Along the magic road…

November 2020

It’s a strange time to be starting a blog about music… this is the first time that I have gone a year without playing a live gig since I was seventeen and I feel utterly lost without it; as though I have been left to wander in an unknown landscape with no destination and no plan. It’s bewildering if I’m frank.

Covid 19 and the subsequent lock-downs have created a sort of twilight world of contemplation in which it’s impossible not to look backwards and inwards. Coupled to the darkness of recent politics and a great fear for the future it’s very hard for anybody to stay on top of things emotionally and a struggle to stay rational and focused. Musicians in the UK face a very difficult time ahead, there is just no way around that fact and it’s impossible to start writing about music now without acknowledging it. As well as Covid 19 which has destroyed the music world in ways so immense and far reaching that it may take decades to fully understand them, we face the imminent horror of Brexit which will diminish our opportunities and limit our freedom. I won't even comment on the 'retraining' insult because it's beneath contempt.

Music has no borders, it is a universal language and musicians share a brother/sisterhood that is both deep and wonderful. So many of my friends have been involved with the DIY touring scene which provides a network of wonderful venues, people and music throughout Europe and enables bands and musicians of limited funds to travel and tour in other countries. For most of us it was the first chance that we ever had of playing music abroad and reaching and connecting with other like-minded people in different countries; the impact that that has on a person in terms of development and understanding is very hard to overstate. Learning how much we all have in common is quite simply an act of liberation. It is very unclear how musicians in the UK will be able to continue to do this and it is a loss to us so deep that it is hard to convey the effect that it has psychologically.

It feels as though a great darkness is descending.

But, that aside, I have decided to start this blog.

I came to make music by accident really. I intend to talk about that in more detail here in the future because it’s sort of funny and probably quite poignant really. I had always loved music but there wasn’t any obvious access to making it. We had no music lessons at school, at least there weren’t any instruments and nobody in my family played. I grew up in an artistic household because both my parents were Stage Designers and music was always a big part of life at home; they both designed operas and I inherited my love of Mozart, Dylan and Delarue from my Mother. My first love was film music and my brother, Rhys and I would hum music to each other that we’d heard in films when we were too young to buy records. We would struggle to remember the themes and incidental music that we’d heard in movies until one of us had it right and I think it really gave me an ear for melody and it helped train my musical memory too. It wasn’t until later that I picked up an instrument and started to make music for myself and when I did it was like my heart had been lit by love. What I didn’t realise then but I do now is that not only was I being freed but I was also being bewitched. You see, music is a magic road and if you step over the threshold you start ascending and before too long you’ve traveled so far up it that it’s impossible to jump off, even if you should want to…

So, let’s begin here then and see where it takes us...