2026

Hello and Happy New Year! How’s the New Year’s resolutions going?

I’m starting 2026 the way I mean to go on, with lots of fun gigs and NEW MUSIC!

As well as various wedding gigs, both as a solo guitarist and with my function band, I also have a few shows and releases with my original music project, Solcade.

I’ve been involved in a few original projects over the last decade, but mainly as an arranger and band leader. My songwriting contributions have been minimal. As a result, I’d been storing up a small collection of ideas that didn’t really suit any of the acts I was working with. These sketches mixed funk and jazz with the afro and latin-fused rhythms I’d developed a deep love for through past work with older ‘world’ music acts, and mixed with a heavy dose of psychedelia and garage rock.

After we began to emerge from the pandemic and start performing live again, I decided to put together a group of musicians with a shared interest in less common styles of music (at least within the UK), including afrobeat. Initial jamming and writing sessions yielded some interesting results, and almost saw the project reshape into something closer to free jazz. However, the lineup didn’t remain stable and I had to rethink what I was trying to achieve.

By 2023, I had assembled a slightly altered lineup that shared the same vision: to write interesting and genre-blending music; and to credit all compositions to all members equally (in this case, as a five-way split). This can sometimes cause issues such as resentment of one member is not perceived to be adequately pulling their weight in terms of writing. However, I was fortunate enough to be working with enthusiastic creatives who stepped up to the challenge, and we soon had enough songs to get onstage and perform live.

Best of all, this collective approach applies to more than just the songwriting process. I may have kicked this whole thing off, but we now work as a team, with no singular leader, making this a true band; a collaborative experience. You can find regular updates on the band on our Instagram page.

Our first single, ONE MORE DOMINO, is out now, available everywhere. This song focuses on the feelings that come with the build-up to revolutions throughout history. Listen to the new track here and let me know what you think.

Stay tuned for news about future releases…

New single ‘ONE MORE DOMINO’ out now

Music

Take Five: The importance of rest in music & musicianship

Advice & Tips, Music

As the end of the year draws nearer, I find myself in a brief period without any gigs.

After quite a busy run recently, I’m now enjoying a few days of voice rest (a result of several shows in a row combined with a minor cold) before the shows ramp up again from New Year’s Eve.

This much-needed rest has reminded me of the importance of self care and taking time to recover.

Many working musicians find it hard to stop. The fear of losing a regular gig means we can often push ourselves too hard far too often. For us, the word ‘rest’ can be a purely musical term:

Courtesy of Classical Guitar Corner.

…but rests can mean so much more than gaps between the notes we play or hear.

Musically, rests are more than mere pauses; they’re essential to shaping how the music sounds. Away from music, rests can similarly help us make sense of everything else.

Help Musicians, a UK-based charity providing support to musicians unable to perform for health reasons, have a really useful article all about the importance of rest. They outline several different types of rest:

  • Physical rest
  • Mental rest
  • Emotional rest
  • Social rest
  • Sensory rest
  • Creative rest
  • Spiritual rest

All of these different definitions of what rest can mean will vary depending not only on individual perspective, but on what’s most important to someone at any given moment that rest takes place. I’ve written about Subjectivity, interpretation and their effect on creativity before, and the concept of silence and rest are no different. I encourage you to read the article and consider which elements resonate most strongly with you (whether it’s something you already do, or something you recognise that you need to work on more).

Personally, I find rests in music similar to rests in life. They are not just a moment in which we calm the noise and remain still, but a time to reflect on the quality of the silence itself.

Every rest, in music or life in general, is informed by the sounds which precede the silence. In a way, rests are shaped as much by the activity on either side of it as much as it is by the length of inactivity within.

Miles Davis famously referred to rests in music as ‘Hot Space’, maintaining that the notes you don’t play were the secret to great improvisation. I believe he too was referring to the timbre and feeling of a rest in the context it’s setting. This is equally true in our lives outside of musical performance.

Think about everything that surrounds your work. The preparation before a show, the admin, chasing invoices, making time for loved ones. Now think about where the time for you resides amongst all of that. Is it enough?

Sometimes we best serve others by getting our own house in order first. This is as true musically as it is on a more humanistic level.

So for now, if you can, take time. If you can’t, try to make time.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Listen to the silence. Reflect on everything that led up to this pause. Think about what follows after this rest comes to an end.

And as always, take care of yourselves and each other.

I’ll see you all on the other side, in 2026…

Original image courtesy of G4guitarmethod.com

Important postscript:

If you are a musician based in the United Kingdom and looking for mental health support, you can contact Help Musicians via the their website here.