from the deep south of England...hello!

A little bit about my songs:

1.) Soldier was written at the time of the Hungerford Massacre in UK. A man with a machine gun lost the plot and murdered several school children. How could anybody do such things? It is also a thumbnail sketch of someone with whom I used to work. The two aspects are unrelated, but it does make you wonder. I play this in open G. 

2.) Terra Nova: Ideas for this came after being captivated by an illustrated book about Scott of the Antarctic. I came back to the ideas recently.

3.) Say You're Mine is a simple love song. Sometimes simplicity is a good way forward. I play this in DADGAD.

4.) Florence Nightingale jumped off the pages of a school history book. It is fairly self explanatory. I play this in Drop D with capo at the third fret. 

5.) There Will Always Be A Place In My Life For You is in standard tuning. Again this is a fairly simple song. I like the words. The song employs stuff you get at school eg alliteration. My English Teachers (from all those years ago) would have been proud of me!
6.) Atheist is ironic because it is in fact a prayer. I play it on 5 string banjo in C tuning without finger picks! Don't play banjo much these days and certainly not in C tuning. Ah me - - - how things change?
7.) Striving To Be Someone was written for my daughter. For her, twenty years or so down the line from writing this song, I would still wish all the same things. Also in DADGAD.
8.) Half Open Doorways is a song which ponders on teenage years on the outskirts of smoggy Glasgow in the 1960s/1970s. All the angst of growing up against a background of perceived expectations, and trying to pull life into some sort of perspective. I play this in DADGAD capo three, but capo two would have probably been better for my voice.

9.) Nova Scotia is in standard tuning. It reflects on the highland clearances, when the Scots were   driven out of their homes to make way for......sheep! It also touches on hardened attitudes towards southerners, and possibly one in particular who found himself fighting "auld feuds" time and again in the school playground. 

10.) My Sister's Eyes is written from the perspective of a conjoined twin. I wrote it after reading a book called The Girls by Lori Larsens. This song was voted into the final twenty in the Oldie Composers song contest in UK 2012.