I was preparing to leave Winchester to study music at Manchester University. I say preparing, I was trying my best to ignore the matter completely, filled with anxiety about what I was about to embark upon, leaving home for the first time and Dad was undergoing treatement for prostate cancer. This trepidation was also amplified because I had just met Sarah. We’d spent the summer getting to know each other and by the start of September Sarah had invited me to walk around what is now known as Barton Meadows Nature Reserve (where I now walk the dog twice a day) and things became official. She had the wisdom to ask me what we would do about the fact that I was about to leave for Manchester, a question which I had no answer for, because I didn’t want to consider that anything might get in the way of our new relationship. Six years of long distance (thank you Skype) and fourteen years of marriage later, here we are.
Another decision I had to make in the summer of 2006 was to leave the band I’d been playing keys (a real Rhodes and Roland Juno 60!) in since college in order to attend university. Being part of that band is still the truest musical freedom I’ve experienced, a collaboration with like-minded musicians who were able to create a record that felt like an expression of our lives at the cusp of adulthood. The DIY ethic we adopted informed the undertaking of my creative career, an understanding to stay true to the vision and if you want something done then it’s best to get on and make it happen for yourself rather than wait for anyone else to enable it or give you permission.
In leaving the band I was suddenly without a musical outlet and found myself sat at the piano writing songs, which I recorded and released myself on a very limited edition of CDR’s and which received a very warm 8/10 review from The 405. I’ve been writing songs at the piano ever since, and have since released a couple of EP’s, but I’ve never played them live, until now.
My old friend Tom, who I used to play football with for the village team, is playing a hometown show in Winchester on 5th September with his band Good Weather For An Airstrike and has kindly invited me to support him. So I’ve been practicing, and I’m excited to be able to perform some of the songs that I wrote twenty years ago for the first time at The Railway Inn, where I enjoyed many wonderful nights watching and playing in bands as a teenager.
I’m not quite sure why it’s taken me so long to consider playing these songs live, perhaps I’ve always considered myself as a drummer and percussionist rather than a pianist. Undoubtedly I’ve imposed some form of self-assigned psychological barrier that has meant I’ve told myself it wasn’t a possibility, but here I am, willing to accept the invitation and embrace the opportunity. Perhaps then, it is time to remind myself of that DIY ethic from 20 years ago, that I didn’t need to wait for that invitation, that all this time I could have done it myself if only I’d given myself permission and held onto the belief that it was possible.