Music & Lyrics

Talk about eclectic! I'm not sure there's any genre or style of music that isn't included in my record collection. And by that I mean good old fashioned vinyl (I still play it on the record player I bought when I was 18) and of course the expedient, but far less romantic CDs and iPod. Everything from Skeeter Hinton's 1920s Ragtime Blues, Sarah Vaughan, Segovia, Lloyd Cole, Jim Moray, Kristofferson, R.E.M., Eels, Elizabeth Valletti, Tom Waits, Erik Satie, to Mirah's quirky low-fi soundscapes. What I listen to most, depends on what I'm doing. If I'm cooking dinner for the family, (which I love to do) it'll most likely be jazz: Charlie Haden, Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane. If I'm writing, hmmm, depends on the tale... but it'll be something without a vocal. My copy of Tangerine Dream's Rubycon which I bought in 1976 often gets played on rotation for literally weeks at a time, (I have to be alone in the house to get away with this you understand), and I've never grown tired of hearing it.

As for writing songs, again, I'll turn my hand to pretty much any genre. I scribble down lyrics all the time even though I've very little outlet for them. Odd this creative lark. At least it is for me. Ideas tend to pop into my consciousness with their identity firmly in place, whether it's a song, a painting, a play, a film, or a novel. Sometimes one medium will spark ideas for another, such as The Weight of Fire exhibition fueling the ideas behind my novel Animalian The Savage Kingdom. It remains an ambition of mine to write a really great album of modern jazz classics - Diana Krall, if you're reading this, please drop me a line :-) - oh, and a musical to rival the very best of Broadway - a boy can dream!

Meanwhile, if you're interested in the work I've written and recorded to date, it is as follows: