The Weekly Songcast

In December 30th 2007 my life changed. Well to be precise I changed my life, although I didn’t realize the magnitude of what I had done at the time I felt very positive about what I had just done and I felt that something in me had changed forever. It had and it is one of the things that drives me to this day in my intention to help and guide you to achieving the goals in life that you want to achieve.

So what did I do?

I made a decision! It was not only a decision that changed how I felt about myself, but one which transformed the way many people felt about me. My decision was to be a songwriter!

I had been playing guitar for about 18 years at that time and had become prolific at writing music for the last 10 of those years, but I had never been able to write lyrics, except for one time in 1996 when I wrote a song which in 2008 became my eponymous song "Boy at Heart".

After the end co-songwriting partnership with a lyricist and singer I spent nearly a year wanting to be able to write complete songs by myself. I was still coming up with all sorts of musical ideas and I felt I had reached a point where there wasn’t much fulfillment unless I could write lyrics and then at least have something I could go out and perform with my guitar. I had never had such a desire, but I was starting to wish I was a singer/songwriter, a solo artist!

Well after some time thinking about it, forgetting about it and then thinking about it some more I decided that I was going to give it a go and the only way I knew how was to just… give it a go!

"How can I become a songwriter and actually write songs I am pleased with and confident about? Not only that where can I find the inspiration or whatever it is I need to actually come up with lyrics that mean something real?". The answer came to me one day soon after asking that question and I decided to publish a new song every week online. I would tell people about it, promote the site and I would be held to account by publicly stating that I was going to conquer this challenge that I had set myself.

I made the decision to be a songwriter. This is what changed everything and something that I try and inspire in other people: I stopped wanting to be a songwriter, wishing I was a songwriter and simply told myself "I am a songwriter". I decided that, for a change I would not give a hoot about whether the lyrics to a song I wrote sounded clichéd or cheesy and I promised myself that no matter whether I thought a song I had written was good or not I would not be the judge. I would let other people decide if it was good It was an exercise in overcoming my self-critical streak in order to allow my creativity some freedom to express whatever was there and not being restricted by my ego ic desire to just write stuff that’s cool. What is cool anyway? I have learned that being cool comes down to being yourself, no matter what that looks like – being authentic, now that is cool!

The power of a decision

The decision was made some time in DEcember I can’t remember the exact date, but I told myself that I would have my first song published and online before the year 2008, so that meant before midnight on December 31st 2007. Song number one ended up being online on December 30th. I hadn’t really made any effort to sit down and write a song and I was due to go away for new year. It was the 30th December and it was my last chance to be true to my word. I sat down and just played and I wrote and I played some more until something snapped and a song revealed itself to me. It may not be the most accomplished song ever written, but it was one that I can still listen to now without cringing, so that is a success in my book.

After that the floodgates opened and I ended up writing over 100 songs to date (I am writing this in September 2009 and I have not been songwriting for a few months).

I retired the Weekly Songcast in August 2009 because I felt that I wasn’t really doing anything new with it since I had begun and I had many other things all competing for my attention, but it is the one project that I have created in my life that I will always treasure for what it did for me and how it marked the beginning of the happiest days of my life, which are still getting better and better!

The songs of the Weekly Songcast were written to inspire myself as I walked the path to creating my new life and it is time now that they helped inspire you in the same way. The Weekly Songcast remains intact as an inspiring music website. You can also listen to the songs via the player in the multimedia box on the right.

These songs are all rather rough recordings. Some of them made it to production and became tracks on my albums "All in a Life’s Work" and "Mind Over Matter Heart Over Mind". They are a very bare and honest presentation of my creative expression, which most of the time I feel is my most effective expression of what I want to say. I hope you can hear the honesty in these songs and I hope they inspire you.