A lot of my songs have little 'easter eggs' inside them i.e. hidden meanings or specific parts I'm proud of, plus quite a few laughs in the studio. For those who enjoy my music and wanted to know more, I figured I would try and 'get some of the stories down'. Are you sitting comfortably..? Then let's begin with Just Me's opening track; But I Really Want To.

What a mad song! The original plan was to have it around track 4/5, but it's short, catchy, easy to record and has an initial energy rush... so it became the opener. The "Yeah" is of course me being silly and a reference to Oasis' LiveForever, Dan decided to go one better by adding a vibraslap, pure cheese! 

It was written 1993 ish and the first demo dated back to a 4x track tape machine in 1996 with me struggling to play every instrument. For the re-record on the computer in 2000 I drafted in Dan (bass) and Neil (lead guitar) but the acoustic part is still mine because hey I am a rhythm guitar player by trade and it's my song!

Timing is crucial on this one (it's part of the hook and an awkward swine)! I remember constantly telling Dan to 'do [the bass] again'. 4 hours later he was unimpressed (!) but it was worth it. The opening riff in particular is a swine on bass (but easy on guitar... which I wrote it on), Dan pleaded with me not to loose that take! I directed Dan to do a line with octaves and then a scale higher up the bass, very flashy and really propels the song forward. That large range in sound made it very difficult to mix, I spent hours getting it just right.

My own acoustic guitar part took an hour, Dan had chatted around the time about whether it was better to get an acoustic guitar sound by plugging it in or using a microphone. So I thought why not try both? i.e. record the same performance plugged in and via microphone and then move one to the left speaker the other to the right. After all I wanted a very bright sound to hit you across the head. Took me about 1 hour, but I did cheat... I cut and pasted! This lead to a happy accident because I cut and pasted out of time, it made the guitar feel like it's bounce around a lot. Listen to verse 4 ("I realise that you're so near"...) and you can hear it in effect (that technique appears on album #2... sssssh).

The basic drum pattern is from me, plus a little help from Dan. The big 80's reverb / Phil Collins snare drum sound my idea! I remember 2007 ish mixing the rhythm section together, constantly hitting re-play one Saturday... next thing I looked at the clock and it was 9pm! I had forgotten to get any tea!

The oldest takes are Neil on lead guitar from one night in late 2000, took a total of one hour! As with Dan I direct him in a 'start here' but allowing for creative freedom. The song is silly, so I told him to camp it up as much as possible. The response? "Are you sure? We're talking near YMCA great big handle bar moustaches here!" Well I did say I wanted it over the top... Also pay particuarl attention to the sound of Neil's guitar, Dan had the idea of copying it three times to simlulate a delay effect. Clever! 

What is this song about? God knows! I just looked in the mirror one night, loosely thought of a girl I knew and started singing gibberish. Well the groove felt good! I suppose you could say it's about indecisiveness, But I Really Do / Don't want to ask this girl out. To add emphasis there is an extra beat on the don't; that's my hook. Then there was the line "I went to bed, tossed and turned all night". Oh! Unintentional innuendo! So on stage the introduction is usually:

"This is about liking a girl... yet not liking her.
About wanting to ask her out... yet not wanting to ask her out.
And so, you spank the monkey instead!"

Usually brings a few gasps from the audience! Hey I'm an attention slut!

Vocally I went for an equally over the top Elvis lip curling style... but despite writing the tune, it doesn't naturally suit my voice! I couldn't ask Elvis to sing it, so instead I relied on a little 21st magic called pitch correction, but let's just keep it our little secret eh? Live of course I can't do that, so instead I do a silly jaw movement on the key phrase to divert people's attention, hey everyone needs a gimmick!

And then we have the ending... given the subject matter I decided to make the relaxing groan for a laugh(!) Dan decided to go one better... he's credited as performing an FHM. Why? Well that as my groan dies away you can hear a flicking noise. It's a recording of Dan dropping a copy of the magazine FHM on the floor!!!!! :-)

For the record FHM is a lads magazine with lots of 'artistic pictures of ladies', the issue in question from 08/2006 featuring Gemma Atkinson in a pool and a VERY nice pose. :-) 

Right that's track one down! Hopefully I'll get around to track 2 soon as long as I don't get Lost. Again... (could... not... resist...)

This songs goes all the way back to 1996 when I was in an indie band called Redset. This was the height of Oasis' fame and we were (mostly) a covers group with a very talented lead singer; Matthew. He could play every part (guitar, bass, drums) and wrote some great original tunes. It's very healthy being around great musicians, it gave me an outlet and inspired me to write something for the group.

Lost Again was the first tune I came up with and it's a clear attempt to write 'a hit single' in the same vein as Oasis. I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something equally straight forward that connected with people. Oh look it's in the same key as Acquiese, which I noticed happened to suit Matthew's voice which is more rawcous than mine. :-D

For the record it was never played by Redset because the focus swiftly changed to another new tune: Nothing Left To Give. Oh that tune has a real life of it's own and will be a highlight of album #2... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So what is Lost Again about? In a nutshell; being single! It was written post my first whirlwind girlfriend ("it was too fast") but during a long period of being single and low, yes it was a bad period but also my most productive... funny how that works! There's a clear desert = single analogy, but true to me there's a few cheeky mucky references. Years later I jammed this with my mate Neil (who played lead on But I Really Want To), when he actually studied the lyrics he fell over laughing at the line: "a love is a river in the deserts of sand, it's more than just something you can hold in your hand". Busted! Yes that line is about - ahem - self love. ;-)

Over the years I plugged away at this single constantly on my 4x track tape recorder and roland drum machine, it was an early experiment at lead guitar (guess who had just learnt the blues scale...). There is a CD on my shelf from the late 90's, featuring Lost Again, The Heart of the Andes and Lost in a Changing World (which is due to for an update). The whole thing had a cover art of a globe inside a light bulb, well it looks profound!

When I moved to the PC I had become tired of the tune and it was almost consigned to the dustbin... until one holiday I happened to hit upon a nice finger pick, only a small addition but it rekindled my enthusiasm.

So what ended up on the record? Dan and myself worked on the drums based loosely on the programming I did with the old roland drum machine. Watch out for the extra fills after the last chorus, they were Dan's idea and he particularly likes the long flashy one, the extra woofy kick drum was my idea.... because I wanted to. :-)

It took some practise but I eventually re-created my old guitar solo... which I often proclaim as "[me] getting my lead guitar chops!" However for the bass part, I sacked myself! There was a take featuring me but on close inspection Dan spotted a few mistakes and offered his services.

That recording session was a barrel of laughs, Dan is a class bass player but I made him dumb it right down to basics, because this is a simple straight forward rock song. Keep It Simple Dan! Lordy did I have him on a tight leash, constantly teasing him pointing out that his licks were 'too good' and instructing him to 'do it again simpler'!

I approached the vocals with some trepidation... no Matthew! My voice is totally different and much softer, it's a bit like asking Dido to sing an Oasis song like Liam Gallagher. At heart though... I prefer Freddie Mercury's power vocals so my voice naturally imitated that style. Each verse was split into individual lines for a double tracking effect... this had nothing to do with me running out of breath(!!!) </tongue planted firmly in cheek>

Finally the icing on the cake was a little 21st magic to make my voice sound more throaty, I always chuckle when I listen to how different I sound to everything else on the album.

The cherry ontop? Chris and Dan wrote and provided the backing harmonies on the chorus which I love. Chris' voice is sooo strong and cutting right through the mix, it's ideal for this number! Dan of course is the master at blending harmonies in and has some great moments.

All in all I like this song, whilst the musicians like Dan, Chris and Jim all find it a little bland (which it is!) there is no denying that it's catchy and is exactly what I set out to write; a single. Hopefully a hit one. :-D

I'll leave the final comment on this tune to Matthew... on hearing the near finished demo: "[Lost Again] has some balls doesn't it?".

This is a personal favourite and gave me the confidence to complete the album. It was written immediately after Lost Again in the summer of 1996 again with Redset in mind, except it is a little more adventurous...

Where did the first idea come from? Well I’ve always been ahuge fan of the Phil Collins song In the Air Tonight, particularly the live version. During the drum finale Phil Collins would be screaming his guts out and varying the melody. I attempted to cover the song but quickly found that my voice has a different range, so I ended up changing the key from D minor to A minor. However I wasn’t sticking strictly to the original melody but instead making up my own variation and it sounded good!

The summer of 1996 was quite a turbulent time for me (like most 18 year olds!) and during the long summer break I found my sleeping pattern was going up the wall. At 3 am one morning I couldn’t sleep but the creative side of my brain was racing... “if my melody is different to In The Air Tonight, why not use it for one of my own songs?” Lyrics then began tumbling out of my head and I switched the light, grabbed pen and paper desperately scribbled the lyrics down; if they were any good I’d find out in the morning.

The lyrics were good, especially the chorus. I’ve always been fascinated by duality stories like Jekyll and Hyde, Batman’s Two-Face character, the light / dark side of the force in Star Wars... and was musing on my own positive / negative traits; growing pains! The lyrics represent the inner conflict of humanity’s sense of good and evil in a confessional setting without being explicit. The confessional setting is based on my tendency back then to pedestal women, representing good.

My song had started to move away from In the Air Tonight so I needed to write more music to support the different themes. This is some of the work I’m most proud of. I used very standard chords but arranged them in very unusual ways, utilising odd key changes to reflect the lyrical themes. I am particularly proud of the bridge (“I love, I hate you”), it represents sudden shifts from good to evil and the chords inversely mirror this by switching from minor to major. The writing was a pleasure, very easy and completed within an hour the following day.

Right so I now had a mini masterpiece, all it required was a gig to show how great it was... oh boy was I deluded! What I hadn’t anticipated was that this complex tune wouldn’t work on just me and my acoustic. The contrasts didn’t come out, to be blunt it flopped and received muted applause. Curses! Initially it put me off the song, but still... I felt it had a lot of potential so I filed it away. One for the future.

The summer of 2000, I had finished my degree and experiencing my last long break before starting work. I wondered if I could use the computer to record this song and unlock the potential I saw in it. Vocal effects became possible as did jumping from right to left speakers... it worked! I played it to Neil, he sat up in his chair during that section and immediately described it as the best thing I’d done.

So recording on the computer was the answer... my dream of an album was achievable.

The lead vocals were recorded in the summer of 2000, co-incidentally due to a slow relationship breakdown it felt very much as turbulent as 1996. I recaptured the feel and raw emotion of the song especially the chorus where I literally gave it my all; after singing the last note I fell to the floor in a coughing fit! It took several minutes before I had the strength to stand.

However completing the song was an excruciatingly slow process. Once I had an initial draft down I became aware of my own limitations, namely drums. It was for this song I enlisted Dan’s help which spiralled to include the entire album. He has this incredible ability to take my raw ideas then refine and extend them, creating a much better finished product that perfectly matched my vision. The drum patterns Dan created were not something to just ‘keep’ the rhythm going, but were instead a prominent feature like another lead instrument.

Dan provided the bulk of the drums (around 75%), but they were refined by myself, Chris and finally Jim Murphy. Ironically many years ago it was Matthew from Redset who pointed out that the hi-hat was missing, something Jim also noted; we spent days working it into the tune and discussing it with Dan. Listen closely and you can hear the hi-hat's introduction on the second verse, then it increases in frequency to maintain the momentum in the keyboard solo. A lot of the delicate touches on the hi-hat and cymbals were Jim and me bouncing ideas off each other and I always enjoy listening out for them.

On the subject of the keyboard solo, it was introduced after the original song had been written because it felt a little short. In 1997 Genesis released on the internet a short snippet of their upcoming song The Dividing Line. It made me realise just how much I loved Tony Banks’ big keyboard solo’s, and wanted to write something similar for my song. I used a tape deck to record a drum + guitar part constantly repeating the music from the chorus then jammed away on a keyboard. What I wrote was new but the phrasing had clear influences from Fading Lights and Ripples. I wrote two thirds of the final keyboard solo and Dan wrote the closing third paraphrasing me paraphrasing Tony Banks!

The introduction of the keyboard solo was a major problem, too much energy left the song and it felt weak. Jim Murphy and I agonised over this problem, it’s why we increased the frequency of the hi-hat... but still it dragged too much. Not good! I lucked out and got a little inspiration; a very simple repeating phrase on the piano like Genesis’ the Carpet Crawlers; bingo! The cherry on top were some deepand meaningful spoken phrases (that were actually adlibbed!) to pique the listeners interest. I’m actually saying “You know don’t you? You know you’re an angel. It’s just.... who we are” jumping from speaker to speaker. Jim's comment was; “that works now”.

There’s something about this song which just clicks mentally with me, so when it came to the live guitar parts I insisted on playing almost everything... it had to feel like me. There are two notable exceptions firstly Chris plays a subtle guitar harmony on the very last chorus, secondly Dan had another great idea for a riff. Now Dan had introduced me to a heavy metal group called Dream Theatre and wanted to employ some of their techniques. So for just a brief moment in the last chorus after the line "I've gone too far", there is a typical metal motif; hence it gets very erm heavy! The rhythm guitar is me (heavily edited!) with Dan having a brief uncredited guest on bass. I had no chance of playing something that difficult!

As you can tell by the sheer length of this article, I am very proud of this song.

I find it a highlight of the album with lots of moments I'll always treasure. 

Another instrumental and the shortest track on the album yet it went through more arrangements and re-writes than anything else!

The genesis of this song was Chris' suggestion; an instrumental reprise of What I Mean To Say that leads into the following track, The Watcher.

Version 1.0 was Chris improvising on his classical and following the main song very closely. It took less than thirty minutes to write and record, we were both quite pleased. It's never that easy though... Dan heard it and thought that we were off in the wrong direction and more could be done with existing chord sequence. I was quite keen on the idea of this number so pushed Dan to submit some ideas...

Version 2.0 was Dan's baby. He wrote a synth string part and recorded a very unusual and impressive bass line. Remember the bass line for What I Mean To Say was all my work, so I found Dan's bass over the same chords very interesting it highlights the different approaches and breathes new live into it. Dan's timing is also very complex, but it is a standard 4/4.

This version was passed over to Dan's dad Chas who is a lead guitar player. Again a different player produced a different interpretation, in particular I found the opening line excellent. However the chord sequence is quite deliberately unusual (Chas err cursed me a few times) and I understand limited time was available so a usable take was never completed, but a little bit of opening magic was captured.

Version 3.0 was a combined effort by Chris and myself. I was becoming aware that this track was in danger of happening without me! So I learnt Chas' opening guitar solo and then wrote the closing section. Finally Chris and myself ironed out the backing synth parts, in particular using some brass to augment the strings was Chris' suggestion. The final cherry ontop was DJ Flywheel working on the mix with me.

After three versions it was finally done! It's worth noting that the sound on this track is a little 'bigger' partly because it was one of the last things recorded and I had access to more modern equipment. A few mental notes for album #2 were made...

Why the title? Dan suggested using a line from the following track, there are several in the form of <line>.... the watcher. A literary que, that indicates this is just before The Watcher. We simply took the title from the most repeated phrase: "that's the curse of... the watcher".

All in all it may sound throw away, but remember the structural rule of three. This is the second instrumental of the album, just enough to make the listener comfortable with instrumentals so I can sneak up with a huge instrumental further down the line... 

Well we've made it to the first real 'biggie' on the album, an epic make or break track. For many this is a polarising song; people who enjoy long musically complex songs with huge instrumentals, often rate this as a highlight. However people who prefer shorter songs more suitable for singles often find this less enjoyable. Whatever your own preference there is no getting around the fact that at over seven minutes it is the longest track on the album but also the one which goes through the most changes. This is going to be an epic write up...

What is it about? Originally it started with just the title (a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that at age 18 I never seemed to have a gf...) but unusually for me I took the basic brain stormed idea and gave it a non relationship oriented story. When I was younger I was heavily impressed with the film Highlander, for those who haven't seen it the film is about a man (Connor Mcleod) who discovers that for some unknown reason that he cannot die. However he is in love with a normal woman, whom he met before discovering his immortality. A central scene of the movie shows him not changing whilst his girlfriend grows older and older until she eventually passes away in his arms. It's set to the beautiful, haunting and soulful Queen song Who Wants To Live Forever written by Brian May; I've always been touched by the combination of that music and that poignant scene.

The exact details of how I wrote the song have been lost... but I remember it feeling very natural and easy, particularly the lyrics if anything the above theme and basic story line came together without having to think about it. There is of course one crucial difference between Highlander and my story; The Watcher isolates himself and refuses to love. The music also fell out naturally and I'm quite proud of the chords, the writing felt musically more mature and my compositional style of simple chords but unusual choices is in full flow. A creative high water mark and a melting point of many musical ideas... some of which will be revisted in different styles on album two. The Watcher went through the typical early demo's on both my tape deck and then subsequently the computer in mid 2000, I felt this track and Who We Are were the strongest of those demos. 

I always felt that The Watcher should sound like a Genesis track (i.e. Progressive Rock) performed on modern instruments. What would Tony Banks and Steve Hackett do with this one? The demo felt like the song had more scope... like it should break out into a huge instrumental at the end.

Finally around 2007 after a lot of hard work on other tracks for Just Me I decided to bite the bullet and restart the recording of The Watcher. The skeleton of the song was laid down fairly easily and I particularly enjoyed playing bass and a nice Steve Hackett style lead guitar line... but it felt like more could be done; I needed a fresh perspective. Unusually for me, I didn't call on Dan (probably because he was so heavily involved in the finale numbers) but instead pulled in DJ Flywheel for a fresh perspective. I didn't know it at the time, but this was an inspired choice because he was into progressive rock more than I was! 

DJ Flywheel suggested an arrangement change, first the time signature of verse one changed and secondly the lyrics were spoken not sung. Effectively it gave the tune an introduction, a spooky feel like a scary organ grinder fairground man telling a ghost story. DJ Flywheel suggested I write some more lyrics for a spoken outro... giving me just the right nudge to go off and actually do it. 

We worked slavishly on improving the keyboard sound and I learnt and incredible amount at this stage. Dan was still around and offered the odd bit've advice, for example I wanted a very quirky drum pattern - a la early 1980's Phil Collins - and had specially bought some up to date samples of the drum sounds I was thinking of. We ended up using effectively two drums, one the obscure sound (where Dan wrote the key signature pattern) and a more normal straight drum kit to keep the beat moving (mostly DJ Flywheel and myself wrote that part with a little refinement from Dan).  

Working with DJ Flywheel also pushed me to write something for an instrumental, just prior to catching up one day I had this odd (and very tough!) chord sequence jotted down. We laid down a drum pattern underneath it but was still lacking a melody so I asked Chris for some help. He suggested using a Tony Banks early 1980's keyboard sound (the Odyssey), so I fired it up... and he wrote the melody in the time it took to play the backing track; genius! 

I played bass on the track up to the instrumental, but it's horrendously complex timing worried me. So half way through the song the bass play switches to Dan, his 6 string deep woofy bass and virtuoso playing perfectly suited this section. Listen closely and you can hear a three part harmony at the loudest part of the instrumental... it's Chris' melody, plus Dan harmonising it on another keyboard plus Dan playing the third harmony on his bass! It was Dan's idea to have part of the instrumental go very LOUD and in your face... it always makes me smile.

Amazingly all the recording sessions were me and one other person, be it DJ Flywheel, Dan or Chris. We never all sat down together to work on the song, yet there were no ego's and no pulling up of the other person's ideas.The tune feels very much like mine & DJ Flywheel's baby, but each person complimented and refined the other... an extremely enjoyable and creative time. 

Another arrangement idea was to open with some church bell chiming ominously, my girlfriend of the time suggested starting with 3 chimes and ending with 4. Why? In some cultures the witching hour is actually 3am and not midnight, in Christianity this is because Jesus died at 3pm and because of the holy trinity is 3... so evil forces chose 3am in mockery. This was mentioned in the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose (if memory serves I bought a copy of it for my girlfriend) and also remember that 3am is the time when most people are asleep probably in deep sleep. The Watcher is a scary or ghost story, 4 strikes for 4am signfies the end of the witching hour and the end of the song.

So... my progressive rock inclinations have now reached their zenith; what next? 

The oldest song on the album written sometime in 1992, this was orignally the finale for my G.C.S.E. music coursework

Credit where it's due, the opening line came from my old school friend Craig. We'd been on holiday and met this girl of a similar age, both being around aged 14 from an all boys school... actually meeting a real in the flesh woman made quite an impression on us! So when we got back Craig wrote the very first line "When I first saw you".

Now the girl in question lived quite a distance away, where exactly escapes me but I vaguely recall it being more than a couple of hours drive. Around this stage I was dabbling with song writing and have clear memories of just playing Craig's riff in my parents dining room one day... and much like a lot of my songs I had a sudden inspiration on where to take the chords next.

The lyrics then fell out very easily, as I naively described it back then; each verse describes something nice about a woman (you, eyes, lips, face). The song itself is left somewhat deliberately ambiguous, why could this love never be? Hopefully it will fit many different situations for people, but to me it implies a long distance relationship.

So it was dusted off and submitted for my G.C.S.E. music coursework, the tape is still lying around somewhere but I do cringe slightly at my singing. The melody doesn't fall naturally for me, in a way I never really 'got' it; a side effect of starting with Craig's melody. Also the tune was written on guitar... somehow it didn't feel right to me.

When I got to recording the Just Me album, this particular track had a huge question mark over it. Would it be good enough to - ironically - make the grade? From the old demo, I was skeptical... my gut feel was that it should be played on the piano not guitar. Now I am not a pianist by any stretch of the imagination (my brain struggles to multi-task even more than the average male!) which is a required skill on piano where each hand must work independently. So sadly I knew I couldn't make this song fly, but Dan (who is a pianist) could.

So I demo'ed the tune to Dan on guitar, put the chords down in front of him and.... he just nailed it; he instantly understood the feel. Next I started freely chatting about the songs history, curiously enough Chris had mentioned that the middle 8 ("Oh how I loved you...") was very strong and suggested it be used again partly because it introduces more variety. 

A couple of days later Dan sent me an email. Not only had he recorded a strong live midi piano backing track, but he had also written a bass solo over a repeat of the middle  8's chord sequence. Wow! Suffice to say I was blown away. Several people have commented that the solo sounds like a nylon guitar. It's actually Dan's six string bass tuned slightly high and double tracked. Lovely and unique sound but there is a drawback... Dan has subsequently switched to a heavier guage string, everytime he tries to repeat the tuning his string snaps! So this solo has never been played live... but it is gorgeous.

The lead vocal was sheer hell for me! It was re-take after re-take followed by endless pitch correction... ow! Still it was worth it. Dan had the idea for a vocal harmony and wrote out the parts, I sheepishly admitted I couldn't sing it so he had the inspiration to suggest he perform a take and then I copied him. To quote Meatloaf; I can do that! So this track contains the first recording of me singing a vocal harmony, with a technquie which we re-used for songs that appear earlier on the album. There is one line though ("A love never to be", just after the middle 8) which is still Dan to add a slightly different tone and because I wanted him there.

OK so what about the rest of the track? Well the normal bass line is me, enjoying myself too because the song called for a very straight forward low bass line very much my style. Dan suggested some nice strings playing chords which has an awesome effect when they come in on the middle 8. It must be said that Chris gave up a lot of his time helping me with the pitch correction and suggested a violin counter melody for the final couple of verses. I fired it up and just let him loose... the result was a soaring line and a highlight for me.

All in all this is a surprising gem of a song, I'm really glad Dan managed to salvage it and if the album had ended on this track it would have gone on a high.

But... we still have two tracks to go. As Chris would say, "go for broke"!