Composer/lyricist/musician from the North of England with grand dreams and very decent songs, who believes that pigeonholes are better for keeping birds captive than categorising song styles.
From the options above, I've suggested folk-rock, art-rock, country-rock and lo-fi acoustic as labels that might fit, but another person's ears might hear it very differently. Musically, I guess my oeuvre aspires most strongly to draw from McCartney, Billy Bragg, Elliott Smith, Jack White (in acoustic mode), Badly Drawn Boy There's a definite lyrical admiration for the great latter-20th century rock wordsmiths - Dylan, Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, Morrissey from before he became a paid-up fascist, Billy Bragg, Warren Zevon, Roger Waters (see Morrissey comment), Lou Reed - big writers embracing big themes ... and smaller ones too, when the weightiness needs breathing space.
As regards the wider range of influences on who I am and what I write ... they’re mostly old, highly obvious and always iconic, but for one simple reason: these artists have never been bettered. So of course there’s the Beatles - because there simply has to be - and of course there’s Big Star and The Smiths, The Stone Roses and The Small Faces, and everything good band-wise from vintage Pink Floyd to 80s REM, but as most things I do these days seem to have that solipsistic solo artist mindset, it’s the singer songwriter influences that permeate most strongly, from Neil Young, Bowie, Costello, Lou Reed and Macca to Elliott Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, Jack White, Neil Finn, Neil Innes, Warren Zevon, Billy Bragg … and Dylan. Obviously Dylan. If I don’t mention much that’s modern, I guess it’s because nothing seems to hold that same level of ambition as their forebears. Sam Fender’s alright, Noah Kahan’s okay, but I listen more in the hope of what they might become rather than what they already are.
Music is becoming increasingly categorised and repackaged, but there has to be more to life than a fifteen-person collaboration (yes, Coldplay, I’m looking at you). It’s the vision of the artist that counts, whether that artist is Nick Drake, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Todd Rundgren, Joni Mitchell, Paul Weller, Roger Waters, Richard Thompson, Andy Partridge or even John Bramwell. Life’s too short to be squandered on excessive production values and paranoid audience demographics - write something real, poetic, well-observed and drenched in melody. If it sells, that’s a bonus. That the art exists for someone to discover, someday … that’s the thing. For now, anyway.
