Music has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I started learning my first instrument,the violin, at the age of 7 and was involved in a few orchestras and choirs while at school. At around 15, I started to teach myself guitar and this quickly progressed into writing songs. The first band I joined had no name but Colin, Dougie and I practiced cover versions of songs by a mixed bag of bands like U2, The Black Crowes, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones and Oasis. We had no bassist but brought in Al as temporary cover for our first gig under the name of Reckoning (you can see the flyer for that in the image below). At the gig we also played a couple of my original songs for the first time.

Colin and I were soon joined by Phil on bass and we would continue as a three-piece under the name of Sundown for a few years. We played regularly in Strathclyde Student Union and evolved from playing mainly covers to exclusively original songs. We had a change of drummer during this time with Crawf joining us before we recorded our first demo as a band at Chem 19 (listen below).

For a while, I was playing a lot of solo acoustic shows under my own name, sometimes accompanied by Fraser on keys. After a while, the band line-up had settled with Phil moving to drums, Doug joining on bass, and Fraser on keys. You can see a few photos of that band line-up on the gigs page. We played under the name Four Minute Mile and recorded a 7-track EP in my house which you can hear below.

We had another line-up change with Paul joining on guitar and me moving to bass. We played our last gig together in Barfly in 2008 and later recorded a 4-track demo before calling it a day. A couple of those tracks for the demo later led onto the recording of my album, Embers, with Paul’s guitar parts taken from those sessions.

I recorded my debut album at home over the course of a couple of years due to the stop/start nature of the recording process. I had played a couple of solo acoustic gigs during my break from the band but decided it would be great to get a band together to play through the album for a launch night. Joining Paul and me for the gig were Vinny on drums, Joe on bass and Dave on keys. It was a great night and a fitting way to bring that chapter to a close.

To hear more about my recordings, gigs and equipment, just follow the links in the menu at the top of the site under My Music. A limited number of signed CD copies of the Four Minute Mile EP (£4) and Embers album (£10) are available to buy (£12 for both). If you’re interested then just use the contact form and I’ll get back to you to arrange payment and delivery.