Better for Me If I'd Never Been Born

You should always explain any gap in your employment history. At the age of 20 I had a spiritual awakening and walked away from a music career to become a pastor, get married and raise a family. Over the next 20 years I taught guitar to pay the bills, preached sermons, studied theology and served in 3 different churches. But even though making music often felt like a sinful waste of time, it kept calling me back. A demo I'd made prompted a call from Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott who said it was one of the best he'd heard. Volunteer work with refugees led to recording a CD released in Iraq and live gigs with an Iranian bagpipe player. I filled in with a friend's funk rock band and won a Battle of the Bands. Songs I'd written were performed in church and kids I taught got signed to major labels.

But 20 years of denying who I was brought me to the point of burnout. I've been writing music since before I could play. Songwriting is in my bones. I laid down all Church responsibilities and some teaching and wrote almost 50 songs in the following year.

Reinventing yourself often means changing into something different, like buying a new set of clothes. For me re-invention is taking the broken parts of who you are and putting then back together in a new and stronger way. Let's Build An Airport is the sound of a personal reinvention.

Billy Bragg gave me the permission to embrace all the limitations and advantages of electric guitar for a singer/songwriter. His example also (along with Arctic Monkeys and The Proclaimers) encouraged me to sing the way I speak. After all there's no point writing songs that come from the core of who you really are as a person and then delivering them in whatever the fake accent du jour is.

My sound is built around a dirty electric guitar, augmented by violin, viola and cello, tuba, accordion, theremin, cymbala and numerous nameless percussion, like a lonely rocker sharing a lifeboat with the survivors of some terrible orchestral disaster. My songs blend deadpan humour and visceral faith that's too spiritual for the bars and too cynical for the church (I once wrote a popular sunday school song containing the line “He stabbed him in the belly and his poo came out”). A lifetime of playing multiple genres means I sound like someone who has been everywhere and belongs nowhere but I don't write so I have something to sing. I sing because I have something to say.



The Songs

Everything Is Broken

This was the first song completed for the EP, which slowly evolved from a hard rock unplugged to the more post rock arrangement. The track struggles with the old question "if there is a God why does he allow suffering?" and historically Christians have been guilty of peddling easy answers. Musically tense, full of 'broken' imagery it features Helen Maddison (Spaceships Are Cool) on violin and viola.


I Got Lost

Written on a 2 string guitar in the school practice room where I first started learned to play guitar. About losing your sense of identity by trying to confirm to everyone else's expectations. Tuba, snare drum and electric guitar combine to create a heavy metal marching band.


Let's Build An Airport

Written and demoed in two hours as part of the February Album Writing Month challenge. Inspired by a book I saw in a school library. A love song marked by unusual imagery and instrumentation.


Better For Me If I'd Never Been Born

The first song started and the last song finished, it took me 11 years to pluck up the courage to complete a song from Judas Iscariot's point of view. Many lines are lifted from the Bible. Unusual percussion (chick chock, cabassa, coccarico and bass xylophone) tells the story of a dead man walking.


Brother Bull

I've known my wife since I was 15 but have never written a song for her. I didn't see how I could fit in everything I wanted to say. But I realised when I wrote church songs I just picked one thing I wanted to say about God and that seemed to work. So I focused on her eyes. The first day I saw her I was so struck with how blue her eyes that I named my first band Crystalline Blue (actually Crystalyne Blue – it was the 80's). But when we began dating I realised they were green. As small children we lived on the same street (though 200 doors apart) And when we married we chose russian wedding rings - 3 intertwined gold rings.