New album and launch event

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Hey, my debut album The Divider is coming out on 21st March. Yay! From that date you can buy it on Bandcamp, stream it on your local streaming platform or buy it on CD (via this site – Ill set up a safe pay method). I can’t wait for The Divider to be out there in the wild, roaming around like a young jaguar, eyeing the horizon and sniffing the air for prey. Prey?? I mean receptive ears, curious brains and hearts that want new music!

A couple of early album reviews have already come in, with Fatea proclaiming it “an  interesting and engaging set of songs” and picking out Cider with Rosie and Tree on a Hill the best tracks. Meanwhile Slap Mag described it as “well rounded and accomplished… where lyrics and sounds blend into tracks that gain warmth with each listen.” I’m very grateful for these and any other reviews, so if you want to do one yourself drop me a line via the contact page.

To mark the occasion we will be doing an album launch show at Spin the Black Circle in Worcester on Friday April 4th (free entry!) And the absolute best part is that I will be sharing the event with my musical comrades The Blue Gravy Orchestra, who are also releasing their first album. The BGO are a brilliant indie folk band with energy and warm vibes, and they have been playing on the local scene ever since I started a few years ago. It’s fitting that we launch our albums together. Also playing will be Philippe Pozzi who I can’t wait to hear.

Come down and take in some great music. It’ll be a fun night. But if you can’t come, please check out The Divider!

New Gigs

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Hey! I put some new gigs into the gig area, so go take a look if you are around the Worcestershire part of the world in September, which is the current month. I still find it self-pinchingly incredible that I am doing gigs. Doesn’t seem that far prior to yesterday that I did my first open mic (except for that one in 1993), and I was pretty shite there due to nerves. Since then I have grown to adore performing. I hope you can enjoy my performances at some point.

New song: I Know My Heart

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I have a new song out! I thought I would write about it here (and do the same for all my future releases) because, you know, songs don’t just appear. Songs don’t spontaneously write themselves without the aid of blood, sweat, tears, inspiration and hours of research. Or do they?

Actually, yes they sometimes do! When the Coen brothers were writing and planning their cinematic masterpiece Miller’s Crossing they got lost and exhausted halfway through the process. Too many subplots, characters and angles. So they took a break, and during that break out plopped Barton Fink, another masterpiece! I don’t know what they think about that but I like to think that the more we try to direct our creativity in a deliberate way towards what we think are good ideas, the more there is a need for your creativity to pull things from your subconscious and do what IT thinks is a good idea. In other words your creativity is not a tool for you to use as you see fit, it is a capricious but benevolent goddess. And you are its slave.

(Jeez, Charlie, you’re writing about a tune – lighten up!)

OK, so over the past year or so I have written a few songs about specific things – mostly the English Civil War (see 21 Summers and Face on a Wall, and come to my gigs if you want to hear others!) – and I Know My Heart is my Barton Fink moment. It started with that first line coming into my head out of nowhere (“Would you consider it crass if I yelled like a drunken ass?”), and I kept yanking on that thread until the rest came out. I was surprised by certain lines at first, but then they settled in and made perfect sense to me once I thought about them.

So what do I think it’s about? Well, I set out in life to do certain things and be certain people, and I kind of failed. The plans got derailed by bumps in the road. But do you know what? Those bumps are better. They are the real things. You can’t plan too much – just strike out in a particular direction and see what you find. The more you absorb the bumps, the more you learn to ignore your head and know your heart.

But that’s just one theory.

Songwriting methods #1

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There is no single method to writing songs. Everyone one writes them in different ways, and each writer uses lots of ways to write a song. I do anyway. The one thing in common to all my songs is that they come to me, rather than me create them. Yes, I realise that I am creating them out of my brain, but only from ideas that pop into my brain spontaneously. When the mise strikes, if you will.

within that there are two other methods – writing the lyrics and music as one (my main modus operandi) and writing them separately or in piecemeal. I’ve been starting to do a bit more of this latter one, which usually takes the form of a melody or structure coming into my head, me grabbing a guitar and then playing/humming it into my phone, then saving it with a title like “Moody tune” or something. Later on I might get an idea for lyrics or theme, and if it doesn’t come with it own ready-made tune I’ll rifle through the ones stored on my phone for one. My latest released song 21 Summers came that way – on my phone I have an audio file called “Western tune” from months ago, that was mainly about the picking rhythm and rise and fall. Then when the voice of Oliver Cromwell barged into my head wanting to tell his “story” but lacking a tune, I made the match. It’s still spontaneous songwriting, you’re just plucking the two halves of song out of the air at different times, like finding one glass slipper and then going after the other.

Well that took some time

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Seems I started this blog / website nearly a year ago and haven’t touched it since. Until now! I promise to keep the content coming from now on. So keep checking back! Maybe subscribe via your blog reading feed? Thanks!

So what have I been doing in the meantime? Sitting on my arse? Yes, some of it. But also writing songs, recording them and performing them. I took the position that no one was going to sing these songs for me, so I took them out there myself. Open mics exist and I am very grateful for them. I’ve been mostly at the Firefly and Arch Rivals in Worcester, but also ventured out Malvern and Evesham ways and even up to the Cavern Pub in Liverpool. I’ll be doing a lot more because a. I enjoy them, b. I like meeting and listening to other local artists and c. it’s a great way to road test your songs and learn how to sing them. But open mics aren’t all I will be doing!

Check back soon for GIG NEWS.

Also, if you haven’t done so already maybe have a listen to my latest song 21 Summers. There is a bit of a story behind it which I will be posting about soon.

I leave you with a pic of me doing one of these open mics and loving it.

Hey

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Welcome to my blog. I have another old blog from my book writing days, but I had a look at it and it doesn’t really reflect who I am these days, so let’s start a new one. This blog will be about how I write songs, make music and try to find an audience for it. So far I have only been doing 1 and 2, so if I discover how to do 3 you will be discovering it with me.