I'm originally from the county of Essex in the UK.
I recall showing an early interest in music when I discovered Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, all around the mid to late 70’s.
This led to a fascination in multi layered sounds and I learned to play various parts on my parent’s piano and other assorted instruments in order to figure out how to keep up with Tubular Bells and Oxygene, two massive influences on my early attempts to make music.
I was awful and my family put up with a lot of single finger Shadows covers and single finger piano riffs, but I persevered and eventually moved on to two fingers, a major advance in technical fret threatery.
I was a quiet kid at school and eventually this forged the bond between my head, my hands and my heart and I simply faded away after each school day to a world of Oldfield and Jarre and progressive rock soundscapes.
I did listen to the charts but always found I was happiest when listening to Ommadawn by Oldfield or Magnetic Fields by Jarre etc because I could lose myself in the music.
Or at least, that’s what I wanted to do.
I guess it was those early days spent traipsing across fields with my little cassette player and hiding from a good kicking that pushed me toward music far more than any other childhood hobby.
I hated sports, was pretty crap at school work and basically figured anything that got in the way of headphone time was a waste of time.
I tried it all, my parents were patient, buying me synthesisers & guitars, my ears were always searching for the beat and the melody in everything.
I was also very lucky in that my Dad, from before I can remember, had various Bang & Olufsen audio gear so whatever was on, LP’s, cassettes or just the radio, and eventually CD’s, sounded bloody awesome and I would crank those 3008's up when my parents were out and fill the house with Tubular Bells or War of the Worlds.
I think a combination of nice audio gear in the house, a couple of old analogue synths and a desire to hide away from the world was a perfect mix for me and it definitely affected my musical tastes and ear for production.
I loved Abba and the Carpenters etc, not just because at age 13 they were still cool, but because I loved that you could hear every instrument really clearly in the mix and this became a bit of a fascination or me, I hated pretty much anything that ‘sounded’ shite, it had to be clear and balanced or it didn’t make sense.
I did listen to a lot of ‘shite’ but it was well produced ‘shite’.
no, not all of it was musically up my street but sonically it was where I wanted to live.
Great mix, great separation and great EQ.
Of course at 13 I had no clue that it was all to do with production and engineering, and of course great musicianship, but I was slowly getting turned on to the whole recording process without going near a recorder.
A revelation point for me was at aged ten when Haitian Divorce came on the radio, and this, without realising it started my life long love affair with Steely Dan and again, production. It was, to my ears, simply a wonderful sonic mix of great music and awesome production.
This got me thrown out of every band I was in as I grew up as I was not exactly subtle when a part was being played in the wrong key or was out of tune or time, not that I was any better, but I ‘knew’ when something wasn’t right so when the guys carried on I was the first to bring it to their attention.
I wasn’t popular.
Jack of all trades but mastering only some.
A move to London in the mid 80’s put me in a damp studio in Camden where I learned the dark arts of mixing and engineering and a few stints as a live sound mixer added to my sonic merits eventually leading to two very early CD’s of instrumental music that I had written since 1981 but never had the gear to record it to - The Journey So Far (1993)
and Transactions Speak Louder Than Words (1995),
both of which were compilations of private-home recorded efforts, all instrumentals, mastered in London by Dire Straits' engineer.
A couple of those early and somewhat naive recordings are to be found on the net here and there but are mainly reminders of where it all began, just me, a truck load of recording gear, a lot of free time and a lot of overdubbing, I was like a kid in a sweetshop in those early days.
Eventually I got a bit better at playing and hung around with a few muso friends in Sarf Landon, where I was living and got caught up in the early rave scenes with my e popping pal and he switched me on to trance and dub, not an obvious choice of vibe for this old prog rocker but hey, music is music and I learned long before that you just have to listen a bit harder to feel the vibe.
So he and I knocked out a few trance tracks and blagged them onto Kiss FM in the mid Nineties, I may stick them on Soundcloud for posterity as they conjure up a lot of memories of a country boy at large in London’s SE1, 22, 23 and SW11..
Various guitars and synthesisers were bought, traded, lost or swapped and along the way a few microphones were added to the mix along with a succession of multi trackers. Being heavily into the creative process more so than the playing aspect, I joined a couple of bands again but left quickly as I felt more comfortable behind the mixing desk and in charge of the faders and building up a track layer by layer and playing all the instruments myself.
By 2002 I had recorded two albums of material
Old Dog, New Tricks
Songs From The Back Of Beyond
and both were predominantly instrumental tracks as I was not a singer at all and hated listening to my own voice.
However, by that stage I had become friends, via relocation up north, with a couple of lads who I offered to do some backing tracks for so they could sing over them when gigging.
I had a go at laying my own vocals down on these backing tracks a few years later and put them out for general consumption.
Of all the tracks I had written and produced in previous years these got the most amount of attention.
Purely because I was singing on them.
I thought they were okayish but I was more upset that no one really cared for my instrumental tracks.
I decided to push my luck on this and set about recording more vocal tracks for 2006’s Salvage album.
Four tracks in fact, and these once again, despite hours spent slaving over a hot multi tracker, were the ones that got the most downloads and hits on myspace.
In 2005, I'd had enough heartbeak warfare to set about writing about it on 2008’s Minor Adjustments.
This is a collection of vocal and instrumental tracks that captured a two year period when life was not how it was supposed to be and this is reflected in the varied mix of songs on the album, most of them vocal.
By this stage I was surrounded by nine guitars, three synths, tons of effects, drums and loads of other instruments, a lot of spare time (sans ninos) and an empty house.
I was finally, albeit unfairly, dumped squarely into the musical world I used to strive for as a lost kid all those years ago and Minor Adjustments is a result of all the studio tricks, playing and performing tricks, recording, mixing and producing tricks piled into 14 songs.
It was after this album got me a ton of response and a huge amount of downloads, that I decided to get rid of the massive production wall surrounding my voice and guitar solos and try for the opposite for the next and most recent album.
2010’s Downtime is
another
collection
of
songs
about
life
and
how
it
can
change
so
drastically,
sometimes
for
good,
sometimes
for
bad.
I wanted to keep it as stripped down as much as a dyed in the wool over dubber could manage and actually let my voice do its job.
The result is a collection of almost pure acoustic tracks with only three possessing drums.
Yes, they are about growing up, growing old and growing apart but also about growing to accept it.
Out went the loops, samples and reason based drum tracks, out went the bass guitar and the flashy guitars and effects processors, out went the workstations, synths and percussion.
Leaving me, a mic and a crap acoustic to figure out the way ahead.
Two Against Nature, to quote my beloved steely Dan.
Full circle to the kid sat underneath the hanging tree with a crap acoustic guitar trying to figure out the complexities of Tubular Bells all those year ago.
And no, he still can’t read or write a bloody note of music.
GF
Midlands UK
BIO