And in the beginning...

Well, it's hardly a beginning. I've been Mr Keep Calm for some time now and was doing what Mr Keep Calm does long before that. Maybe I should explain...

I'm a songwriter, a musician, a singer, a live performer, a studio hermit who uses my low-fi kit to make low-fi tunes that people seem to like.

I'm not someone who pretends they're from the 'street', I ain't interested in fashions and trends and I don't have loads of money and yet pretend I'm a struggling artist. I'm doing okay and yet I'm always skint. Hmmm

I have played lots of festivals, theatres, concert halls and other, smaller venues. The biggest place I played is the Med Biome in the Eden Project, the smallest is my living room when I practice and write. I've been on lots of radio shows from the BBC to commercial stations to hospital to community radio. All across the UK and even as far as Vietnam.

I sell a few downloads, a few CD's, a couple of T-shirts, a handful of SD cards but not enough to pay the bills. The royalties do a better (but not much) job of that. Really I'm in it for the art although for a slice of songwriting cash I'd work for most people. Let's face it, I got bills to pay. I would be fussy but I'd be fine selling my wares. Don't let anyone fool you, all musicians have compromised their art for money without fail. Even The Fall have sold a song to an advert.

So now I have enrolled on a BTEC Music Technology course. I'll be posting some of my work from the course on here as well as detailing some observations of life but mostly I'll be talking about my musical exploits.

My current musical status is that I've released an EP, self produced with my limited resources and funds. I'm not playing live at the moment due to some crappy stuff that happened but I've done a few open mic's to get back into the swing. I have lots and lots of songs written, somewhere around 75. Some of them I play acoustic live, some are only studio efforts. Most are fully written but some are just doodles. Some will probably never see the light of day coz I don't like 'em (although these are among the songs I would happily sell to someone if they wanted it - they ain't doing anything for me after all!).

www.mrkeepcalm.bandcamp.com

Please take a look at my EP - The Rocky Place. I've also got on here last year's Christmas album, a labour of love that hopefully will put some new music into someones annual Christmas song playlist. Further to this is the BBC Red Button Project. Each week for 8 weeks I took a news headline and wrote a song based on it in less than ten hours per song from reading the headline to writing, recording, producing the song and posting it online with a video. It was exhausting but the results are not too bad at all. The recordings are a little wobbly as time was obviously tight but some of the songs I really like. This is probably the project I'm most famous for. The final piece is my old acoustic duo's album. We were popular on the folk circuit but our album is very amateurish. It's the first bit of recording we ever did and it's wobbly in places but also at times soars. See what you think.

So what for the future? Well, I'm still working with my guitarist James Bennett as we often write together. I'm also learning lots of new skills and have access to better production software. The music can only get better. Plus the songwriting will have some new skills to play with. I'm also tentatively learning to play the piano as time permits so I should have a new instrument I can add into the mix soon too.

My next blog will be a microphone box work piece for my course. Feel free to pick it apart etc as it can only help my coursework!

Please get in touch through sound cloud, Facebook, google +, myspace, twitter, youtube and my yahoo email as I would gladly hear from you, link and take on board criticism of anything I do.

Laterz!