Storytelling in lyrics and music
It was 1974. I was 9 years old. And my Dad had taken me to see the Royal Ballet perform Swan Lake at the Birmingham Hippodrome when were caught in the IRA pub bombings in the UK.
Part way through Act 1, the curtain came down. The stage manager walked onto the stage. And he asked us to leave. There had been a bomb warning in the building. Palpable fear filled the hushed auditorium as we all quietly exited.
This was long before mobile phones. My Mum had spent the night glued to the radio for updates. Her face was ghostly white when we eventually arrived back home in the early hours of the morning. My nine-year-old angst for my Mum's fear prompted me to write my first song - about the bombings and the futility of war. Where is Love? was selected as a winner in The Observer newspaper's Young Songwriting Competition, and since then I've been drawn to take moments from life - real or imaginary - and turn them into something that can be shared with others in a matter of minutes.
I have continued to write songs and/or music for productions including Treasure Island (Colorado Shakespeare Festival), The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare-On-a-Shoestring, UC Davis), Tartuffe and Antigone (UC Riverside) as well as my two one-person shows Tilly No-Body: Catastrophes of Love and Nell Gwynne: An Essaye in Acting and Prostitution.
Over the years, I've worked with music producers, Marti Amado (Amado Music Ltd, San Diego USA), John Gregory (GOLD DISC, Wales, UK), Axel T. (Birmingham, UK), Allen Steen (Los Angeles, USA) and David Roesner (Munich, Germany). Here are a few song-stories...
Part way through Act 1, the curtain came down. The stage manager walked onto the stage. And he asked us to leave. There had been a bomb warning in the building. Palpable fear filled the hushed auditorium as we all quietly exited.
This was long before mobile phones. My Mum had spent the night glued to the radio for updates. Her face was ghostly white when we eventually arrived back home in the early hours of the morning. My nine-year-old angst for my Mum's fear prompted me to write my first song - about the bombings and the futility of war. Where is Love? was selected as a winner in The Observer newspaper's Young Songwriting Competition, and since then I've been drawn to take moments from life - real or imaginary - and turn them into something that can be shared with others in a matter of minutes.
I have continued to write songs and/or music for productions including Treasure Island (Colorado Shakespeare Festival), The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare-On-a-Shoestring, UC Davis), Tartuffe and Antigone (UC Riverside) as well as my two one-person shows Tilly No-Body: Catastrophes of Love and Nell Gwynne: An Essaye in Acting and Prostitution.
Over the years, I've worked with music producers, Marti Amado (Amado Music Ltd, San Diego USA), John Gregory (GOLD DISC, Wales, UK), Axel T. (Birmingham, UK), Allen Steen (Los Angeles, USA) and David Roesner (Munich, Germany). Here are a few song-stories...