Serious Child Albums
Light A Candle
(For Save Ukraine)
Stunt Double
Dave Young is an emergency relief driver in Ukraine, who has saved over 1,000 people. He also happens to be my brother.
In October 2023, I released Light A Candle, an EP to raise money for Save Ukraine with whom Dave worked, together with two videos made using footage from The Times who have run several articles about Dave.
There are still a few copies left of the EP and 100% of proceeds go directly to this amazing charity.
Light A Candle
Talk About The Weather
with Andy Ruddy
Fatea - shortlisted
Album of the Year 2021
“writes about Britain today in a way that is almost tactile… with wit, style, intelligence and bags of melody” ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ Spiral Earth
Andy Ruddy is a singer songwriter from Bradford who blew me away at a gig he was playing in Guildford in 2019. We chatted afterwards and decided it might be fun to try to write a song together.
When lockdown came we actually ended up writing once a week on Zoom for several months. This album is the very happy result, recorded in our bedrooms, and in the case of Andy, a wardrobe, before Chris Pepper at Saltwell Studio brought it all together in the studio.
Talk About The Weather
Turn The Music Down
Time In The Trees
a year in the woods
“The year’s first home grown album of depth, vision and commitment” ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ Spiral Earth
“A jamboree of versatility and melody” Folk Radio UK, Featured Album Of The Month
“Brimming with vigour and style” ⭑⭑⭑⭑ RnR
The Oak - filmed in Petworth Deer Park
For the whole of 2019, I spent all my mornings in the woods, just listening and feeling. There was a moment after a few months, when time seemed to move differently. I could intuit how the trees were communicating on a frequency lower than we could hear. I could sense how our needs and concerns were just chatter to them, but how important they still were to us. These are the songs that followed.
Brambles - based on the work of forensic botanist Dr Mark Spencer
I came into the studio and asked producers Boo Hewerdine and Chris Pepper if we could make the songs ‘earthy but still modern’. Out came the old instruments, the harmonium, the dulcitone, the marxophone. In came a little bit of electronics, even a drum loop here and there. I’ve never felt so creatively at home as in the days we had recording this record. This was the moment I found the sound I wanted to make. I hope you enjoy it.
Empty Nest
the very first stories
“Taking acoustic rock to new levels” ⭑⭑⭑⭑ Maverick
Time Keeps Rolling - a film by Gareth Rhys Jones
“Not sure what to file it under but that’s part of the pleasure” ⭑⭑⭑⭑ RnR
I was given a songwriting course by my wife for my 50th birthday, having not really written a song since I was a teenager. I was terrified, almost turning back when I got to the drive of the Moniack Mhor Writing Centre. Thank goodness I didn’t. That week and the people I met there changed my life.
For my first ever single - ‘Time Keeps Rolling’ - we chose the first song that I wrote that made me cry. That’s a good thing, Boo said. I’d been thinking about my father-in-law, and how he used to play Paul Robeson’s Ol’ Man River every Sunday afternoon, just before lunch.