I began playing the trumpet in the school orchestra. At twelve I gave up on brass because my older brother said, “you’ll get lots of girls if you play the guitar”. After giving up on the guitar two times I finally had a breakthrough when I learnt how to play the melody to
Blowin’ in the Wind – third time lucky I’d say!
It wasn’t until August 2006 that I truly discovered what Folk Music is. I had traveled up to The Green Man Festival somewhere in the Welsh Countryside by myself. It was here that I encountered
Bert Jansch, a guitarist who I’d been told was “as good as
Jimi Hendrix”. I started wandering around the campsite listening to people singing old songs around the campfire. I went for a ramble singing a melody to the wind; there were some very tall sunflowers around.
So I finally put away my electric guitar and focused on songs, only songs. I was teaching the guitar to make a living, reading inspiring books and learning more about my instrument. My confidence grew as a singer singing in his own voice about things that had affected me.
Then
Chris Monger asked me to travel to his bedroom studio for a demo…
It was late October and autumn was all around. Chris had set up some microphones, I had brought my Taylor 514CE and a portable recording device with some sounds on it. Suddenly we were listening to
Ryan Adams Heartbreaker very loudly, drinking beer, adding e-bow and playing with keyboard textures. Having another person’s sudden creative input made such a huge difference, finally it was sounding like it was always meant sound. Whilst Chris was mastering, I was busy making sure that the album would also look like it was always meant to look.