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Careful What You Wish For

Off The Road
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I played a show at London’s St Pancras Old Church last week. It was, in my eyes, a failure. Difficult to swallow after so much work had gone into it…

Track 9 - I've Always Known It

Off The Road
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This is the second of a ten part series about the songs on my record, The Second High, starting from the end and working my way back to the start…

Track 10 - While I Was Dying

On and Off The Road
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This is the start of a series in which I speak in depth about each song on my new record. 
 
Releasing an album is a funny thing. There’s so…

Antisocial Media

Off The Road
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I suspect that I'll write a lot more about this topic because it's a huge and complex one and I spend a lot of time thinking about it. But this…

Could you spread the word, please?

On and Off The Road
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Dear readers, if I could ask you a small favour... 

I'm attempting to reach more subscribers with this blog. If you have friends who you think might enjoy these bits…

Where to Put This Enthusiasm

On and Off The Road
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I’m feeling energised to write today. I’m back in my flat in London, buoyed by a couple of positive conversations during the last week with people about music here and…

Get Gentle

Off The Road
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I knew this would happen. I have been going hard since the start of the year, touring in the UK and Europe with Emily Barker in January and February, getting…

A Brief Sabbatical While I'm on the Road

On and Off The Road
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Hello my dear subscribers. I'm writing this in a bedroom in the outskirts of Hamburg. I played my second last show with Irish songwriter and musician Susan O'Neill at the…

The Point of it All

Off The Road
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I’m on a plane to Brisbane to play a couple of last shows before I leave for the UK. My attention has slowly turned back to England and my career…

Always Forward, Always New

On The Road
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I’m at Sydney airport. I’m tired and ready to go back to Melbourne. To go home. My partner and I have been out on the road playing shows to launch…

There I Am

Off The Road
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It’s the lushness and colour which struck me the hardest returning from London two weeks ago. Everything is alive and buzzing. Houses are different colours, streets are wide and lined with nature strips. The sky is blue, there are clouds discernible against the sky, instead of the one steady sheen of grey. There is time. And space. 
 
I had a small, unpronounced fear upon returning to Melbourne from London, where I’ve…

Some Thoughts on The Second High

On and Off The Road
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Hello everyone. On Friday I released my seventh solo record, The Second High. It's been an enormous amount of time and work getting it ready to go out into the world and I'm stoked, and relieved, that the lion's share of that work is now done. There's not much more I can do now except enjoy playing the shows and hope that people get something out of this work that I've spent…

Big Feelz

On and Off The Road
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Hello everyone. Just before we launch into this week's rant - a side note: Sometimes I post these blogs and, after reading them back (after having already proof read it a lot), I notice something weird and go in to amend it. So, the way to make sure you're reading the 'most properly' edited version is reading this on the website instead of in your email. They're never big changes, but sometimes…

My First Great Love

Off The Road
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This piece was written and published in April 2020, while the world was reeling from the beginning of the Covid pandemic and the first round of lockdowns. I was living in Melbourne again, after spending the preceding couple of years in Toronto and having just received my Canadian permanent residency card. I happened to be on tour in Australia in March 2020 when everything shut down and, so, stayed with my brother…

I'm late with my blog and I'm dreaming of Frank

Off The Road
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My dear subscribers,

My apologies for not publishing a piece yesterday (Sat evening in UK/Sun morning in AUS). It's grant writing season and that, combined with my new pilates obsession, meant that I ran out of time.

I'm gearing up to get ready to go to Australia for the launch of my record The Second High in a few weeks and things are hectic. I'm working pretty much non-stop preparing for the…

Pilates Girls

Off The Road
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There was a special deal at a reformer Pilates studio in Finsbury Park, a ten-minute cycle from where we live. A month of unlimited classes for a reasonable amount of money. Everything in London costs a shitload, though. Prices are inflated, doubled and even multiplied in some cases, compared to the rest of the country, so the Pilates deal seemed reasonable, despite it really not being that good. 
 
Anyway, Pilates…

Out on the Snowy Fields

On and Off The Road
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It’s Wednesday evening. I’m sitting upstairs, backstage at the Hamburg show on the outskirts of the Reeperbahn. The venue is surrounded by sex shops and kebab restaurants. I have a banging head cold, inherited from Emily who’s been sick for most of the tour. What with the close quarters and sharing mics, this was bound to happen. 
 
Because I feel like death on a stick, I’m particularly excited to get…

Thanks For Your Feedback

On The Road
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I’m writing this backstage in Utrecht, Netherlands. This is the tenth show, or thereabouts, with Emily Barker and it’s been lovely and, mostly, pretty easy travel-wise. The last day has been a bit more hectic though, due to having to travel from Winchester in England after a show there last night to a hotel near the Channel Tunnel, and then continuing on after four hours sleep this morning to Calais and…

Tour Lyfe #1

On The Road
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I didn’t think I’d have time to write this week but I’ve found a window of time, on a grey and windy Liverpool Friday morning, before we have to check out and move on to the next place. I played in a church in Liverpool last night opening for Emily Barker, a songwriter from WA who spent twenty years living in the UK and who's only just relocated to Fremantle. She’s back…

Kittens and Underdogs

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I’m by far at my best in the mornings and, because of the time difference between Melbourne and London, most of my meetings and the sessions with my consulting clients start very early (at 6am). Between 6am and around 1pm I get a huge amount of work done. My mind feels sharp and I have a particular kind of drive. And then I have something to eat, and/or a break, and…