history.

I’ve played the guitar and written since I was fifteen, got my first paid gigs in Hamburg in 1979 when I lost my passport and had to survive, and recorded 2 albums in Bremen at Thein Studios in the early 80s with my good friend and wonderful guitarist/composer Torsten Brandes. The songs really are questionable, mainly due to some really crap lyrics, but I’ll always be proud of the guitar work on those albums. Until I stopped gigging in 1988 I played across North Germany and Central Scotland, doing one-off supports for Jack Bruce, John Martyn,and John James. In 1986 I wrote and performed my first composition for solo guitar, ‘Anamnesis’ for the Stirling District Festival, to accompany paintings by Koert Linde. I have 2 Honours degrees, in English with Music History (1983) at Stirling, and in Music at York (1992), where I focussed on composition and stopped performing and writing songs (although I did write some for a project at York, 3 of which have survived). Although I wrote some adequate compositions, including 2 guitar quartets (for the York Guitar Quartet and the Dundee Guitar Festival, a tape piece for York Dance Festival and arrangements of Celtic music for Richard Ingamells, I dropped it 18 months ago when I started writing songs again (nearly 40 since then), and decided to record them. ‘Acts of Faith’ is a kind of sampler album of some of those, and I hope to record them all over the next 2 years or so. I may post the lyrics in advance on this site.