One of the best received songs on my People Watching CD is Monica Is Taller Than Me. I wrote a blog post with some info on the writing of the song a few years back and a minimally updated version can be viewed below. This includes a very early demo version of the song and […]
There’s a bit of a story about this song as it resulted from a songwriting technique I learned from Christine Collister in 2013 at Moniack Mhor near Loch Ness. I was attending my first ever songwriting workshop and Steve Tilston and Christine were our guides. Steve concentrated on the musical side of things and Christine […]
Sometimes I will write a song with a different well known song as its starting point. I don’t mean copying it or ripping it off in any way but more so taking inspiration from it. Those of you who know my song “Marching On” may not be entirely surprised to learn it was prompted by […]
Here is a relatively new song I have yet to record or even perform in public: “Mary Didn’t Want To Come To London”. In all honesty I am a bit ambivalent about it as it deals with some pretty serious and grisly issues. It is, at least on the surface, about an imaginary terrorist attack […]
Five String Hammer was written in June 2017 at Halsway Manor in Somerset by Monica Shepherd and Tony Burt. It’s an interesting example of a co-written song so I’ll try to give a bit of insight of how it came about. I’d never written a song with another person until I started attending songwriting workshops […]
Had a really good week in June at Halsway Manor in the company of Boo Hewerdine and Darden Smith for a bunch of songwriting fun. Met up with a few other old friends and met some new ones in what became an inspiring and productive week. At the end of the week we each recorded […]
Early in September 2015 my good friend John Taylor suddenly died. I’d first met John when playing cricket against him, probably in the 80s or maybe early 90s. We quickly established we both had a passion for folk music and so met often at clubs and sessions. He was a terrific singer of sea shanties […]