TRACKS NOTES
DON'T WALK ON BY - EP
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DON'T WALK ON BY
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This was one of my older songs that i was keeping back for another album but with life and all that was happening here and in the world i thought it would be right to release it but as part of a EP which then would also give me a chance to release some of the other tracks i wanted out like The void and the sunshine cover.
Originally the track had more lyrics when i first wrote it but i re-wrote some of the lines to get the song shorter and tighter.
This was one of those rare songs that when i first came up with it i knew exactly what i wanted to do on the break guitar section.
for this recording i wanted to do some different things so there is no backing vocals on it and i played some power chords for the last verse which strangely is something i have never done on a song before well not properly intended ones anyway ,which was to give it more power and a build .
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YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE ( Traditional Cover )
I always thought the lyrics to you are my sunshine are really dark but you always hear happy songs of it and where they sing it to kids, so it got me thinking of trying to do it in a way that reflected the dark desperate nature of the lyrics.
I wanted to record a few of my own songs but they required big vocals and i needed to try and sing something easier first , so i thought i would do this one, it turned out well and was done very quickly so it was a track that i was just waiting for a way to release it and i thought it would suit very well to this EP with the other songs.
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THE VOID
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I thought i would try my hand at a spoken word song but i wanted the music to very minimal that would broaden out to be more dramatic in the final verse. I made the music then wrote the lyrics and i think i done the vocal in one take and decided to keep it as it is.
Lyrically its a life and death song that i tried to keep open for interpretation and so it could appeal to others.
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LOST IN A DREAM - ( Bare Bones Version )
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This a stripped down version of lost in a dream that first appeared on the Forever Road album. this is just guitars and vocals with a slight lyric change on the outro verse . i liked the stripped down sound of it and EPS give me a opportunity to release tracks like this and others that won't be on the main albums, so i thought it would fit perfectly on this EP with the sound and theme of the other tracks.
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JOUTAU ( see you in dreams ) - Single Release
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This was one of my more later/ recent songs that i was going to end a album with but decided to release it as a single,
it's written in part English and part Chinese the title means goodnight , i wanted a nice song that was about two people on different time zones, so when one is saying hello the other is saying goodnight, but i also wanted it be a song that could be played years later during harsh times as a comfort for the listener.
for the intro i done it on guitar and a 6 string banjo to give it a asian feel. musically it was all recorded and mixed on my portable digitrack and then uploaded from there like a lot of my other songs.
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IT'S OURS FOR THE TAKING - ( Single Release )
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This was a song from my later written songs that was going to be the first of a run of singles for what was going to be the next album, but life had other plans so it remains a one off single.
like nearly all my songs its a track that just came out one day when when playing, I have a longer version with a slow verse to end that i was going to use as the album version but i will probably now try and put that out on a EP sometime
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ALL NIGHT ( I Want You EP )
ALL NIGHT ( I Want You )
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I was wondering what it would sound like if i done some deeper backing vocals as like a tempo rhythm, but then added some higher vocals over it then something in between, I done that and played it back and i started singing along to it and came up with this song, so i wrote some lyrics then sung the main backing vocal part while counting of the bars in my head as i sung so i could sing over it afterwards and so it would match. once that part was done the rest was easy and just a case of singing some other vocal parts and the lead vocals .it was originally written and recorded very quickly in a few hours .
rather than keep it for a later album i thought it would be cool to do a EP that i wanted to do before which would then allow me to add some other songs that i wanted to get released .
Originally i released the EP In 2018 with a slightly different track list but i had to change distributors so i removed it and released it properly in 2020 but back dated it to the original date .and added the acoustic demo of rich man as the different track.
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TOO COOL FOR THAT ( Demo version )
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I originally wrote this for the shadows chasing light collaboration album as a intro to she's too cool but i liked the demo version of it so i thought it would be cool to put it out on its own as it is and as it goes well with the title track All Night as a mostly A cappella tune.
recording and writing wise wise it was done very quickly and the shortest track i have released so far in this demo form.
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RICH MAN ( Acoustic Demo )
This was the original demo i done for the shadows chasing light collab album that i done with Frank Radice, there was something about the sparse demo that people seemed to like so i had been trying to get it released for a long time , the challenge was trying to clean it up enough to be releasable from a sound/mastering point of view. and finally being able to do a EP gives me the chance to release some of these other songs and versions that i cant release otherwise.
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AWAKE IN A DREAM ( instrumental )
I wanted to try and do a instrumental but one that had guitar and keyboard. something nice and simple. this was my attempt at writing a instrumental on the guitar that i could then play the keyboard too. i thought it would be a nice way to end the EP and with something different.
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WICKED GAME - ( Cover single release )
This is a cover of the Chris Isaak classic. I don't normally do many covers but when i do i like to just do them in my own way rather than copy the original which cant be bettered. it was a song i just fancied trying to do one day and it came out pretty well so figured i would release it,
I have a rule of no covers on albums and i wanted to just put this on a EP but i couldn't figure out a way of releasing one at the time so i decided to just release it as a one off single instead.
for the recording Cyndi Corkran kindly done the female vocal parts for me which i added to the track.
HERE COMES SANTA - ( Single Release )
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There was a song contest for original xmas songs and doing xmas songs was not really my thing but it got me thinking if i could do one, the next day i came up with a bit of a nice song and thought maybe tomorrow i would play that some more and see if a song comes out, but the next day i just started playing and this song just came out instead.
I originally recorded it with keyboard as the main backing but then re-recorded this version to have a more guitar based sound and bought some sleigh bells just to use on this song, which are a lot trickier to record than you would think .
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TAKE ALL THE LOVIN - ( Single Release )
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This track was a song that started as a collab with Cyndi Corkran and Frank Radice. Cyndi had some lyrics and as soon as i read them i had the idea of the type of song it should be which i saw as a sultry bluesy number i wanted something you can imagine being sung in some smoky late night club , so i came up with this track which i wrote as a duet using as many of her lyrics as i could, This version was meant to be just a demo i was so ill at the time and had to sing it sitting down late one night which took a while to get through it, in the end .i liked the recording and sound so i decided to keep this solo version and release it.
we also done a different version where Cyndi and Frank added their vocals to it and more music which is unreleased.
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FLYING SOLO - Camille Vocal Version ( Single Release )
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This was one of the first songs i wrote from what I call my later songs. I knew that whatever song i would do next that i wanted to do something different and more sparse in style. I Started playing one day and out came this song, originally it had more lyrics but the verses were too long so i re-wrote it to be shorter.
I saw the song as a more sparse acoustic type number with minimal music and one of my best songs at the time i wrote it, but after uploading some demos people were not impressed so in the end i decided to do a more fuller version which people seemed to like but i still wanted to record it again properly.
For this version i thought it would be interesting having a female sing it from their perspective and with just some piano and minimal strings . Camille done a fantastic job on the vocals. I will release my main version sometime , maybe on a EP or something one day.
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FOREVER ROAD ALBUM TRACK BY TRACK NOTES
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FOREVER ROAD
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This was the last song that i wrote for the album which was written and recorded a few weeks before the release.
After listening to what is now forever road part 2 i had a idea for a upbeat kind of version of the theme. it was too different to be the same song yet to similar to be different so i thought it would be good to label them forever road and forever road part 2. I wanted the fast version to start the album as you blaze down forever road then for the album to end with them walking away in the distance in part 2.
My original idea was for a track that had not many lyrics and that had a kind of football terrace chant style for the verses with a sing along but instead done a little differently . I wanted it to be a kind of dance to your doom apocalyptic escape kind of feel to it.
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BLAZE TRAIL
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This was written near the end of what i call my early songs that was written after " Tongue Tied " I had the title in my head for a while and was just waiting for a song to come along to use it, i came up with the verse while just playing the guitar on my bed and i wanted to see how it sounded so i set up my gear played it and just went straight into singing that title and the song came out,
Originally it had 2 verses before the 1st chorus and a longer bridge with no end vocal. and was the original title track for the album before i wrote Forever Road. The original track list was 10 songs as they were all quite long, so i wanted to tighten the songs up and structure them to be more precise. so for this song i cut one verse and rewrote the bridge to be shorter and swapped a few lines around for the verses.
for the recording i decided to start it slow then go into the chorus but that was a challenge as i had to record the slow part while the drums were pounding away and ignore them, then mix them out after, but then i wanted to keep the slow part and do another take of the rest, which meant i had to listen to the whole slow part first every time then click record get back to the mic count the seconds in my head and go straight into the blaze trail lines and sing the rest without stopping for each take. as i had no one to click buttons for me it was the only way of doing it.
i spent 2 days trying to record it, i done it so much that i was even forgetting the first lines or just getting to the mic and laughing, yet on the 3rd day after thinking i may have to give up suddenly it was easy to do .
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SOMEHOW SOMEWAY
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This was a song i wrote for a later album but i felt theme wise and style wise it would be better suited for forever road.
a friend of mine came around one day and was telling me about a friend of ours and how she was getting on and it got me thinking about my own situation at the time and what the future could be, a week later i started playing and came up with 3 songs in a row and this was one of those, originally lyrically it had a story about a couple but the lyrics all turned out true, so when i went to record the song for this album i decided to re-write some of them for the verses and make it more universal but also i wanted to tighten up the melody so it got to the chorus quicker as before it had more lyrics on the verses and was just too long. strangely it turned out long anyway but most of that is the lead guitar ending that i thought was ideal for the driving feel of the song so kept it.
The break section was something i originally done by accident when i done a live demo of it once, I was meant to play some chords but instead went into this funky part and so decided to keep that for future recordings.
For this recording i recorded the basic guitars first but i messed up the break section so i recorded the whole song from scratch all parts finished it but i didn't like the tone of the guitar. so i went back to this version and decided to record the break section on another track then just remove the messed up part afterwards, the problem was i cant play and push buttons to lower it at the same time, so i had to record it and the rest of the song straight through while the messed up part and rest played something different in my ear and just try to ignore it. "tricky to do but i got it in the end ".
WICKED LITTLE LIES
Every time i would just jam i would play this rock guitar riff . one day after watching some politicians lying on t.v and with some family issues i set up my gear and just starting playing that riff and singing and out came this song.
lyrically i wanted to leave it open to have different meanings , it was a song written from my early songs before tongue tied and was a track i always kept and intended for this album that i saw as being more more gritty and poetic and the last verse continues the theme of the album.
musically it turned out a little wider than i originally intended and there wasn't going to be any lead guitar on it, but i was just playing along to it and decided to keep it in .
NOTHIN' TO LOSE
This was one of the more newer written songs on the album that I wrote I think in 2016.
I had some of the lyrics to the first verse stuck in my head for months and everywhere i went no matter what i was doing i had those lyrics repeating in my mind it was driving me crazy. so it was just a case of waiting until one day a song comes so i can use them.
I was still a little obsessed in songs sounding real and i had a idea that i wanted to do a song where you just touch the strings with no fancy guitar picking or strumming or big chords, and something that you could sing without any effort or trying, no big vocals just something that felt like a conversation .
i started playing one day and sang those first lines i had in my head and out came this song. then it was just a case of playing it again a few times to tighten it up, ( i still have the recording of the moment the song first came out )
musically I didn't want to add much music and to try to keep it as real as possible. i think the vocals were done in one take or three depending if i forgot the lyrics and the guitar line parts were just me playing during playback that I kept in,
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COMPANY FOR YOUR SOUL
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This was a song i wrote for another album but i always felt it was too catchy for that album and lyrically it would be better suited to forever road plus i wanted something more upbeat amongst the tougher sounding songs on the album to lighten things up a bit musically
it was a song i wrote after a break from writing, i came up with two songs this one and a rock ballad at the time.
I wanted a song with a quick vocal/lyric delivery that captures a certain kind of desperation to match the lyrical theme
I re-wrote some of the lyric lines for this recording and put a lot of music on it in my attempt to get a bigger production sound to what i had done previously,
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RICH ENOUGH TO LOSE
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Written after Tongue tied i was listening to Sheryl crows first two albums and i liked that she had these cool guitar riffs but lots of vocals over the top and some deep lyrical themes. that just kind of flowed easily and i wanted to try and do something with a light guitar riff in that vain, i wasn't sure if i could but i started playing and out came this song straight away.
originally it was more riffy on the verses guitar wise but i added some guitar picking on the recording to give it a different feel. i added a lot of music on this, drums guitar licks you name it and with a long rock outro but it just sounded too much, so in the end i stripped everything down to this version.
Lyrically i guess at the time i was thinking about how if you have money you can take chances but if you have nothing opportunity is less and you cant take those chances as you cant afford to lose what little you do have.
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HARD WEARING SOUL
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This was the first song i wrote from my earlier songs for what eventually would become this album, i knew the album would be tougher in sound and more poetic as i had wicked little lies, movin on and lost in a dream for it, i just sat on the end of the bed started playing and out came this song . I was thinking about how hard things are and how we are surviving but only just, and what happens to those who cant survive who don't have that hard wearing soul , which i guess is how the song came out.
recording wise i kept it pretty much how i first wrote it, i wanted it to be desperate sounding, a fighting for your life survival type of song that was both manic and urgent.
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LOST IN A DREAM
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Written before Tongue Tied I wanted to try and do a strummy kind of song something acoustic. I started playing and out came this song , it was different to what i had in mind at the time and originally had a higher vocal style on the verses with a gritty chorus. For this recording i kind of done it somewhere inbetween , it was one of the first songs recorded for the album and one of the 3 i kept for it.
musically i kept it pretty simple as i liked the rawness of it, i also released a stripped down version of the song on the Don't Walk on By EP that has a slight lyric change on the outro verse and just guitars and vocals.
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MOVIN ON
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This is i think the oldest written song on the album, written before a lot of the tongue tied tracks, at the time i wanted to write more seriously and lose the style of playing i had at the time and move on in all ways which i guess is where the lyrics came from,
I had a drum machine and i made a straight beat on it and just started playing along to it and singing and out came this song along with the guitar break. originally it had longer verses on the 1st and last verse but i wanted to get the song shorter so i cut some of the lyrics before i recorded this version.
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FOREVER ROAD ( PART 2 )
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This was a song I wrote while going home late one night with my dad, the road always felt long and seemed to take forever and i had the guitar with me and started singing about it an we both sang it all the way down the road in a high vocal on the road lines while waking up the street as we went, it was a lot of fun. we got back got a few people over and continued to play it in the early hours with the full drum kit and guitars plugged in, a few days later i wrote the lyrics properly and kept it.
for this album recording i sung it in a more straight forward style. I wanted it to end the album where after every track before it they are now walking back and singing to themselves before they whistle away and walk of into the distance as the song fades out.
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TONGUE TIED ALBUM TRACK BY TRACK NOTES
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TONGUE TIED
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I moved my music gear to the window as the room was dark and i wanted some light and i started playing and this song came out .This was originally a song I wrote as a duet that i used to sing with a friend of mine.
before she died we used to sing the short verse each and both sang a kind of relay vocal style between us on the chorus, which was a lot of fun !
It was a song that as soon as i first wrote it back then i felt it was the song I'd been after and would be a good album title. it also made me decide to start doing demo albums and it made me go through all my songs at the time and throw out any ones i didn't like, So when years later in 2014 to /16 when i decided to try and release a album officially , I wanted to start from the beginning of my demo albums, with this song again as the title track for the first main album, A starting point which then enabled me to record the songs written from that time and earlier as well as later ones and new ones that i felt would fit the theme of Tongue Tied and or its style.
It took a few recordings before i got this version, i thought i had it but it didn't sound right, so i done it again a few more times but same problem, then i done this version and was about to start from scratch yet again but i thought maybe the problem is the mix so i panned a few guitars and suddenly it sounded right, which is the version on the album. the bridge i wrote during the recording the song for the album
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EASY ON ME BABY
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I was recording a demo album of mostly serious songs and i set up my gear and i was about to click record to record one of those but i fancied doing something fun and sleazy /dirty sounding, so i clicked record and just started playing and singing and out came this song. i put it to one side thinking maybe to use it as a outtake or something, as it was the opposite of what i was doing at the time. But once i recorded that demo album a few months later i returned to this song I went from memory and wrote the lyrics while sitting on my bed one day, and then got up and done a quick demo, I realised playing it back that i wrote too many lyrics. but it seemed to work and i liked the song, so kept that structure, and lyrics.
I planned to use this song on a later album, but i had this version recorded and it was quite well known at the time and i thought well it cant go on the next album as not suitable, and it wouldn't be right for the next 2 i had planned so tongue tied seemed the obvious choice.
I had a decent version where i played some dodgy harmonica on but i wanted it better so i asked a musician friend i know to do the harmonica for me who kindly agreed, its the only song song on the album that features another musician
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THAT GIRL OF MNE
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This is one of my oldest written songs that i wrote when i was 15, it was the 2nd or 3rd song i ever wrote with music
and a track i used to play a lot with a friend of mine when we had our little duo band, we even recorded a version of it once in a studio in Brighton when i was 16 with 3 other songs of mine.
I was still learning guitar at the time and didn't know much but i came up with this melody while playing on my bed one day on the electric unplugged, and i had a lyric book of songs that I'd been writing since i was 11 or something and i looked through it to see if there was a song that would match and That girl of mine matched perfectly.
It was a song that i thought if i ever do release a album properly one day this would definitely be recorded for it.
For this version i re-wrote some of lyrics in the verses just before recording it. The dooby doos and scat type vocals near the end was just me having fun while the mic was on while waiting for the chorus to do the backing vocals and decided to keep it in the mix.
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BLUE JEAN BABY
It was a hot summers day but my room was dark so i moved all my gear down stairs into the kitchen where it was bright, i only had one idea which was that i would like to try and write a rock ballad that i don't think i had really done before at that time. I set up my gear and as soon as i touched the first chord the song just came out along with most of the lyrics i ad- libbed at the time. i only really had to write the last half of the 2nd verse and some of the bridge to what i originally sang.
I made some demos at the time of about 20 songs and this was the one everyone came back singing to me, so it was a song that i defiantly wanted on the first album one day.
to me it's a song that ideally requires a rock band as i wanted big pounding drums and heavy guitars on the chorus and moody verses. so the challenge was to try and record it best as i could at the time with just me.
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LUCKY IN LOVE
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Written after "Tongue Tied sometime" i decided that i didn't want to write anymore catchy songs at the time and i wanted to do something more epic and gritty, I had a bit of a melody and i thought i would try that as a starting point but nothing was coming out, in the end i got frustrated decided to grab a drink and just play something simple to ease the tension. i started strumming and singing and out came this song. It was the complete opposite to what i wanted to do but it came out of nowhere and was far too catchy to leave so i wrote the lyrics and it was done.
originally i intended it for another album but i always felt it would be far more suited to the Tongue Tied album.
Recording wise i played the guitar a little differently on the verses which led me to sing those verses a little differently which gave the song a different feel, The bridge i wrote during recording the song for the album and the sha la la's an lucky in love refrains was just me singing during doing the backing vocals and liked it so re-done it which made the song even more catchy.
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HOUSE OF HELL
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I was jamming with a friend of mine who i used to play Tongue Tied etc with and we were joking about and she suggested we do a fun song so i started playing this quirky rhythm on the guitar and and out came this song along with a lot of funny and dark lyrics. I liked the song i so wrote some proper lyrics for it,
The lyrics actually took me weeks to do at the time, as the verses are short and so precise it had to not just fit but tell a story. songs with lots of lyrics are easy to do but this one strangely took me ages as there isn't many lines .
It was another song that i definitely wanted on the album and to try and do it justice recording wise as one my personal favs.
I was going to record it for this album with a straight tight beat but i wanted drum fills and a more bigger sound. so i recorded it a little differently production wise than i was used too which gave it a more expansive feel.
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9 KINDS OF CRAZY
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One of the more newer written songs at the time of the album recording. written in 2015/16 .
I was joking about with some musician friends online and we were just telling funny stories etc and i told them a few and they dared me to write a song about it which gave me a idea for the style of song i would go for, next day i started playing and came up with this song but it originally had some very silly ad-libbed lyrics , i uploaded it and as soon as i played it i thought wait a minute this song has something. i so i pulled it and re-wrote the lyrics as 9 kind of crazy and re-recorded it which is the version on the album.
musically i felt it would go well on this album with the other songs rather than keep back for another.
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YOU GIVE ME THE BLUES
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This was another more recently written song at the time written sometime between 2014/2016.
Sometimes i take some time out to just play the guitar for 10 minutes now and then for a few days so next time that i go to try and write a song i might have a few more arrows for my bow to use.
i had a few days and i went to play and came up with 3 songs in a row and this was one of those songs. i thought i would record this one while its still fresh so i could try and capture its tone.
I thought i would use it for a later album but i had already decided to put easy on me baby on the album and 9 kinds of crazy so this would fit well with those styles.
i recorded it with some old raidogram style backing vocal effects to give it a quirky old skool feel and some bluesy guitar licks and wah pedal to push that tongue in cheek theme of the song.
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MY LARRAINE
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My original plan was to not just record a album but to record all my songs and do at the same time.
This was a old song that i hadn't ever recorded a proper demo of it since i first wrote it and i was curious to see if i could do it and how it would sound. so i re-wrote some of the lyrics for the verses and and just went straight into recording it.
it was very catchy and i liked the rawness of the take and i was determined to try and keep this one as it is without adding too much or re-recording etc. and thought it would be a good fit for the album.
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I DON'T WANNA WALK AWAY
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This was another of one of my very earliest written songs that wrote when i was about 16. though the bridge i wrote during this recording i was singing and stopped the recording and quickly wrote the lyrics to the bridge then went back into singing and done it in one take as i didn't want to change anything.
originally i only planned to have "That girl of mine" of my earliest written songs on the album but i had been playing this one live quite a bit of just guitar and vocals and i done this recording which i wasn't sure people were too keen on but i liked the natural feel of it and sparse nature compared to how i first wrote it which had a more lighter bouncy feel to it. so decided it should go on the album.
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LOOMING LASS
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I wanted to write a song but it had to be fun and tell a story. i moved my gear in the other room and started playing and out came this song, i wanted the verses to feel young and full of fun times but then you get this slow section later where it feels older as the person is now looking back on the couple in this song and what happened to them.
This was actually one of my more later written songs that was written for another album but i thought lyrically and musically it would be perfect for the Tongue Tied album.
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HURTS LIKE HELL
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I wanted to do a song with some guitar picking and started playing and out came this track but with a switch to rhythm playing in the choruses. lyrically the idea came from just how were taught of fairytale endings of boy meets girl when were kids and no one ever tells you the flip side of that .
like blue jean baby i always saw this song as big rock ballad with big drums and guitars that ideally needs a rock band, so i was worried to whether i could do it how i wanted on my own.
i couldn't figure out at the time how to get heavy guitars wihout drowning out the vocals so like always you compromise but the recording worked out well i thought as it has a certain feel that i wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
I wanted the album to have a beginning middle and end and i thought the trilogy of tongue tied to start with blue jean baby picking up the theme in the middle and ending with hurts like hell would tell the overall story well.
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