It has been a lifelong journey to live-out the phrase “I like all kinds of music” that you often hear people say. I guess I’m no different but took it further and ended up going around the world in search of it. For me it was not only listening to the music and discovering new music, but I made it my life to actually play many different styles of music and find the links that run through it.

As a full-time musician one of the beauties of physically playing music is that you absorb it on an even more personal level than you do just listening alone. It goes deep until it becomes you. Over the years (as a bass guitarist and double bass player and then later as a guitarist and banjoist) I’ve been involved in acts that have played all over the world. New York, Japan, Germany, France, Norway, Spain and Sweden have visited every corner of Britain to play.

The genres have spanned styles such as blues, swing, pop, brass band, rock, new wave, ragtime, folk, jazz, soul, funk, ambient, heavy rock, rockabilly, tribute bands, garage, art-rock, country, cabaret, dance, punk, classical, world and I even performed in a rock band with a chap from the death metal bands Carcass and Napalm Death. It really has been a journey through all kinds of music.

Along the way I was writing and amassing a box file full of songs and ideas. There have been so many kinds of music in my life and little bits of all these styles have filtered through.

So, how does one turn the decades of rough ideas and song fragments into living breathing songs?

Between the busy schedule of being a musician in two busy working bands (The Washboard Resonators and Leeds City Stompers) and also doing solo sets on dementia wards is not easy but there was something to say and I had to figure out how to say it.

As a huge fan of old blues, country and jazz since my teens, I’d amassed a huge collection of records from artists like Blind Boy Fuller, The Carter Family, Blind Willie Johnson, Jimmie Rodgers, Memphis Minnie, Son House and Bukka White all of whom are big influences. They had recorded in the 1920s, 30s & 40s and the records are often scratchy and of poor sound quality. There is a certain romance to a voice that comes to you from beyond the grave through the sound of a crackly record on a gramophone - it becomes like a séance - albeit one you can drink Stout with and tap your foot to. In and amongst these records were some artists that played as seated one-man bands with drums at their feet; Jesse Fuller, Joe Hill Lewis and Abner Jay being particular favourites playing their songs on guitar or banjo while making rudimentary drumbeats beats with the drums at their feet.

The desire to do something with the volumes of song ideas I’d collected was growing. The whole ‘solo’ act thing really started to come together as I made time to focus and prioritise my own music around 2018. Upon sitting down to finalise my ideas (some going back to way before the millennium) I had varied styles; banjo hymnals, requiems, pretty country songs, down-tuned heavy riffs, traditional blues amongst all kinds of other ideas.

Slowly I started working up a selection of songs. The ones that would have benefited a bigger band sound I tentatively started to use foot drums on like I’d the chaps above do over the years. From this (and to my surprise) came a stripped down bluesy sound a bit like RL Burnside, John Lee Hooker or the blues and garage-rock mix of The White Stripes or The Black Keys.

‘Songs Of Death And Love’, released in 2020, is a collection of 12 songs that all hold those two themes somewhere in them – or at least close. There are a couple of gentle folk and hymn-like songs that sound like they could have been written in 1880. Tom Waits is a master of playing and writing new songs that sound like they came straight from a bygone era. Some songs conversely are stomping blues songs (with the odd Black Sabbath style riff thrown in) that surprisingly get people dancing. The songs are all tender, loving and romantic even if their title may suggests otherwise.

When playing at a live show the instruments are mixed and include; harmonica, guitar, banjo, loops and maybe seventy percent of songs feature foot-drums. Depending on the gig I’ll draw from a set list with about sixty traditional songs and ten originals on it and pick material that fits. It is music that gets people dancing and is exciting to play.

On record I hope it is many things both new and old but with no definite line between.

Born in 1981, I grew up in the mill town of Huddersfield in northern England.

In that landscape of rundown Victorian mills and beautiful open moorland, I listen to, learn and play music. I can’t help but reflect through that musical prism some of what I see around me.

Somehow I ended up making sounds that a friend (upon hearing the album) quoted as sounding like; “the soundtrack to a party that never happened, in a time that never existed but in which everyone dances and sings lovingly for those who have been and gone.”

I’m as surprised as anyone to have ended up here with these songs and instruments, but it seems right.

It’s all in there somewhere.