Shane is a good friend of mine. I've known him for over a decade.

I first encountered him as an audience member watching a band called Earnest Cox. He was the drummer. "What a fine drummer" I thought to myself. I booked a few drum lessons with him and learned a few bits and bobs about playing drum kit. Eventually Shane left Earnest Cox and I was quick to ask him if he fancied playing drums with me and my singer songwriter friend Dan Pierce.

After a while we became business partners with a commercial recording studio venture and we got to know each other better whilst building sound isolated rooms together over the course of about 9 months. The studio was called Loficity and existed as a business for about 3 years.

Shane, Dan and I recorded an album called Nocturnal City Journal (with another friend Andrew Farrington) calling ourselves Big Blue Sun at Loficity. Although made 10 years prior to SPACES, Nocturnal City Journal is also an album inspired by Gloucester containing 10 songs about a life imagined, real or otherwise as a resident of the city in the past, present and future. You can listen to it here.  

When we closed Loficity, Shane trained as a photographer. He has won many awards for his photographs. He is meticulous when it comes to light and just like with his music, he is discerning and tasteful with his photographic choices. He is also an excellent teacher and my wife has benefited from training with him.

Shane has been an invaluable collaborator on SPACES. He is the first person I ask an opinion of and the first person I look for at a session. Originally I asked him to take photos for me, to document the project using his camera. As you can see in this gallery and throughout the website Shane has delivered some magnificent images.

After the first session we talked about the project in more depth and it was obvious to me that I would ask him to collaborate as a songwriter. He has co-written 3 of the songs creating melodies and crafting lyrics and verses in response to the musical sketches I've made. We will definitely be writing more music together in future so watch out for that.

Shane also plays drums on "Love Will Remain". We started the writing process on that one by Shane suggesting I listen to a Blockheads track and I began to put together chords on top of a drum beat inspired by that track until it evolved into our song.

Photo by Chris Watkins