Back in 2008, my first "proper" band Epsilon Red played live for BBC Introducing at their radio studio near the River Severn in Worcester. As a full-on rock trio with Chris Daniels thundering away on drums, Jez Cole playing fuzzed-up "lead bass" and me blasting away on distorted guitar, with no monitors it was ... quite ... loud and I couldn't hear anything I was singing. It was good fun, though.  

By 2013, the BBC Introducing shows had started to record their guest artists at venues instead, and my new band Hitchhiker, a four piece with Anna Mason sharing lyric and vocal duties, were one of those live guests at the Boathouse in Upton upon Severn. It had rained so much over the previous few weeks that we almost needed a boat to get there! The same year, Anna and I played an acoustic duo support for The Moody Blues at the LG Arena in Birmingham. Not in the main arena, but a huge audience from all over the world, nevertheless, watched us in the auditorium. 

In 2017 I became a full time musician for the first time. After years of juggling a highly technical and stressful software developer day job (and, more importantly, being Dad to two brilliant kids as they grew up) with writing songs, rehearsing and playing gigs, I was made redundant and so was left with little choice. But it's a pleasure to play music for a living. I consider my "day job" to be the weddings, parties and venues where I play covers, and I still get to play my own songs at pubs and other places open to originals. All while I work on my second album.

And this is how it all started, some time in the 1980s on a borrowed Yamaha Portasound synth, recording songs onto a reel to reel recorder given to me by a family friend. Not a DAW or a smartphone in sight!