1986 and Voices of Sin my first band who I played bass with had broken up and the following short-lived band The Fire Within never found a vocalist. I was already the lyricist but had yet to sing. I still didn't have the confidence. My housemate Neil Campbell and Mark Turner encouraged me to go solo. I had already seen Billy Bragg tour the UK single-handedly as an edgy singer songwriter and had watched Justin Sullivan blow my mind with his acoustic gigs. It was a case of if they can do do so can I. I spotted a rather nice acoustic Eko 12 string in a second hand shop and put half my giro down as depsoit .I figured a 12 string would give a nice full sound with simple chords. And the way Led Zep and Justin used it always sounded good. Within a few weeks of getting it I had written my first couple of songs, the first being 'The Risk'. I was heavily into Marillion at the time and that influence really came into my lyrics there. I'd shifted away a little from the alternative/punk scene I'd been in. I went back and did English Lit A Level at college reading a fair bit enjoying Dickens, Shakespeare, Blake and Milton. I was also getting heavily into other types of music. Seeing The Waterboys live was a game changer. I'd moved back in with my mum who lived on the other side of Kettering and spent alot of time walking in the fields and quarry with other friends - a place we referred to as 'The Kingdom'. I started playing at the local folk club, going busking, travelled around Europe inter-railing, I fell in love with a Austrian girl that didn't work out. Fell in love with my first long term girlfriend on my return. Through a Community Progamme scheme for the unemployed I started working in archaeology, found I loved it and landed a job. I moved to Bournenouth to study it, getting terribly homesick and ended up retreating to my flat in Boscombe 'The Quiet Room' where I would really start to pour out the songs. Acclerating into the 90s this creative theme continued during my time in Northampton and then after my return from living in Germany in Leicester, where I put down quite a few tracks at Fosse Arts and Stayfree. All these songs were my connection to the outside world and I wanted them to be somehow be heard and understood. It's funny how now years later they now are still here waiting to be heard, maybe understood by someone who at some point in their lives have felt isloated and trying to make sense of it all in their own 'Quiet Room'. As Dylan sang 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'.
