I’ll be honest.

This is not the best album I am capable of making. In fact, I wouldn’t have released it at all, if it wasn’t for the guilt associated with hostbaby sending me “free cdbaby submissions” as a reward for having my website with them. Guilt, because I kept thinking “Next time...next time, I’ll be ready”.

But, I never was.

Here’s the thing: I’m an excellent singer, I’m a very good songwriter (the tunes are fairly straightforward, but they stay with you, and I’m always getting compliments for my lyrics) but I’m not an accomplished guitar-player. And, I’ve spent a lot of my life “trying to put a band together”, but never staying in one place long enough to actually do that.

So, these are very basic, solo recordings.

A couple of tracks (“The Door” and “The Door, Part 2”) are taken from a demo I recorded in Seoul, South Korea, on 21st January, 2006, which was produced by Lance Reegan-Diehl.

The last track, “Follow the Sound”, was again recorded in South Korea, this time in Bundang, in the karaoke room of the English camp I was teaching in at the time. It was produced by Colin Allum, aka Solar Scenery.

The remainder/majority of the songs were recorded in Paul Woodward Studios in Dublin, as a wedding present for two of my friends, who I met in Seoul, Rebecca Cant and Jeremy Toombs, when they got married in November 2010.

So, you may be wondering why you should buy this album. Well, the main reason is that my voice really does have a lovely, almost hypnotic, tone – it’s quite easy to get lost in it. Also, the songs tell beautiful stories from the optimistic, early days of love, to the passionate, soul-wrenching despair of loss, with pretty much every emotion in between thrown in for good measure.

And I know that my guitar-playing needs improvement. Or that I need to find some talented musicians to accompany me in future. But, having said that, there is something raw and very honest about the way then songs are played on the record. Basically, I tell it like it is. And, that can be very refreshing.

Enjoy! And, if you’re coming to Ireland at any point, please look me up :)