Album Notes

All the songs on this album are taken from a semi-autobiographical, and hopefully humorous, book written about my experiences as a singer-songwriter. Sub-titled ‘Song Tales – Volume One’ (the first of a trilogy) it also includes stories and interesting facts based on other musician’s lives. Though each chapter starts with lyrics that inspired it, the songs may have other origins.
The book was an idea I’d kicked around for years as many of my songs have a narrative, but I could never see any way to link them. Nor did I have the time or energy to spend on such a huge task. Then one day I was accosted by a mad old busker in Newcastle and, after nearly fainting with amazement having realised it was the legendary session musician and record producer Arthur Grimsby - the man I had tangled with as a youngster when foolishly trying to make it in the business. Another reason for my surprise was that he was supposedly dead - killed in a drink induced car crash at the end of the Eighties. However, before long he managed to entangle me in his dubious schemes again and I found myself reeling across country after a pile of gold records, among other things.
My all time song-writing hero is Woody Guthrie who was not only incredibly prolific (hundreds of songs but also poems, stories, journalism and political polemic) but went out on the road with other great musicians such as Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Huddie Leadbetter and many others. His integrity and humanity shine through everything he wrote and sang and has also since inspired numerous other artists over the past seventy odd years. Other musical influences are many and various, but I’ve always admired the lone singer who tries to be honest and tell life as it is, from whatever genre. If you want to pigeon-hole me, you’d say I was a folk singer because I mostly play acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, bouzouki, dulcimer, etc) but that’s a superficial designation.
At the end of the book I relate going to Okemah, Oklahoma, to attend the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival after winning a prize in their song-writing competition. It was a brilliant experience mixing with hundreds of other Woody fans and seeing many top artists. I also got to play on the Crystal Theatre stage which, many years previously so the legend goes, the man himself once appeared. Many of my songs, I realised, have been inspired by American traditions (which in turn often began life in the UK) and remain so to this day.
At the showing of a film about Woody’s life (featuring Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen and others) there is the following quote: ‘I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that.’ Watch MTV for a few minutes and ask yourself, do these songs make people feel better about themselves? I don’t think so. Most commercial music is sexist, violent, superficial, dishonest, materialistic and often immoral. I’m not claiming my songs are so much better, but I do try. And so did Woody and many other singer-songwriters past and present. Hopefully, my book and the accompanying CD, will reveal some truth about myself, the business and the lives of those involved along the way.