ABOUT THE ALBUMS

Six albums, made over five years, and each one arrived for a different reason. The records came about because I had songs I wanted to make, things I wanted to say, memories I wanted to revisit and, sometimes, things I was trying to understand about myself. Looking back, the albums feel less like a planned catalog and more like a journey. From the playful experimentation of "I'm Back & I'm Funky," through love, memory, loss and disappointment, to the stripped-back vulnerability of "Elapsing Light", each record tells me something about the person I was when I made it. They are all different, but they belong together.

I'M BACK & I'M FUNKY — 2022

The first album came about almost by accident.

During the Covid-19 pandemic I started recording at home simply for the hell of it. I'd write a song, record it, then move on to the next. There was no plan to make an album.

But the world around me inevitably found its way into the music. The killing of George Floyd brought racism to the forefront of people's lives, and I wanted to acknowledge how profoundly Black artists had influenced me. James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, The Isley Brothers and Roberta Flack were all part of the musical landscape I grew up with, and I wanted those influences to be heard.

Other songs came directly from what was happening around me. Everybody Has the Right For Peace was prompted by the invasion of Ukraine. Get Down was my response to greedy, self-serving politicians, while Airplane Ride came from simply longing to travel again after the pandemic. Life in a Motorhome was inspired by Sly Stone, who at the time was living in a motorhome.

I loved making this album, and I think that comes across. It was deliberately retro in places, but the songs were all original and very much rooted in the time in which they were written.

There was just one problem. It didn't really sound like me.

For a first album, that was perhaps not such a bad thing. But I knew the next record needed to go deeper and show more authentically where I came from musically.

TILL THE BIRDS SING — 2023

If I'm Back & I'm Funky was an experiment, Till the Birds Sing was a reset. I wanted to get closer to my own musical voice. I'd spent a considerable amount of time in the States during the 1990s, and that experience had stayed with me. I think you can hear it throughout this album.

The songs grew out of a difficult period. Anxiety, grief and insomnia became the underlying themes, and the album moves through the strange territory of an unsettled mind — anger, worry, isolation, fantasy, reality, sorrow and, eventually, hope.

It begins with Back to Mississippi, which came from a haunting dream about travelling back to Mississippi to take my blues home, accompanied only by my guitar and an unknown driver. I wanted the album to feel a little like being inside that state of mind: thoughts jumping from one place to another, never quite knowing where you'll end up.

Then something unexpected happened. While recording I Always Will Remember Loving You, my microphone picked up birds singing outside the window. I decided to leave them in. It turned out to be the perfect moment. The birds arrive just as the album begins to turn towards hope, and so the title Till the Birds Sing seemed to find itself.

Everyday I Wake Up Next to You was written one morning about my wife, Juliette. When I played it to her, I decided to record it. The guitar and backing vocal were overdubbed later, but what you hear is essentially me playing the song to her for the first time.

I'm very proud of this album. It was also a tough one to make.

TI AMO — 2024

I'd accumulated a lot of songs about my wife over the years, so eventually I decided to make an album out of them. The idea was simple: an album about Juliette, released on Valentine's Day.

But Ti Amo isn't simply a collection of romantic songs. It's a recognition of how important my wife has been, and continues to be, in my life.

The first song I wrote about her was It Almost Feels Like a Sin, back in the late 1990s. Other songs came from much smaller moments. Beautiful to Me, for example, contains the line “like the bubbles in their bath”, inspired by watching my baby son having a bubble bath.

Those little memories are what make the album so personal. At the same time, I suspect that's why other people can find themselves in it. Love isn't always found in grand declarations. Sometimes it's in the ordinary things we remember.

There was a problem with my vocal microphone while I was recording some of these songs. I was trying to get the album finished for Valentine's Day and eventually thought, what the hell — leave it. That microphone problem became part of the sound of the record.

The album ends with Juliette, which is essentially a recognition of the love I have received.

THE EVERYTHING — 2024

Having spent an entire album writing about my wife, I found myself with room to look back at the rest of my life. The Everything became an album about where I've been, where I am and where I might be going.

I'm on My Way is about taking the journey whether you're ready for it or not. That's life, really. All of the Time came from missing my son after he left home to go to university.

Eyes is about someone important to me who couldn't let their guard down enough to love with complete openness. I wrote it because I needed to feel a love that wasn't being given. Perhaps someone who has been hurt in the same way will recognise themselves in it. For me, it's one of the best songs I've written.

Stephen looks further back, to a real childhood friend and the importance he had in my life at that time.

Walking off the Blues takes me back to a younger version of myself, walking through Memphis in my red carved Venezuelan boots, and later walking the streets of London, where I lived for a while. I used to walk when I was trying to work out how I felt. I walked a lot. Eventually, it became a song. Musically it was influenced by Bob Dylan's It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.

The album finishes with The Everything, which is about the idea that all of our individual lives somehow form part of something much greater. I believe in God, but not necessarily in the way religion has traditionally described God. To me, God is the Everything — everything of which we are a part.

BLACK RIVER — 2025

Black River is an album about failure, disappointment and the question of what happens next.

Some of these songs had actually been written years before I released an album, but they found their place here.

The title track came from a powerful dream after my mother died. In the dream I became a boy again. I remember feeling exactly as I had felt as a child. It was as though my mind had to turn me back into that boy before it could let the sorrow out.

Ordinary Day came from a different kind of helplessness. I was overwhelmed by the news of yet more wars beginning, and that day I simply wanted to hide from the world and take comfort in my wife's arms. I knew that was a luxury many people in the world don't have.

The album is about disappointment, grief and the things we cannot change — but also about finding a way to carry on.

ELAPSING LIGHT — 2026

My son called this album “my Nebraska.” I think he understood it immediately.

Elapsing Light was never really supposed to become an album. It began as a way of trying to pull myself out of a dark place and feel at home again. I wrote the songs because I needed somewhere to put what was happening to me.

The recordings eventually became a return to the folk music I first played back in the 1980s. John Martyn, Nick Drake, Gerry Rafferty, Tom Waits, Kris Kristofferson and Dick Gaughan were enormous influences.

There is very little between you and the songs. No reverb. No attempt to disguise the recordings. I didn't even change the strings. For some of the tracks I brought out an old acoustic guitar — the same guitar I had played as a young teenager when I was first discovering the world of music.

That felt important.

These recordings were never intended to sound perfect. They were intended to sound honest.

And although Elapsing Light comes from a difficult place, I don't think it is ultimately a dark album. Listen closely and there is something else underneath it.

Hope.