Welcome Stranger Tomorrow

DW on 15 February, 2009



In 2006 I wrote and produced an album for Claire Smith, “Welcome Stranger Tomorrow”. It was a project to develop a young singer, who didn’t have lots of confidence to start with, but she did have ambition, a decent voice, and a relatively wealthy father who was prepared to invest in his daughter’s future. As well as introducing Claire to writing techniques and studio craft, we arrived at a collection of warm, melodic songs, which though it remains unreleased and has not been professionally mastered, bears repeated listening and hangs together well as a live set or an album.

The only way I have ever found to grow newly emerging talent is to spend a lot of time trying things out and experimenting to see what feels natural, and then within that, see what might work live in front of an audience and be commercial.

The problem with pop is that it demands instant in-your-face success, and that demand sucks the life blood from subtlety and grace and inspires copycat banality.

My writing partner and sometimes co-producer Mark Crook and I steered a course away from these pitfalls and in the end, developed Claire from a 16 year old willing but naive songwriter to a young woman capable of sustained original output.

My personal favourite is (selfishly!) the song I wrote with Claire’s white soul voice in mind, sung in falsetto on the demo, “Wouldn’t Do That” – a song which comes totally from my own experiences at the time but which seemed to synch up with Claire’s own early adult preoccupations. Either says a lot about my level of maturity, or that like everyone else, I am still learning and growing.

Claire is currently in her third year of an English degree and continues to play and sing live.

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Welcome to my music…

DW on 15 February, 2009

I’ve been making music since I can remember, but this is the first time I have attempted to provide a complete overview of my musical activity. This is a start… there’s a lot here and this site is as much an attempt to assemble my musical output in its entirety, as it is to present my career in some kind of logical order.

What might you find here?

As well as pop songs which have enjoyed the benefit of commercial release, I have a largely unpublished back catalogue of songs which is currently known to a small group of friends. Since 1994 I have been observing the ongoing paroxysms of the music industry as it collides with internet technology. Now that broadband is widespread, podcasting a norm, DRM is pretty much dead in the water, there are half-a-dozen ways to self-promote, self-publish and reach a sizeable audience, and having been heavily involved in many of these developments on behalf of media corporations, organisations and a small selection of famous people, it seems churlish not to do the same for myself.

I truly love funk music, have written numerous bass-driven groovy tunes. I even produce a funk music podcast, but I when I write it is regardless of style, and in most instances style is determined by the song as it arrives from the musical universe. Though I’m very happy to accept commissions, or as with the Daily Song project, write around subject matter provided by current events, songs tend to arrive by and of themselves, and it’s always been that way.

At the end of 2008 I decided to move my old blog to a new home on the WordPress platform, and to utilse funk.co.uk, my most famous domain, for a music website – not before time. Welcome to my music.

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