About Me
I was 8 years old and watching a concert put on by my school, during which one of the older pupils sang a song from Les Miserables. When he finished I turned to my parents and said "I want to be able to sing like that". So began my musical journey to develop first my voice, through singing lessons at school and membership of the National Youth Choir of Scotland, then guitar and piano through lessons at school.
My guitar teacher was a true master of the instrument and he expanded my repertoire. I got an electric guitar for Christmas and quickly added an acoustic. I also got a book of four chord songs or as I call it, "my Wee Black Book". As my dad and I sat on the sofa looking through it, we found "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison. I brought my book into school to show my teacher and we set about learning the song. Ordinarily the music lessons only lasted about 35 minutes, however, because I was his last pupil of the day my teacher stayed longer so that I could perfect the song. The 35 minutes stretched to an hour and 35, however I had mastered the song. Two days later I played it at a small show that my class was putting on for our parents. To this day it is still one of my favourite songs to play.
​
In 2018, at the very start of the year, while strumming my four favourite chords: G, D, Em and C, I suddenly began to sing words which I'd never heard in any song before. Ten minutes later, I had written my first song which I called "Different”, and continued to work on the tempo, notes and some words of the song with my Dad. "Different" was a song loosely based on my own life experiences, as well as the experiences of some of my friends. The song talked about losing friends, bullying and relationships, however the message of the song can be summarised by the repeated rhetorical question "Who wants to be different?". Despite all the other themes in the song, the main one is that everyone should embrace their own individuality rather than changing themselves so that they fit in. The final line of the song sums up my belief, which is: "Why don't we be different?”.
Later in 2018, I busked at the Perth CiTay festival where I met a studio engineer for a local record studio. He gave me his email and said that if I had any songs that I wished to record that I should get in touch to arrange a recording session. At the time, I was working on an EP which I called "Endless Summer", which took on classic themes of the rock songs which had inspired me throughout my youth. I structured the EP to tell a story, taking inspiration from Bruce Springsteen in this regard. However, I ended up never recording any of the songs.
The struggle with and eventual shelving of "Endless Summer" resulted in a two years song writing pause, however I started writing poetry, and in particular sonnets, both Petrarchan and Shakespearean. The sonnets allowed me talk about more passionate types of love because I was able to write lines and use words that I wasn't able to work into a song. Writing the sonnets gave me a much better appreciation for the structure of language and how I can more poignantly display the themes of my songs.
​
Over the years, I gradually learnt many more songs in order to give me a large and eclectic repertoire, including songs by: Johnny Cash, Paolo Nutini, Hank Williams, The Old Crow Medicine Show, Skippinish, some traditional Scots songs, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, George Ezra and many more.
However, the artist who has had the biggest influence over me has to be Bruce Springsteen.
When I was very young, my mother's friend used to occasionally drive my sister and I home from school as we were good friends with her son. In those car journeys, she would play Bruce Springsteen.Despite my young age, these songs stayed with me, and all came back to me when I heard the drum intro to “Born to Run” again. As I listened to each song I began to analyse the lyrics. Once I truly saw just how beautiful the lyrics were, his songs began touching my soul itself.
I returned to songwriting in early 2020. Suffering from a bad case of writers block, I picked up my harmonica and began messing around on it until I found what I thought was a “nice little tune”. So I picked up my guitar and put some chords to the tune easily enough, but when I tried to write some lyrics, nothing came to me. For the next four days I sat in my bed playing the chords over and over again on my guitar. But to no avail.
On the evening of the fourth day, I watched the film "Yesterday" with my parents. Afterwards, I went back to my room and went onto a video chat with a friend of mine. I told her about my writer’s block and played her the tune I'd written. As soon as I finished she began to speak and said it sounded pretty, while she spoke I heard some words echo in my head. I grabbed my pen and paper and wrote a verse. I immediately hung up on her and continued writing. I wrote a chorus and some verses and once I finished I ran and dragged my Dad to come listen. I played it to him, but he said he didn't like the chorus. So I quickly rewrote it and played it to him again, but it still wasn't right. Finally, on my third attempt he said that I'd gotten it right and he said that it was the best thing I'd written yet. That song is "Only We Have You and I". Quickly after writing it I went to the studio and recorded it in an afternoon. Shortly afterwards I released the song and the rest, as they say, is history.