MUSIC
Four albums spanning four decades - please click on the album cover to listen and/or download....
For high resolution images of the album artwork, including lyrics, please look on the gallery page.
Chris Matthews and I first met at a Bridget St John gig in 1976 where I was playing as Bridget's guest. We have been collaborating ever since.
As the year 2000 approached, and technology gave more and more opportunities to record an distribute music, we decided to gather together recordings made since 1976 into an album. The recordings were made in a variety of studios and, well, bedrooms, and some of them were made especially for the album. There were so many people who contributed to these recordings over the years, and I want to thank them all for their enthusiasm, encouragement and time.
My partner Carol and I went to a world Expo in Portugal just before the year 2000. At that time, there was a sense that huge changes were in the air; that there were new voyages about to begin, both globally and personally. This album was made to reflect that sense of exciting and strange changes. The name is taken from Shakespeare's "Tempest'.
When I started this album, after finishing 'SEACHANGES', I wanted to make an album that reflected more of a 'Jug Band' feeling in the compositions and arrangements - something more 'amateur' than the complexities of 'SEACHANGES'. Chris and I began work on the songs, and then there were the attacks in New York in 2001 which I felt I had to refer to in the themes of the album, which therefore became a bit more serious. The title track in particular, references to "The walls of my city came tumbling down..." , and the track "GOVINDA' has lyrics directly referencing the attacks (the original lyrics were about the death of Nick Drake and the birth of my son being on the same day). On balance, though, I think this album is still a bit of a toe tapper, and it features the wonderful flute playing of my partner Carol.
I wanted to reflect the spirit of Brighton, which had become my home town, in a series of vignettes about its "Cheeky Chic". The whole approach was rather 'Japanese' - understated and impressionistic. That's my excuse, anyway.
