Like anyone in their late 30s there were a few tough times in between the great ones. When I decided to come out of home studio hibernation in late 2025 I still didn’t know what to think about life after Dad; my ex roadie and best friend. He was a DJ, general music lover and for the last 10 years of his life, a radio presenter. This was what he really wanted after so nearly working on Radio Caroline… the original version no less! Turning down his dream job might seem odd from the outside but a life at sea was simply not for him. Dad’s tragic and sudden departure is not to blame for my musical slow-down; that was my choice after 13 years and 3 separate self-inflicted burnouts.
At the conclusion of my 10th solo album I said to myself out loud “I can’t do that again” and I was right for quite a while. 3 years after its release, despite my best efforts all I had was two false starts and the nagging thought that I was right all along.
I decided to give it one last chance but there would have to be fundamental changes if this was to succeed. I would need to pace myself to such an extent that any thoughts of a time frame would have to go; that would be the only way I would be happy with anything. Making music at home with no outside expectations gave me the opportunity to do just that. I hate to say it but after 30 years of playing guitar, 17 years of playing bass and 13 years of making solo albums it shifted from hobby to voluntary work. Don’t get me wrong; I still enjoy elements of it but what really keeps dragging me back is the need to create things and hear them take shape one layer at a time. Admittedly that need is sporadic now but it is the same old feeling, as recognisable as ever. If I have a strength I’d like to think it is creativity; I can hide from it for a while but there is no escape for me.
For those first 10 albums I was almost unhealthily obsessed, (emphasis on the almost) with more than enough motivation to back it up. My usual fear of failure did not apply to music; as long as I was making the best album possible during any given year the mission was accomplished. Whether people liked it or not was beyond my control. I often struggle with the concept of self pride for a similar reason. A friend once said I must be really proud that I’d made an album but I don’t think of it like that; in my mind I told people I was doing it and… here it is. I tried really hard and simply stuck to my word. I understand other people feeling proud of themselves but me? Nah!
At the early stages of album 11 however my perspective has had no choice but to change. Dad’s passing was the worst thing I have ever experienced; I had lived with him and my mother for 37 years by then. We all know intellectually that no one lasts forever and life doesn’t have to be fair but I never really thought about it enough until his last couple of weeks. Perhaps that was for the best? As families do, we continued on as best we could. I think we did well but it is clear that I will never be quite the same person again; I am still a bit lost at the time of writing, more than 2 years on.
Eventually I caught Covid after ironically avoiding it for 6 years. There were signs things weren't quite right but I was mostly fine, so I attempted some half hearted album preparations. Unfortunately for me and poor Mum, things were going wrong; I beat Covid fairly easily but also gave it to her somewhere along the line. Just to finish off I quickly picked up ocular shingles. It is probably crass to group the condition into different degrees of luck… but I’m going to call this unlucky regardless. I was stuck doing next to nothing for a month thanks to a shocking lack of energy and at least another month went by before I recovered. I am normally pretty healthy so this was the most physically uncomfortable I had felt in decades. Even the recovery wasn’t as simple as I’d like; nerve damage means I still can’t feel the right side of my head and face, although it's nowhere near as annoying as you might think; the numbness is often only noticeable if the skin is touched. I called my particular variety of shingles unlucky earlier but it did spare me one thing; choosing my right side was, in a warped sort of way, ideal. My right eye is somewhat rubbish, had nature chosen to attack my left eye, temporary blindness would have caused huge disruption. I had barely considered how I would have felt; probably something unprintable for the faint of heart.
The timeline is understandably fuzzy after all that and my memory is an unreliable narrator on a good day, so let's finally focus on this pesky album. With some trepidation and too little confidence, I decided to start with a test tune to get used to the whole process of composing, recording, mixing and mastering again, and to see if I could get the sound right after those two aforementioned false starts. The end result was, perhaps surprisingly, the furthest thing from a throw away prototype and easily the best complete track I’d made in 2 years. I spent months getting it right, delayed by a musician's worst fear; the real possibility of hearing loss had the potential to end my time in the studio just when I was starting to embrace my comeback. Thankfully it wasn’t a genuine hearing problem; something else was causing my eardrum to misbehave. I was fortunate to receive some free advice from Crystal Clear on the Isle of Wight and with yet more patience my stereo field was restored. For the second time my usually healthy body had been repaired. Unbelievable? Perhaps, true? Absolutely!
With one knockback after another at such a fragile point in my musical life things could have gone either way. Had I permanently lost half my hearing I would have retired from the home studio there and then but with everything back in order the musical rollercoaster was in action again. Of course, perspective often comes in handy; unlike so many people I’m not fighting a war, I have a roof over my head and to some degree I get to choose how to live. Life has been good to me.
On completion of that first track I made a decisive call; with the proof in front of me that I could still do it, I was going to give it everything to make the 11th album my best. It certainly seemed like there were plenty of things working against me; it is impossible for me to have the same motivation after decades of playing, my imagination is slower after using up 110 ideas on album tracks alone and the hobby element has gone. So all is lost then? Apparently not. What I can provide is better masters, a more developed musical taste, better feeling on the instruments and more mature compositions. That was the long answer. In short I now have the tools and experience to provide the best overall album package. How? By working on it at a snail's pace. My imagination may be slower but it is still perfectly willing on a good day and my phrasing and other musical sensibilities have, if anything, improved.
As I write this the second track has turned out just as well as the first. Once again it took months, although the pace was not quite as glacial as before. So, will all this time and effort finally lead to my best work a few years from now? I think so but we will find out together in the final chapter of this quaint web log.