Off The Road

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…

Antisocial Media

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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Big City

Off The Road
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The last week has brought with a series of coincidental bits of contact with friends in Canada and it’s thrown me back into the time I spent living there, pre-pandemic. Canada has been a big part of my life over the last ten years and, were it not for Covid, I would most likely still be living there as a permanent resident, which I became just before I left Australia to…

Upstairs, Downstairs

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My blog is a little late this week. I endeavour to send these out on a Sunday morning (Australian time) but the pre-Christmas craziness has gotten the better of me. On that note, I'll be taking a little break over the holly-daze and will be aiming to post again on Jan 5th. 

Please be safe and happy over the rest. And I'll leave you with this rant about the conclusion of…

The First Year is The Hardest. Part 1 - The Teaching Assistant

Off The Road
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 PREFACE
 
Inevitably, at this time of the year, I start looking back at what’s happened in my life since the last time January 1st happened. Time is a strange beast, divided into neat and strange segments of itself. A year is an important segment. The full turn of the season wheel, the ending and the beginning. 
 
I moved to London on December 31st, 2023. I arrived at 6am at Heathrow…

The Other Side of the Counter

Off The Road
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There’s a guy who frequents the café I now make coffee in in central London. I work for a company that provides the catering and hospitality for some of the biggest businesses in the city, including for an internationally renowned structural engineering firm which has offices all over the world, including in Australia. The café I work in is situated on the ground floor of a six-story building in Soho and…