You Can’t Deny What’s Inside
You Can’t Deny What’s Inside is, amazingly, my first commercial release as a solo musician. I say amazingly because these days, musicians make albums right at the start of their career, rather than after years of writing and performing, which was the norm when I started out. But, I digress. You Can’t Deny What’s Inside […]
You Can’t Deny What’s Inside is, amazingly, my first commercial release as a solo musician. I say amazingly because these days, musicians make albums right at the start of their career, rather than after years of writing and performing, which was the norm when I started out.
But, I digress. You Can’t Deny What’s Inside is a big step backwards for me. For a while now I’ve been trying to project my musical ideas into the future, trying to create a new image, style, brand, whatever. I’ve gone as digital and experimental as you can, in pursuit of some new kind of sonic wow, to launch my solo career.
And, with You Can’t Deny What’s Inside, I’m drawing a line under all that and saying, for now at least, enough. It’s time to just admit the kind of music that flows naturally out of me, when I pick up an instrument isn’t new, or all that innovative. It just is what it is.
I hear a lot of talk about authenticity these days. I believe the best way to be authentic is to admit to what’s inside you, the sacred and the profane, then give that voice through whatever art or craft you can express yourself with.
During 2012 I closed my doors commercially, stopped marketing, stopped networking, stopped chasing clients and for the most part, spent day after day alone in my studio, listening to my muse. What I learnt tore through my soul.
Much of what I had been doing to try and “make a name for myself” and “get exposure” had really become a creative cage.
Early on in the year I would pick up my guitar, play a few bars and just start to weep. Without the pressure to create to a schedule, I found myself pulling all sorts of haunting musical fragments from my memory It was like hearing the long forgotten sound of footsteps in a school hall.
As the year progressed, the solitude of my studio became a safe place, where I could admit to myself, before admitting to the world, that there was no shaking off the layers of musical sediment.
You Can’t Deny What’s Inside is the first project created in my new project studio here in Singapore, Sugar Shack. This studio really is a phoenix-like story. I moved to Singapore with lots of dreams and when I couldn’t realise them, I decided instead to invest in building the most kick-ass little studio I could afford. This is my third project studio, after Pooja House in Delhi and Cloud in Hong Kong. And, it’s easily the best one yet!
The name, Sugar Shack, comes both from a Soul-Music inspired painting by the legendary Ernie Barnes and one of my favourite songs by the rock band Phish. For as much as I’ve called myself a Jazz musician over the years, when I pick up a guitar, just as much Soul & Rock comes out as Jazz. Like I said, You Can’t Deny What’s Inside!
In the next couple of weeks I’ll post some songs and details on how you can get a copy of You Can’t Deny What’s Inside. But, for now, I just wanted to let you know a little about the release and the journey that’s gone into making it.
And, I wanted to thank you for your patience and encouragement along the way, for reading this blog and reminding me in so many ways that making music still means something today.
