This is one of the questions that sits quietly in the corner of every home studio. You may not ask it out loud at first. You may try to ignore it. You may convince yourself that the vocal is probably fine, the bass is probably doing something useful, and the drums sound much better than […]

There was a time when getting your music “out there” meant something very physical. You had to make a CD. Or a tape, if we are going back far enough and trying not to think about how old that makes us feel. You needed something that could be held, copied, posted, handed to someone at […]

There is a strange kind of faith involved in continuing to make music when very little evidence suggests that you should. Not religious faith, necessarily. Not even confidence. Confidence would suggest that you know where it is all going, that you can see some kind of reward waiting in the distance. Most independent musicians do […]

Last Saturday night I had the immense pleasure of hosting the 5th Songwriter Evening in my local village hall. Songwriter Evening was set up to be a place devoted to listening to songwriters in a lovely building in front of an audience that came to listen, not to chat, order drinks or spend half the […]

There was a time when the phrase “home studio” sounded far grander than the reality. In my case, it meant a room in the house, a computer, Cubase, a microphone, a keyboard, a pair of headphones, some speakers and enough cables to make the back of the desk look like an unsolved crime scene. Oh, […]

No, I’m not leaving home, this is all the equipment I take to run a Songwriter Evening at the village hall 400 yards from where I live. I never realised when I decided to start Songwriter Evening that I would have to turn into removal man. All this will get loaded into my car and […]

Paul McCartney hardly needs any promotion from me, but that hasn’t stopped this album being promoted literally everywhere. There’s been wall to wall coverage of it, McCartney has popped up on podcasts, YouTube and TV shows around the world so I bet there’s very few people who have any interest in music who are unaware […]

Great songs deserve great sound — and at Songwriter Evening, sound is a vital part of the experience. The live sound is controlled by Jermaine Nelson-Williams, a graduate-trained sound engineer with more than 20 years’ experience. Jermaine brings technical skill, musical understanding and calm professionalism to every event, making sure each performance is heard clearly, […]

Kiss Me Goodnight is one of the songs from my second album Collateral. It is also one of the songs that caused me the most grief while I was writing it. The song was originally written for my niece’s wedding. I had never really written a song to order before and, as it turned out, […]

Songwriter Evening is just over a week away, returning on Saturday 6th June for another night of live original music at Ysceifiog Village Hall. If you enjoy discovering new songs, supporting independent musicians, and hearing music performed in a proper listening environment, now is the time to make a note of the date. Songwriter Evening […]