Jul 22, 202413 min read

File Under 'Mature Artist, Rising (again)

File under ‘mature artist, rising again’

As David Byrne says (How Music Works), a life in music has ebbs and flows, it rises and falls, and rises again.

After 40 years as a musician I can only describe myself as ‘mature’. I no longer qualify for all those grants and stipends for ‘newcomers’ or ‘rising stars’. I’m not young, but I have experience, and I know what I’m about. I’m good at collaborating, and I love working together on projects that are bigger than the sum of the parts - like theatre, dance, film and video, all of which require working with real people in real time. If David Byrne was once described (unkindly) as willing to collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos, I can say I’d collaborate for a fair-trade, organic and locally-sourced meal, if the creative energy is right!

Growing up in Liverpool kick-started a life in music and the arts: artists like Terry O’Toole (of 60s band The Mojos) who was friends with my parents; members of The La’s regularly came to the house to visit my brother; I went to Quarry Bank (John Lennon’s school) and was surrounded by poets, artists, philosopher-comedians and musicians who were also plumbers, teachers, and mechanics,. Studying guitar with Anthony Whitby and Brendan McCormack, playing punk and classical, rock and bossa nova, jazz and folk was completely normal. I had yet to hear Louis Armstrong’s claim that ‘there’s only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. And it’s all folk music - I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song!’, but I already had that attitude.

A year in Nova Scotia proved to be a coming-of-age (and not just musically). Playing tuba and electric guitar in high school ensembles, writing our own stuff in a funk-rock band, and playing solo classical guitar in my folks’ restaurant near Annapolis Royal and local art galleries all helped me gain confidence on the stage.

Returning to Liverpool aged 17, heart-broken but experienced, I hit the woodshed while studying for A Levels, which qualifications took me to the University Of Sussex to study History with African & Asian Studies. There I met amazing musicians such as Adrian Oxaal (later in bands such as Goat, Lenna & The Snakemen, James, The Oyster Band) , Lenna Santamaria (Lenna & The Snakemen), Guy Piran, Byron Wallen and more. It was the late 80s, I was discovering African & Asian cultures, and ‘world music’ was everywhere, opening up my horizons and challenging my perspectives.

Tragically my mother died as the result of a car crash as she was travelling down to visit me at the end of my first year. That hit me hard. I took a year out from university as I was unable to maintain motivation or focus. During this time music really helped, as did being involved in setting up a housing cooperative in Brighton. I eventually went back and completed my History degree, but by then I had come through the grieving process knowing that you have to follow your heart because you simply don’t know how long you’ve got. My heart said ‘music’, and my heart also said ‘education’. Since then, when I was 22, music and education have been the twin pillars of my life.

In Brighton I was head-hunted to join the most highly-qualified band I’ve ever played in (so far anyway). The folk-rock band Waterwheel boasted three PhD science students, a Masters (Business) and one under-graduate with a beautiful bell-like folk voice. (The three scientists are now all professors at prestigious institutes around the world!) The band was good, and we produced two self-published cassettes, playing mostly around the Brighton area, but it was definitely a side-project for most of the members.

Then came One Big Party, a reggae band led by the charismatic and talented Arthur Vaughan-Richards, and managed by our blind drummer Giles Carrington. Arthur’s songs were great (we also did a couple of mine) and we won the local Battle of the Bands one year. We made some studio recordings and at least one artsy video, and toured around the south-east of UK, northern France and - the peak of our success in my opinion - were one of the first UK bands into Czechoslovakia after the Wall came down (in November 1992). But we noticed fellow Brighton band The Levellers had beat us to at least some of the venues, as we found their graffiti on the wall of The Bunkr club in Prague. One year later the country split in two: the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but I can honestly say I toured Czechoslovakia!).

But One Big Party, despite being scouted by Acid Jazz records, was not sustainable. We never quite got the success that might have bank-rolled the venture, and then other life events complicated things. For example, my first child was born. Arthur, sadly, never quite found the right vehicle for his genius - he even turned down an offer from Acid Jazz to sign to them personally, without the band - and after moving to Mallorca he drifted into alcoholism and depression, finally taking his own life. I loved him dearly, and miss him still.

During this period - the early 90s - I was also involved with some great theatre projects. In particular I was musical director/composer/arranger for Re:Action Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park productions 1991 Romeo & Juliet; 1992 The Tempest; 1993 Much Ado About Nothing).

Then in 1995 I worked on Vital Theatre (George Dillon)’s production of Hamlet, together with virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Glasson. We were the two musicians sitting like bookends or pillars on either side of the stage, fully visible with our flutes and drums, accompanying the Noh-theatre style interpretation with minimal music. It was a fairly big deal for me: we were flown up to Edinburgh from Gatwick airport, and stayed for a month in a nice flat near the centre. Not only that, but we received per diems and a small wage, which Charlotte and I augmented by busking when we weren’t needed on stage. George was quite well-known, so there were several reviews, but on the whole it wasn’t a big success for him, despite being a great adventure for me!

I was also writing and performing my own songs, playing in jazz and bossa nova duos in pubs and bars, and facilitating workshops to explore the healing and esoteric properties of music and sound.

With my first child I felt I should become more responsible, and so I turned to my other passion: education. I always taught guitar and music theory in various part-time and private settings, but now I needed more stability. I went back to ‘school’ to get the necessary Music A Level and a Jazz Diploma (my tutors there included the great jazz tenor player Bobby Wellins amongst others). Then, with my accumulated track record and the basic qualifications I got a place at Leeds University to become a Music (and History) high-school teacher. One year later, and now with child number two on board, my family moved to Essex and I started my first job as a Music teacher.

It was awful. My love and enthusiasm for music was dampened almost to death by the rigid structures of the school system. Creativity was killed by the compartmentalisation of everything, and by the stressful environment faced by the kids, who naturally, rebelled. Teachers were the enemy - even the ones trying to be nice, like me. Even the musical kids, who I knew were doing all kinds of cool and creative stuff outside of school, were simply not interested in ‘school music’. I don’t blame them. I lasted 20 months!

My rescue came from a small live music venue in Manchester, where I became Education Director, taking a sizable cut in salary and moving my family half-way across the country. ‘Band on the Wall’ is justly famous as an organisation that has supported live music since 1975, not only with a cool and intimate venue but with outreach programmes that connect great local musicians with various community groups. My first day at work there ended with going downstairs to see John Scofield’s American Quartet! I went on to see so many amazing performers from around the world: The Skatalites, Andy Sheppard, Wayne Krantz, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim, Joyce, Roy Ayers, Eliza Carthy, Fairport Convention, Bill Bruford, Pucho & The Latin Soul Brothers, Trilok Gurtu, Courtney Pine…. I think I saw over 300 gigs in my first 2 years there, and was often able to meet the musicians personally at sound check. It was also part of my job to organise pre-concert talks and workshops, so I had to deal with many of these world-renowned musicians. What I found was that the greater the musician, the more humble they were (with a few sad exceptions). This was a lesson in itself, just as much as witnessing the ‘magic’ that regularly happened on that small stage.

During my time at Band on the Wall I realised that my own educational ideas matched the work known as ‘community music’, and I did what I could to promote this work. In a nutshell, CM is (in my mind at least) related to ‘education’, but in a broad sense. It’s not about teaching people how to play or read or write music (although it can be), and it’s not about telling people what to play (although it can be that too!). It’s about music-making (or ‘musicking’, as writer Christpher Small called it) as a group activity that can allow all sorts of other, non-musical things to happen. So, a town council might want to collect opinions about a local issue, or social workers might want to connect with a group of drug users or rough sleepers; musicians with disabilities might simply want the same access as non-disabled musicians; teenagers who cannot abide school, or who become ‘young offenders’ might appreciate a project where they can develop their creative ideas without the atmosphere of school, and so on. Buzz words at the time were ‘inclusion’, ‘opportunity’, ‘participation’ and ’access’. It was a joy for me to design and manage these projects from my position at Band on the Wall, and I think I brought new kinds of fulfilling employment to many great local musicians too. It’s hard to make a living only from performing or recording, and teaching isn’t for everyone. CM work was creative and rewarding, and stretched me and others in interesting ways. For example, I was a guest lecturer at LIPA for two years on their Community Arts degree and on their ground-breaking Performing Arts For Disabled Artists (now sadly defunct).

It also led to some great contacts! Through this work and my role at Band on the Wall, I met and played in bands with musicians from Manchester’s extensive jazz, classical, urban and folk scenes. Bands like Cuchillo (with S Whitehead, Yvonne Shelton, Jerome Stokes and others), or Kokoriko - a band I co-founded with refugees that I had worked with: Serge Tebu (Cameroun), Pat Mackela (DR Congo) and others. I played first guitar in the Halle Orchestra’s CM project The Manchester Guitar Orchestra, directed by composer (and Robert Fripp enthusiast) Paul Mitchel-Davidson, and there were collaborative projects with the jamaican community, with the BBC Philharmonic, with artists from Chinatown, and local professional pop, rock, Hip-hop and jazz musicians.

I also got the chance to once again work on a theatre project, this time a large-scale ‘community drama’ produced by The Lowry, a new and impressive arts centre in Salford (Manchester’s ‘other half’). As Musical Director my job was to facilitate the creation of a score with the amateur musicians who signed up, which we would perform ourselves. We had to work closely with the other creative directors in order to stay with the emerging artistic direction, the practical needs of the staging etc. It was a wonderful challenge, and we came up with something quite amazing: the first licensed stage version of the 1930s novel ‘Love on the Dole’ (by Salford writer Walter Greenwood). The lyrics to the songs we wrote even became part of the ‘book’ by Walter Fegan, and the show was nominated for a Manchester Evening News Award (we didn't win). The Manchester Evening News paper wrote:

THIS is Salford's answer to Les Miserables, as the spirit of the depressed 1930s is recaptured in this musical adaptation of Walter Greenwood's classic - and the stars are 100 local people drawn from all walks of life.

Freely adapted by writer and lyricist Kevin Fegan, it is touching, funny and full of authentic spirit. Director Andy Farrell marshals his forces effectively. And there are 15 original songs, played by a folksy seven-piece band on stage, under Martin Milner's musical direction.

It was a very rich time musically and creatively, but as the years went by the work seemed to either dry up or change into something more bureaucratic and less interesting. The year 2008 began with a week-long recording session at a residential studio with political folk song-writer Aidan Jolly (and Jilah Bahkshayesh & Jaydev Mistry) recording Aidan’s CD ‘State of Hysteria’, and playing with Kokoriko, but then I was struggling to find paid contracts that I wanted to do. At the same time my family life was not going so well, so when I got the chance, more or less out of the blue, to work in an international school in Berlin, I took it.

Through an old contact who I hadn’t seen for 10 years, I ended up working as a music teacher in a school again. This time however it was very different! International schools are usually private and although they use curricula with very laudable ideals (e.g. the International Baccalaureate), they can be quite expensive and therefore exclusive. But after working with some of the poorest demographics in Europe, I felt the chance to give my own kids a new life experience was too good to miss. It did mean separating from my first partner, and it was not easy, but we both managed to be loving (enough) and sensible even during our separation, and our kids really did benefit from a new adventure, where their horizons would be widened very greatly.

Music classes at BBIS were small, being limited to a maximum of 18 and often being smaller. The department was well resourced, and my new teaching partner had very similar ideas to me about how music in schools could be. She saw music as something you do, not (just) something you learn about, and my community music approaches fitted well with her established ways of working. In fact, we got on so well we eventually got married! But that’s another story.

So, for 14 years I had stability and reasonable money, but little time for musical projects outside of school. (Inside of school there were many good projects, and I made arrangements for the school ensemble, played bass in the orchestra, accompanied students with guitar for exam pieces and worked on many theatre pieces.)

With the money and the long holidays, I realised I could finally take the time to record some of my own songs, and I found a friend - Christian Isheim - with a recording studio in an industrial part of Berlin. Over a year or so (from 2014-2015), and calling on friends and family to add parts, I made what became ‘Songs For A Fragile Planet’ at Unterton Studio. It was great fun working with Christian (we still work together now, almost 10 years later), and I learned much about how recordings can be made these days. I went in wanting to make something as ‘live’ as possible, but soon realised (yet again!) that a recording is a very different thing. If you want people to listen to it many times over, it has to not only be free of the little ‘mistakes’ that can be ignored in a live performance, but also have enough ‘depth’ to stay interesting and not give up all the secrets too easily. Another rubric I gave myself was to involve my family and friends, so both my kids are on it, Ruth (my wife) and several other teaching colleagues, my sister Kate (a great singer-songwriter in her own right), who sent files over the internet from Liverpool, and other friends from around the world.

We managed to hit my self-imposed deadline (before my 50th birthday) and I invested my teaching income into producing 1,000 copies of the most environmentally friendly CD package I could find: a simple cardboard envelope. It’s still not close to being carbon neutral, but better than a plastic jewel case, and it looks great with Maggie Organ’s original artwork.

Teaching about the climate crisis at school (I was now teaching not only music but Humanities and Theory of Knowledge) and meeting kids and other staff who themselves had experienced the effects of global heating, I was keenly aware of our world predicament. Living in Potsdam I also got to know some of the climate scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, who also supplied some alarming information. Although I tried to agitate for changes at school, it became obvious that, despite the best will in the world and really nice colleagues, the business model of international schools is closely entangled with the culture which is, in my view, threatening life on earth. This caused severe cognitive dissonance in me, and - coinciding with the global pandemic of 2020 - eventually led to a form of ‘burn-out’. It wasn’t the job, which I could easily manage by then: it was the cognitive dissonance, and my body simply said ‘no more’. I was signed off sick, and then handed in my notice. I immediately began to feel much better!

Since 2022 I have been re-launching myself as an artist, a musician and poet who is working locally, in as sustainable a way as possible. I say ‘have been re-launching’ because it is an ongoing process. I don’t think I will ever be able to say ‘I have now re-launched myself’ - it is a process that goes on everyday. I look for the opportunities to work with those around me, making the most of the life we have, celebrating the wonder of the everyday world, seeking peace and harmony. I still work in education, but now I work part-time at a democratic school where grades are not given: kids discover their motivations and we as ‘learning guides’ support them. Needless to say, there is much (and joyous) musicking!

Since 2015, when ‘Songs For Fragile Planet’ came out, I have recorded several more songs in various studios, collaborating with the wonderful singer Theodor Gramann on ‘Zero, Vacuum, Void, Abyss’ (he’s also my step-son!) and locally-based musicians such as Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq (sax on ‘Never Too Late(For Love)’, Daada (who contributed wonderfully ethereal backing vocals to ‘I See Your Face’, a song for my deceased mother) and local singer and multi-instrumentalist Becca Babor. I have a band, called The Need, and continue to look for other great projects which bring people together through music…