I had a friend, my Mum and Dad’s neighbour, and when I went to visit them, I would chat to him over the garden fence, mostly about music as he was an avid fan.
When he passed away, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I wrote a song about him.
I wrote something called Music Man, which got past the first verse and then stalled badly! And then, as I sometimes do, I went back to a half-sketched lyrical idea and started to work at it. That idea became Catch A Flame, which now includes a variety of moments and ideas including dealing with grief, creativity, getting through the day, mental illness, addiction of some kind, perhaps addiction to a way of seeing things in life and trying to see things in a new way somehow in order to deal with your circumstances in a better way. Weirdly, it doesn’t seem to directly reference my friend now but he was the catalyst behind the song turning into what it is now and so the song is dedicated to his memory.
I have a great affection for this song. It has that unusual quality of sounding quite uplifting whilst being quite dark lyrically. But the best thing about it is that I finally got to ask some of the friends I have made along to way to participate on the track. It’s funny how I never felt like I was socialising whilst I went out and played live but all of a sudden I would stop and realise I had made lots of musical friends and that it had been no effort, just fun. And so I asked a few of them if they fancied singing on this song and they were very happy to get involved. It was such great fun going to people’s houses to record, getting multiple harmonies emailed to me and, in one case, getting a fantastic vocal recorded and sent from someone’s mobile phone.
So a massive thankyou to Graham Paul Kendrick, Rich Baxter, Tim Wilson, Kathryn and Megan Holt, Kez Hinton, Terri Hignett and Megan Ridgway, it’s fantastic to hear you :)
You can listen to and download Catch A Flame now: