Keep Asking Questions...

What the fudge happened

In 2008 I started building connections in the local community revolving around cycling and music. I owned a bicycle shop and was doing what I could to support the music community, eventually running gigs from the cycle shop and then at a local recording studio. Part of the ecosystem for this was Facebook, it was a good way to keep everyone in the loop in realtime, it felt like a great way to connect to people with similar interests. As we moved through 2015 into 2016 I noticed a change in the water, things were appearing in my feed I wasn’t remotely interested in, the shifting sands weren’t bringing people closer together for the better of the community, they were sliding people away from each other down opposite sides of a mountainous sand dune, continually shifting and picking up pace. Without going into the detail this was a very large contribution to Brexit which was a big marker to where we are now, I would recommend reading Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa’s documenting of what happened in the Philippines in the book ‘How to stand up to a dictator’, it’s all linked.

I could see what was happening, but found it hard to engage in the discussion as both sides were becoming more polarised, as usual I retreated to songwriting and wrote ‘I Don’t Understand’.

Here’s a video of my previous music project playing it very shortly after it was written in 2016. We went to a local pub to work it out as we would be playing it as part of a full gig set a couple of days later. Dan who is involved in the current project is on his cut down kit and Ryan on guitar is my Nephew (who plays in his own band Hunter and The Wolves nowadays).

It’s funny watching this back, as when I lean over to my left to speak to someone off camera that was Pete who is playing guitar and keys on this track for Owls That Talk. We also got the ending a bit wrong but Dan hadn’t played it ever until this point so was figuring it out and this was Ryan’s 2nd play through of the song, his first was just after I’d shown him the chords about 30 mins before, testament to how good they are.

I’ve never thought of myself as politically motivated, I’m just trying to be better to the people around me continually, sometimes I get it right sometimes I get it wrong, but I keep asking questions and sometimes processing the answer ends up in a song.

Bringing this back to a more music focused place for a moment, we recorded ‘I Don’t Understand’ as part of this project and the first 6 tracks were affected sonically by music we found we had in common and were listening to at the time. Some slightly more soulful and jazzy like ‘I Won’t Lie’, one is definitely Brit Alt Rock influenced which will be released later this year and then ‘How Long’ and this one are very much rooted in a more classic rock, I had been listening to a lot of Thin Lizzy in the build up to recording these and found the other guys could also feel that vibe.

We’re so grateful for you making it all the way to this point, we would love to know what influences you hear in this track, and what influences your music choices.

We hope to see you again soon…