Hello! Thanks for visiting my website and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to my songs. I’m an independent songwriter, working from my home studio in the countryside about 10 miles west of Glasgow, Scotland.
Music is everything to me. My dream job growing up was to play music on the radio. And I was lucky enough to get to do exactly that. I spent years as a presenter on some of the UK’s biggest commercial radio stations. I also worked as a journalist and between those two careers got to meet and interview some incredible artists, producers and songwriters. From John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez to Sophie Ellis Bextor, the Kaiser Chiefs to Richard X, Texas, The Saturdays and many more. I also conducted one of the first radio interviews with ‘Steps’. They insisted on calling me ‘Col’ which I quite liked and struggled to sit still!
Making my own music was something I could barely admit to myself that I wanted to do. It seemed so far away. In my childhood I was a competitive swimmer training twice a day and competing every weekend. There was no way I could commit to learning an instrument and although I got used to using my voice to speak as I moved through my career in broadcasting, the though of using it to sing totally terrified me.
Something shifted as I hit 40. I decided to do things that scared me. That led me to 18 months of fortnightly signing lessons with the wonderful Louise Berry in Glasgow. Working with Louise was so much fun. I slowly began to make progress and grew in confidence and realised how much I enjoyed it.
By this point I admitted to myself that playing music on the radio, great as it was, had been a compromise. Writing and performing my own music was something I really wanted to do.
This was pretty embarrassing. I was in my early 40s, with a family and a business, and even the people who knew me better than anyone else in the world, had never heard me sing a note far less read my lyrics. But my family are an incredible support and gave me huge encouragement and valuable feedback.
Once I accepted this was something I was going to try, I set about developing the craft. I’m incredibly grateful to Yvonne Lyon, a friend from school and a highly accomplished singer songwriter. Yvonne spent lots of time coaching me in the art of songwriting, helping me build and structure songs and tap into emotion and what I was trying to get across. My background in journalism sometimes helps with this – I reckon I’m pretty good at observing the world and seeing things from various points of view – but it can also be a hindrance because the best songs sit in a moment, go deeper, and express a feeling whereas journalism tends to (or should!) focus on facts and stories tend to resolve.
It’s been a little over 7 years since that songwriting journey started (although I’d been secretly dabbling for years previously) and I’m still learning and developing that craft. It’ll never stop. I self release some of my work as ‘Fierce Planet’. You’ll find the songs on all major streaming platforms and I’d love to hear what you think. I work with a small team of collaborators including producer Sandy Jones at Foundry Music Lab in Motherwell who is a fantastic, multi instrumentalist, engineer and so much more rolled into one!
Becoming an artist and performing songs my self was never really part of the plan. But given the stage I’m at and the way the music business operates, it’s the best route I have to get my songs out. And it’s the most fun I could imagine.
People in music always talk about genre and influences. But I’ve got far too many to mention so I won’t. The truth is there’s very little music I don’t like. I think because I held back for so long and was simply consuming such vast amounts of music (4 hours a day, 6 days a week on Clyde 1 for 5 years – and that was my job – my own private listening at home was additional to that) has, I think, done something to my brain and made me incapable of picking a genre or a sound and sticking with it.
What I try to do, in my songwriting, is to be honest and real. I grew up listening to George Michael, The Prodigy, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and Deacon Blue among a multitude of others. Their songs made me feel something. They could change my mood and take me places. The buzz I would get if one of my songs had that same impact on someone else is such an enticing prospect I simply have to try.
More recently, I’ve found myself really enjoying and being inspired by the music of Florrie and her colleagues at Xenomania, led by Brian Higgins.
Over the last few years, as I’ve taken this more seriously and learned more about the music industry, it’s become clear to me that the only way to have any chance of success, however you define that, is to simply go for it. You cannot hold back, cover things up, wait for something to happen and hope to be discovered. It isn’t a lottery.
You have to be honest and go all in. So here I am.