Musical Background
1960-1965: Traditional schooling. Achieved good grades in music despite not playing an instrument.
1967: Learnt to play guitar and harmonica. In my first year as a musician I played regular gigs at the Castle Folk Club in Newport Gwent U.K. It was in this period that I learnt most of the styles that I have since discarded such as finger picking, bottleneck and vamping on the harmonica. My enthusiasm for song writing had already begun several years prior to this, so upon learning an instrument the words I'd been writing for the previous five years or so were almost immediately put to music.
1968-1970: Continued to play folk clubs at every opportunity in the Newport/Cardiff area of South Wales. Almost without exception my sets were self penned. The song writing continued at a rate of anything from one to twenty songs a week.
1971-1973: Toured with various small time rock bands which resulted in a real good gig from time to time. These dates included some memorable moments like supporting Slade at the Weston-Super-Mare Pavilion and being on the same bill at the Speakeasy in London when the New York Dolls ambled in, borrowed the booked band's equipment, played four or five songs, and split. That was the Doll's first ever gig in Europe. The song writing continued.
1974: I moved to Jersey and in general took time out playing only the occasional gig in the Mechanics and Ann Port Bay Hotel Folk Clubs. The song writing continued.
1978: Came second in the Melody Maker regional heats of "Search for a Star" or some other aptly named competition. Melody Maker described me as "an aspiring Loudon Wainwright the Third" On the strength of that performance in Plymouth which included The Proverbial Halter-Neck and Last Stand I was given an eleventh hour booking the next night as support to the Jenny Darren Band, AC/DC and Medicine Head (top of the bill). The song writing continued.
1980-1994: Took more time out due to the impossible situation of living on an island in the middle of nowhere. However.......The song writing continued.
1995: Bought a computer and music software then combined thirty years of song writing experience with my new found computer skills to put a different angle on the sounds I was producing. My initial efforts can be found on Shaenea. The song writing continued.
2000: I made a promise to myself that if I wasn't famous by the time that I was fifty I'd quit. True to my word I didn't write a song or perform live until recently.
2010: Wrote and had published Tangents
I came to the realisation that as I wasn't famous the only person suffering from the lack of my music was me so I came to the self compromise that I'd get back into it when I retired from work. As that day has now come and passed I got back into songwriting in a small way though to date I've still not made it onto a stage. And besides, half of each year now is spent travelling and carting an expensive guitar around the world is more trouble than it's worth.
2017: Still keeping on keeping on.