres in addition to my songwriting and production exploits out of my cellar studio.

It was towards the end of this time I met Shane. I had formed a band with my friend Dan and we were playing gigs as a duo called Ghosting. Shane was playing drums in another band that we supported a few times. When he left that band we asked him to come and play drums with us and we formed Big Blue Sun.

Shane and I had a lot in common both being keen on recording so we decided to build a new studio together and ran that for a few years. It was all really good until Dan opted for a different career, moved away and Shane and I called time on the studio.

Several years later Shane invited me to join another band, we did a bit of recording in my cellar and played one gig with that band. Around the same time in 2017 I managed to land grant funding for a project called "Spaces" where I brought local talent together to play and record new songs in 8 of Gloucester’s historically significant buildings.

I asked Shane to take photos, play some drums and write some lyrics and melodies on the project. When "Spaces" was finished I sent Shane some piano pieces and to my absolute delight he wrote some lyrics and sang them over the top of my pieces and in 2019 The Powdered Earth became a thing.

Shane is in a different time zone and sends me wonderful draft demos of songs made with my piano sketches. I either wake up to find the most beautiful way to start my day in my inbox or get them just before bed and I fall asleep with his melodies and lyrics singing in my head and heart. Each time it happens is a gift that only I get to experiences. I wish I could convey it and that's why I am compelled to share these songs.