ABOUT THE TRACK

I was tidying up around the house and the lyrics, "I don't want to be the one to tell you, your man was playing away from home last night" just came out of nowhere. I stopped what I was doing, wrote them down, and asked myself the question, who do I not want to tell, and why? And a story formed of a first love who left me and made a bad choice, but maybe all hope was not lost? And over the course of the afternoon the song came alive.

I liked the song, but to me it didn't really stand out. Then one night I played the song in The New Lewis and an audience member asked me who the song was by? I told him it was one of my own and I can still remember his exact words - "You couldn't have written that, that's one of the best songs I've ever heard!" Perhaps a little fulsome with his praise, but it made me look at the song in a different light and work on it some more - add a word here, remove a word there...

I played it to Andrew when we had one of three get togethers to decide what songs show be on the album. He loved the story that the song tells and the melody and said straight away, "That's the opening track." recently, a fellow songwriter got a preview of the album and told me he like it so much that he played it eight times back to back. I hope you like it too.

ABOUT THE TRACK

Introverts is quite a recent song. As I met more and more creative people, I realised many of them played at being extrovert in public but were really introverts like me! You can't be an extrovert if you sit alone day after day creating content, but you need to be an apparent extrovert when you're delivering it! Wear a shiny, shiny mask... And an idea formed that extroverts need introverts to create the things that make them happy, and introverts need extroverts for an audience. So I wrote a song on that theme.

I thought it was just a throwaway song, but when I played it in public, everyone loved it. It didn't make the album cut. But as I was about to go into the studio, I had a chat with Lewis music legend Iain 'Costello' Maciver and he cautioned me to make sure that there were enough upbeat songs on the album. So we took a last minute decision to take out a quieter, slower song and record Introverts in its place, and the rest as they say, is history. When looking for a name for the album, someone said that the album was about an introvert coming out at the age of sixty eight, so why not make it the title track? So we did...

ABOUT THE TRACK

I watched the lunchtime news and then went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. When I got back, a programme I never normally watch had started. It was 'Doctors'. The policeman character had found his wife, who worked in the surgery, dead on the sofa, and he couldn't accept that she was dead rather than asleep. It was good television and it held my attention.

Just as well! He used the expression 'beggars will ride', and as the plot developed it transpired that her favourite saying had been 'If wishes were horses, then beggars will ride', and I thought, what a great title for a song. Over the next hour, the words and melody poured out of me, and the song was complete. As soon as Andrew heard the first verse, he said, "That's the single." And if I hadn't chanced upon a programme I never normally watch, it wouldn't exist!

ABOUT THE TRACK

In early 2022, I had a period of collaboration with renowned island musician Cree Mackenzie. One of the things to come out of it was the beautiful song Falling In Slow Motion. I had written a song of that title and left it with Cree while I was away commentating in Pilsen, Czechia. He took most of the words, took out quite a few more, added some words of his own, and came up with the beautiful melody.

He sent me a rough draft on Messenger, which I played to the rest of the media team one evening. I could tell from their reaction it was a winner. Cree's version was more guitar based. We went with a piano based version for the album, but it would be great if Cree were to release his own version as well.

ABOUT THE TRACK

I don't know how many people watch it, but I love 'Opry Le Daniel', a TV show hosted by Daniel O' Donnell and featuring many country music stars - mostly Irish, but artists from the USA and Scotland as well. It's an Irish Gaelic programme with English sub titles, which I found on BBC Alba.

While watching it one week, I had the idea of writing a song that might suit the show. Nothing came to mind. Then, in the middle of the night, the fully formed chorus came into my head - words and music. I got up about three in the morning, wrote down the words and sang the basic tune into my phone's voice recorder. It took nearly a month to complete the verses. Some things you just don't hurry, you just let them happen.

I don't play it very often in public - it's a soft song that needs a quiet environment. But every time I play it, I think I like it a little bit more. Maybe one day, it WILL be played on Opry le Daniel?

ABOUT THE TRACK

I was browsing through social media, and came across a folklore story about selkies at Barvas beach. Barvas is a village on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. A selkie is a seal that takes on human form when it leaves the water, but if it spends too long out of the water, problems begin. Shape Shifters tells the story of a selkie who falls in love with a handsome man who came walking along the beach late one night.

I spent a few days trying to come up with a melody, but nothing came to me except a gradual realisation that not every 'song' needs a melody. The track was recorded in less than fifteen minutes, me in one sound booth and Keith in the other with his boran. We had one dry run, after which Scott told me to talk softly, let the microphone do the work, that's what it's there for. So I did it in more of a whisper, and afterwards Scott said, "That's it."

I had expected a few more takes, but no. It's different from everything else on the album. Some will love it, others will be more ambivalent. Maybe someone somewhere down the line will even come up with a melody and completely change the feel of it. The Arctic Monkeys did just that with a John Cooper Clark poem. Or maybe it's right just as it is?

ABOUT THE TRACK

It was a cold and very windy autumn Sunday morning. Power lines had come down in the wind and I sat without electricity waiting for it to come back on. And over two hours, I wrote two complete songs. Better Days was one of them. It turns out it's a motivational and uplifting song. The message is, if your life has been good, it'll get even better. If your life hasn't been so good, better days lie ahead. I didn't set out to write something motivational. As so often with songs, it just happened. (The other song was Wrote It Just For You, which I hope to feature on the second album. So quite a productive power cut!)

When I played the original song in the studio, Scott commented that it was a great three minute song masquerading as a far too long five and a half minute one. So I compressed the second and third verses into one, and did two choruses at the end instead of three, and it got as close to three minutes as one of my songs ever will. It's a favourite to sing at noisy venues, because I can drown out the shouters. And it gets people dancing.

ABOUT THE TRACK

Places Like These is one of two songs on the album that came out of a songwriters' retreat in Black Bay Studio, Bernera, Isle of Lewis, in May 2023. We were given various prompts during the course by tutors Willie Campbell and Findlay Napier. On this song, the first part of the challenge, from Findlay, was to write a song using sustain chords. I didn't think I knew any sustain chords, but it turned out that I did - I just didn't know that's what they were called! The second part of the challenge came from Willie. We sat on a beach near the studio, and were asked to take in the sights, smells, sounds, sensations and emotions we were experiencing.

After I'd written my words and melody, Findlay mentored me and helped me fine tune the song. I had written four verses, and Findlay suggested we turn one of them into a chorus and use a verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus progression. I wasn't sure that the song was strong enough for the album, but Andrew liked it from the first time he heard it, and one of my golden rules is, if you're going to work with an expert, listen to what they say and follow their advice. Andrew turned the song into something better than I thought it was with his beautiful, understated piano, and the falsetto right at the end is Andrew too. I hope, if it gets radio play, DJs don't fade it out, because the final ten seconds really make the song. As does Louisa's fiddle. It's so much better with the fiddle than it was before it was added.

ABOUT THE TRACK

Just Like You is the other track to come out of the songwriters' retreat at Black Bay Studio. Again, there were two prompts. One was to write a song using the 'loop of death' (G, D, Em, C, for example). The other was to write ten six word stories. After doing that, we were told to use one of the stories as the opening words of a song. My story choice was the first I wrote - You're invisible to everyone but me.

Where the words came from, I don't know. What the words meant, I didn't know either. But the challenge of the six word story is to develop the story from that first line, and the song became about two introverts who's eyes meet at a busy social function where both of them are squirming with discomfort. This time, it was Findlay's prompt and Willie was the mentor. I knew the song was catchy when I heard Willie walking along the corridor singing 'Just like you' over and over. It was also Willie's idea to put in an octave jump at the end of each verse and into the chorus. It will capture the attention, he said, and he was right.

Again, the words and melody flowed. I wrote the bones of the song really quickly, and not a single word has changed from that day to this. But when it came to recording it on the final day, I just couldn't play it, hard as I tried, and Willie had to accompany my vocal without me playing a note. I just couldn't grasp the timing of the loop. Things have changed since, and it's now one of my go to songs in a noisy room. But every time I play it solo, I miss Mary's backing vocals, because they're what really makes the song. I hope you agree.

ABOUT THE TRACK

In early 2023, I was out walking the dogs one afternoon, headphones on, listening to the radio, when I heard the expression 'American Wake' for the first time. A hundred years ago, when young Irish people with few prospects in Ireland left for 'the new world', those staying behind held what they called an American Wake. No one had died, but they would never have the resources to visit North America, and those leaving were unlikely to return. So they would never see them again, hence the wake. And that's what the song is about. For anyone from the Isle of Lewis reading this, there are strong parallels with the Metagama. (The SS Metagama was a Canadian Pacific Railway steamship that sailed between Scotland and Eastern Canada. On Saturday 21st April 1923, she sailed from Stornoway with 300 Lewis emigrants on board, all but 20 of them young men, with an average age of 22.) 2023 saw commemorations of the centenary of the emigration. American Wake is also set in 1923, from an Irish perspective.

I had a vision that I would sing the first chorus myself, a choir would join me on the second chorus, and the choir would sing the third chorus on its own. I saw it as the last track on the album, giving an emotional and stirring end to a concert of the album, should one ever happen. Andrew agreed. It was a perfect farewell song to finish the album with. But then two things happened. Budget realities and the lack of availability of a choir during our recording window meant that we ended up using my voice on all the choruses, with Andrew providing lovely backing vocals. We agreed that the first priority, and the raison d'etre for the album, was to get the song out there, and the stripped back production would mirror the rest of the album. And the second thing that happened was that I played Andrew If Only I Had Known. And he thought that IT was the perfect goodbye song. So the finale with the choir became the penultimate song with no choir.

There's a certain Irish group that I have often visualised doing a wonderful, full orchestral version of the song. One day, maybe, but every time I listen to our stripped back version I like it a little bit more. Play it several times, and you'll hear more and more layers on each listen. Keith's piano, Louisa's fiddle, Andrew's harmonies, the melodic variation on the final chorus...It took well over a month to take the song from its earliest form to the version you hear on the album. I remember when I went to Black Bay in May 2023, it was my 'latest song'. The first half of 2023 was a particularly productive time...

ABOUT THE TRACK

If Only I Had Known is not only the last track on the album, but it's also the oldest song, written in 2021. The Bayhead Players did a concert in Tarbert, Harris in June 2022, and this was one of two songs I played at what was my first ever concert appearance. It was the favourite of my songs for a lovely lady called Chrissie who was still singing at Bayhead well into her nineties. She still had a beautiful, pure voice. When she passed away, her family came from Canada and USA for her funeral and I played the song at the post funeral wake in Bayhead. I was scared to look up as I played, as I could sense everyone was in tears and I was worried that if they set me off I wouldn't be able to finish the song. I kind of retired the song after that, but Andrew, and others whose opinions I value all told me to put it on the album. It's raw and pure, they tell me, and who am I not to take their collective advice?

In the studio, day one is about laying down sample tracks, which the musicians then play to and a new vocal is added at the end. But this was just guitar and vocal, with fiddle to be added later, so after ten minutes of putting a new vocal on, Scott said, what are we doing here, the sample track is as good as anything you're going to do today. So what you're listening to is actually the sample track recorded on the very first day back in February, with Louisa's fiddle added at the very end of the last session in April, late at night when we were all exhausted and ready to go home. What's it about? Death? Departure? Break up? Shattered dreams? Disillusion? I guess only you can decide what it means to you.