I met up with Morgan of Cuckoo Savante (check that band out – they’re awesome) and was chatting about our lives and work. Just catching up really, but he was excited by how many songs I’ve got at the moment. Which made me stop to think how few I’ve demo’d and how badly I’ve done those. I need to stop spending time alone with the songs and start performing them and sharing them with other people so they don’t start to suffocate in my bag.

I’m going through my lyrics at the moment, adding in the edits I’ve made on the fly as I practise and work out the songs. I like a few of them, but I blow hot and cold about my own work quite frequently. I guess I need to let other people judge the work and not be so critical of myself.

I spent about two years in total playing with her, gigging around Ireland and a little bit around the UK too, before she headed off to Spain. I’ve known her since university, and we both used to play the singer-songwriter night in uni. She’s got a fantastic voice, and has released one EP so far, but I’m hoping she’ll release a full album. Here’s one of the tracks from that EP:

The video was shot and edited really badly by myself, and I helped her put together the EP for release, including working on the cover design and getting it available for sale. It was definitely a learning experience for me.

We had some great gigs playing together as “Husband | Wife” and just with me accompanying her as a session pianist. We shared a house together for about a year, and would practice and mess around with music at home. Here’s a cover of Portishead’s “Glory Box” that was recorded in our living room one afternoon back in 2006. Just ignore us messing around at the start ;)

We never really recorded anything together, other than some random live videos that are floating around, or little demos from our living room, or little videos like that one on youtube. DIY music most definitely.