Parallel to my career in advertising, my creative urges have always found an outlet in writing and playing music. From my earliest efforts, playing homemade drums with a friend at the age of 12, I have been fascinated by the world of musical creativity, playing in other peoples bands for the experience, and eventually starting three bands of my own, one each in London, Stockholm and Malta. I have written hundreds of songs, and recorded around 45 of these, and this is something I continue to do.
Since 2008 I have been writing and recording music under the name Earwig Forever. I originally formed the group Earwig when I moved to Stockholm in the early 90's. In Earwig I wrote all the music and lyrics, and we played live gigs whenever we could get them. The band lasted for about two years, and we recorded a demo before falling apart for various reasons. For the next ten years I did nothing musically, before eventually moving to Södermalm to focus on writing and recording in a newly set up home studio. I wrote and recorded 34 songs over a period of 2 years, and released 4 collections on my Bandcamp page, https://earwigforever.bandcamp.com/music.
I released Closer, a collection of 19 of these songs, on Spotify in 2013 just before I moved to an old stone farmhouse in the countryside of Gotland, and a three year hiatus; I found the isolation dampened the urge to create new music. Eventually I left Gotland, not without some regrets.
In 2021, I released a second Spotify collection, entitled The Golden Chair, comprising 10 newly recorded songs from my base in Malta, where I have been located since 2016.
Myself and Elke Harras, German light artist and designer, Gozo, 2017.
In 2017 I formed The American Airlines, with Daniel Cassar (bass) and Clemens Janes (drums), with me on guitar and vocals. I wrote a number of new songs for the band, as well as resurrecting some tunes from Earwig Forever. We played a number of gigs and festivals, but the band ceased to exist in 2019, and apart from a short period where Clemens and I carried on as a two piece, trying out new songs and styles, I have been working on my own since. No recorded material exists from The American Airlines, everything on this page was written, played and recorded by myself. I also made a number of videos to accompany some of the songs, mostly for my own amusement.
Fear of Flying is in fact a bastardisation of two much earlier songs, the chorus/outro taken from a song of the same name written for Earwig circa 2006, and the main riff taken from a song called Is It Safe, written in my home studio around 2011. Put together with new lyrics, a new bridge and a much harder sound, the track was greater than the sum of its parts. We played it a few times at our rehearsal space in San Gwann, but never live.
Not many photos were ever taken of The American Airlines. These are about all that have survived, some from our rehearsal space, and some from some of the gigs we played, most notably the Rock The South festival at Zion Bar in St Thomas Bay, in 2018.
The post gig video of the two day festival. Exciting, noisy, sweaty and loud, just before Covid-19 killed all live music for some years to come.
Islands was written and played almost exclusively on the bass. I had been playing around with bass chords on earlier songs, but this was the first time I wrote a song entirely in this style. Clemens and I played it through a number of times in our borrowed rehearsal space in Birkirkara, but the new duo split after Clemens announced he was leaving Malta. The lyrics concern a friendship from that time between myself and a girl who moved to Gozo. The friendship did not survive the move.
Released in 2021, The Golden Chair is a mix of old and new songs, all re-written, newly recorded and newly arranged. Some were written for The American Airlines, some written as Earwig Forever and Earwig Mk 1 in Stockholm, plus one with roots in my first London-based band Adrenaline Chorus, and a number of totally new tunes written since.
Juggernaut was originally a short instrumental track which The American Airlines played live quite a few times. After the band split I wanted to develop it into a fully fledged song, with a new arrangement and a set of lyrics, which were very personal to me. The first section refers to a long journey down the impenetrable valley to Mgarr ix Xini on Gozo, one sweltering summer day in 2020, and events which happened afterwards. The final section is based on memories from the years at my old stone farmhouse in the remote countryside of Gotland.
Bee Drunk Eyes was another song I wrote during the me & Clemens period. It was a powerful tune with great potential, but we never finished it, and the final lyrics and arrangement were only completed after Clemens left Malta, and I resurrected my home studio. Inspired by a bizarre story from Brazil about a woman who was found to have tiny bees living in her tear ducts.
This is the only recorded version of The Painted Bird by The American Airlines, from a rehearsal tape made at our San Gwann studio. Overlaid over footage from our performance at Rock The South 2018. I re-recorded it for The Golden Chair album.
My Bandcamp page at https://earwigforever.bandcamp.com/music. Everything I have recorded and released is on there. Beneath are the original album artworks for each release, plus the different cover art for the Spotify release of Closer.
In my opinion, Grace and Sensibility was the peak of my songwriting as Earwig Forever in my apartment on Södermalm, Stockholm. I felt that this perfectly fused all my ambitions for my music, and tested my skills as a musician and singer. Layered harmonies and a loping beat, and subtle guitar work leading to a huge vocal wall of sound crescendo, and a gradual collapse to a drawn out finale.
Circus Of Pain was originally written for Earwig Mk 1. Inspired by an article I read about the Jim Rose Circus, we first worked on it in our rehearsal room on Kungsholmen, and later when we moved to Södermalm. Played it live a few times too. I resurrected it for recording 10 years later in my home studio in flat on Metargatan, and was especially happy with the guitar sound, which reminded me of a jet engine slowly exploding. The second of two circus themed songs I wrote during this period.
During my time in London in the 1980's I was constantly fascinated by the stories about underground rivers and lost communities that abounded. From Victorian stories about buried watercourses to Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books, and my own family's historical connection to Portobello and Ladbroke Grove, this song was just waiting for me to write it. It took a few decades, but eventually it was born in my top floor flat at Metargatan 7, Södermalm, Stockholm.
The Spotify release of Closer, basically the original Closer Bandcamp release repackaged with tracks from The Upwards Drop and the Green Gash albums.
One of my favourite tracks from the Metargatan period, Mountain Scientists seemed fully formed when I began working on it, requiring that I just prise it out of my subconscious and give it shape, and even the lyrics came unbidden to my mind. I tried resurrecting this with Clemens after the demise of The American Airlines, but if it was hard enough playing these songs with just three musicians, it was impossible with two...
Of all the lyrics I wrote at Metargatan, I was probably most proud of those I came up with for Circus Devils, my second circus-themed song. The dark vision came fully formed, and the list of bizarre characters flowed naturally off my keyboard and into the verses and chorus of this disturbing tune. Later I brought this to The American Airlines, where it became a staple of our set and we played it live on a number of occasions, to great response.
I made a film about a bike ride across Malta that I did with my good friend Johan Annerfelt, and I wanted it to have a music soundtrack. I chose Suspension Head from the 2010 release Motorfuck, as it seemed to fit the vibe.
A slightly steampunk song about something technical and disturbing in a dream I had.
This song, Seahorses, was actually the first song I ever wrote and recorded myself at Metargatan 7, after being persuaded by my then girlfriend to invest in a home studio setup. She was herself a successful recording artist and gave me a lot of help in getting everything up and running, and she even acted as my critic and sounding board on the early recordings. Very much trial and error, but the end result persuaded me to continue. Another song we covered in The American Airlines. I re-recorded and re-arranged this for The Golden Chair album
In London in the 1980's I formed my first real band, Adrenaline Chorus, with San Francisco native Hal McMath on guitar, Andy Parker (vocals/keyboards) and Jonathan Walford (drums). An early version of the song The Fall from The Golden Chair was originally written for this band. I wrote a whole new ending for this song and recorded it with double vocals, and it seems to sit there with the newer songs well enough, despite 35 years separating them.