“Derby Days” was the first song I wrote for the new album. My family moved from Ormskirk (near Liverpool) to Derby when I was 2 years old. Being the youngest of 4 boys, when my brothers flew the nest we moved to a smaller house in Burton just down the road. A few years later, after completing a biology degree at Sunderland University in my mid-twenties, I lived back in Derby before moving to London and eventually Vancouver. I've always felt a deep connection to my old stomping grounds in Derbyshire and the Peak District, and I wanted to honour the area with a timeless folk song in the British tradition. It speaks to some of my favourite pastimes then and now: hiking, birdwatching, and drinking ale. It was written not long after my dad died from COVID, hence mention of “his tree” in the bridge. There's an oak tree dedicated to him near the town of Ashbourne. The “messenger tame and tawny” refers to a robin that's often seen near the tree on visits. In folklore robins are messengers between worlds, linking us back to loved ones who've passed. There's a saying: “Robins appear when loved ones are near.”

Back in March I spent a week as artist in residence at the lovely Coutts Centre near Nanton, Alberta. I wrote this song as I looked out over wheat fields to the Rockies in the distance. In recent years I've been keeping a list of possible song titles. I find just having a title is enough to recall what I was thinking at the time. Toward the bottom of the list was the title of this song, which I wrote down in 2025 after reading about the northern lights being sighted as far south in the UK as the East Midlands, a rare occurrence. Nottingham is just a stone's throw away from Derby where I grew up. It's a short number coming in at around 2:30. Because this album will be printed on vinyl, I had to take into consideration the time limit of 22 minutes per side. I did the math and calculated the song would have to come in under 3 minutes to fit on the record. Click here or below to watch.

These days it seems good news stories are hard to come by, at least in the mainstream media. However, there's no shortage of them, and there's a number of organizations dedicated to bringing more positive stories to light, Squirrel News for one. There's no doubt, though, that there's cause for concern in the world today, and so I turn to songwriting to put a different spin on things. To write this song I took three reoccurring or seemingly unsolvable world problems - war, homelessness, power-hungry presidents - and imagined waking to find situations improving. Wishful thinking. Guitar is in DADGAD, an alternative tuning I've used in the past on songs such as “Okanagan Sunset” and the instrumental “Dad Glad” (hence the name). I was dusting off these tunes in preparation for an upcoming tour when “Good News Story” came to me. Hope you like it!

A bit of a departure (pardon the pun) for this post. Having read the book Beneath Dark Waters by Eve Lazarus, I felt compelled to write my first shanty. This meticulously researched book by the Vancouver-based writer and historian deals with the sinking and legacy of the Empress of Ireland, which collided with a coal ship in the St. Lawrence River in May 1914. It happened just 2 years after the sinking of Titanic and with greater loss of life, but soon fell from the headlines due to the onset of the Great War. I'll let the song tell the rest of the story, and I highly recommend grabbing a copy of the book for a deeper dive. Last year I had the good fortune of meeting the legendary Tom Lewis, and I had him in mind as I put pen to paper (or thumbs to iPhone). Writing the shanty was a lot of fun, a real word puzzle. The chorus came first followed by the verses (11 of them at 8 lines each). The challenge was to communicate the rather long story in as few words as possible and keep it to meter. I hope you like it. Do sing along!

In Vancouver near 12th & Kingsway is a big Salvation Army Thrift Store. Every now and again I like to purge the house of unwanted items, and this song came as I sat in the living room literally looking at “books in boxes” and “clothes in a pile” ready for a trip to the Sally Ann. I then got to thinking about consumerism and the thrift store's role in processing all our discards and keeping them from landfill. As I was writing the song there was a CBC news story about young TikTokers showing off their “phone pinkies” (referred to as “dented fingers” in the song) caused by excessive phone use, the same phones used to make online purchases of anything under the sun. It's the way things are going/have gone, but it's doing irreparable damage to the High Street. Nevertheless, I'm sure thrift stores are benefiting from this over-consumption even as the environment suffers. Song structure is ABABCBA, so straight to the chorus after the first verse. I like songs that begin with vocals right off the bat, hence the immediate start to this one. There's a few long words in the chorus, but I sometimes like to use unusual or unexpected words in my writing. I figure the English language has a vast vocabulary to choose from so why not branch out a bit?

Sometimes I pick up the guitar and the fingers just start doing something. Simply sliding between two chords conjured the verse melody for this song. I find my roots in British folk coming through more these days, and nature has been a recurring theme since I began writing songs at age 15. These two elements combine in “Now More Than Ever Before.” I started thinking about how the natural world is important to us for so many reasons, especially now: biodiversity and life cycles, physical and mental well-being, etc. In the verses I recall memories of British plants and animals. When I write I sometimes like to work with a certain set of criteria or weave in a repeating characteristic. In this case it's the unusual three-syllable names that begin each verse: sycamore, daffodil, tortoiseshell, nightingale. Song structure is AABABCAB (A=verse, B=chorus, C=bridge). There's a saying in songwriting circles: “Don't bore us, get to the chorus.” I agree with that to a certain extent, but there's also something to be said for delayed gratification, and the song's vibe needs to be considered also. Sometimes I like to establish the song/story a bit before the first chorus, hence back-to-back verses to begin this one.