In a Nutshell...

Out of those jams came the early demos of Red, White and The Blues and I started thinking about maybe releasing an album on my own label. The internet had changed massively since Magic Bus and putting something out on iTunes was now a real possibility.

We formed CM2 Records with Joe looking after production – Sadly, we didn’t have the budget for Abbey Road so we built up our very own studio and coined it Shabby Road.

We recorded the songs after work and on weekends. Shabby Road basically consisted of anything we could get our hands on like battered acoustic guitars, keyboards, mic stands, you name it. Any spare time and we were working on the album.

Around this time I road-tested the songs with an acoustic night at The Cellar Bar in Chelmsford. It was hardly Oasis at Knebworth but it proved I could still get back up on stage and play to an audience.

The songs seemed to stand up on their own as acoustic tracks as well and the gig got a positive review from a local music magazine so that gave me the confidence to take it further.

Progress was slow though because we were both juggling full-time jobs. We didn’t really realise until Joe’s brother went travelling around Asia and Australia. When he got back we’d only finished half the tracks!

It took a while but the album’s done and dusted now and available on iTunes. So far, we haven’t found the pennies to make it into a proper CD release yet. Let’s see what 2010 brings…

What really matters though is that we’ve managed to get the album into the public domain by ourselves so I guess that gives us something to build on for the future.

There’s a fine line between success and failure so you’ve just got to give it a go. It’s better to do that than not bothering at all.