Since my debut album was released in 2014 I’ve been touring the UK and Europe with John Bramwell from I Am Kloot. Having not had the chance to sit and write for a while I set myself a challenge to write and post a song each day throughout August whilst touring the festival circuit with my family in our caravan ‘Aurora’.
I then spent September and October in the recording studio working hard to create album number two featuring eight of the songs I wrote in August and four new songs. I’m pleased to announce that my new album ‘Songs from Aurora’ has now been mastered at Abbey Road Studios and will be released with 27.27 Records in Spring 2019. Here’s a quick overview of all 31 songs that I wrote in August with a little help from my friends:
What inspired the song a day? I read a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert that talks about turning up ever day to create - I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys creating in any way - you can find it here. I also chatted to an artist friend of mine Debbie Wattis who drew a picture every day for a year to document a transition in her life. Looking through her journey fascinated me and inspired me to post a song a day. To my surprise the videos had over 50,000 views on socials and loads of my musician friends joined me on different days.
Why the challenge? This year I set out to write an album and before the summer it was only half written due to a case of writer's block. I’ve been telling myself that it's because I’ve had so little time between growing my company, touring Europe and doing family life. After reading a great book on creativity called Big Magic and talking to an artist friend of mine, I realised that no matter what the result, it’s important just to turn up every day and create until inspiration comes.
Below you can view all 31 days of August along with the lyrics and a blog entry I made each day. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did.