This is my cover version of a song by my friends Fiona Thom and John Farrell, of Ms Fi and the Lost Head Band. (It starts very quietly!) I’ve loved the song Box of Tricks since the first time I heard it. The soaring chorus of I fooled them all is one thing, the elusive … Read more
She Wants Out Here’s a new pop song. This is a followup to the Beatles’ She Loves You. As you well know, its narrator is telling his friend don’t worry, go for it, apologise and she’ll be yours again. Some weeks or months on, he has a different story for her. As with most of … Read more
I added lyrics to a video I made in 2015, and it’s proved the most popular video I’ve had on Facebook. Let me know if you like it – please share it if you do. There’s a little more background in Songstories #7: Song For A Walk If you like this, you might also like … Read more
Continuing my musical life story with one of the stranger episodes- how attention-seeking ended the first band I led. By the middle of the 1980s, in Manchester, I’d got over the novelty of multitrack recording and begun to take songwriting seriously. Solitary songwriting I’d been writing songs since I was 16 but I’d always tended … Read more
This past weekend I was at the Glasgow Songwriting Festival 2017. A weekend course rather than a festival. Here’s what happened and what I got from it. Govanhill Baths The course was held in one of strangest venues I’ve been in. A hundred-year-old building housing several swimming pools, rows of private bath cubicles and a … Read more
I remember a quote attributed to Bob Dylan about songwriting although I’ve never been able to verify it: Q: How do you write a song? A: Take a song you know, change the words then change the tune The weather’s been glorious and I heard it’s going to break tomorrow so I decided to put … Read more