Unaware of what or why I was writing, I wrote "Rolling Waves Of Blue" the week before my brother Andy’s death. I thought it was strange that I’d written a song about surrender and death—until I received a phone call early on Sunday morning, September 9th, 2018.
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"Rolling Waves Of Blue" is out now everywhere 👇
🎧 Spotify
📻 Bandcamp
📺 YouTube
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A huge thank you to community radio across Australia and independent radio in Ireland for giving these quiet…
Read moreIt feels like a dream. It's September 2018, and one minute I'm gratefully living back in Dublin, after 5 years in Western Australia, and then, the next thing, my brother Andy dies in what feels like an accidental-on-purpose tragedy.
For the next 8 years, I'm in an ethereal bubble, feeling like a red balloon floating high above the world in a meandering spell. All the while, all I could hear was a mermaid-like entity calling me back down to earth, out of the clouds, like a Siren from some distant rocky…
Read moreSo, the short story is that I’m in Sydney for a brief visit, caught off guard and out of focus, taking a photo of the Opera House.
The moment seems to have arrived where I’m ready to let my old—and possibly long-lost—friends know that I’ve christened the songs for my endless-in-the-making new album, Blue Shadows & Golden Light—And I guess this is a photo of Yours Truly amidst the Blue Shadows & Golden Light.
Meanwhile, I hope you have time because here’s the long story 👇
Journal — Fairy Floss & Broccoli
I've…
Read moreHomage For My Estonian Father & Grandmother
(Enn & Helmi Truupold—Nee Kukk)
My father was an Estonian refugee from the Second World War – and a mountain climber. When I was growing up, I never understood the more profound implications of who he was and what he did, but in the last years of his life, when he finally opened up about his family's history, I finally understood why he was the way he was.
I did a few climbs with him at his indoor climbing gym in Sydney, and one day, I found myself at the top of the…
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Maybe it's been said before, you have to lose yourself to find yourself.
Today, the 12th of August 2023, marks the passing of 38 years since I got “clean and sober”.
Six weeks prior, on the 3rd of July 1985, the day after my 21st birthday, I arrived at Mosman Ward 4 Detox in Sydney — Six weeks before I finally “got it”.
It was after first conceding that success as a teenage junkie had eluded me and finally accepting that I couldn't drink and substitute one addiction for another. All roads seemed to lead me…
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My brother's name was Andreas, but he called himself Andy for the early part of his life. I think he hoped he would go unnoticed as just another "Aussie" growing up in Sydney in the 70s — when being called Andreas got you into nothing but trouble.
Going unnoticed didn't work out for Andreas, and he got into plenty of trouble. But, eventually, many long, dark years later, he woke up to the beautiful, bright truth of himself, with thanks, I believe, to the arrival of his daughter Ginger. She revealed him to…
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'Southern Cross Northern Skies' is about following a star that is impossible to see unless you learn to look in new ways and trust where it will lead you…
1. Different Now
Written in Albany, Denmark & Vasse, Western Australia, 19-22 November 2011.
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I felt this song signalled a new chapter when I wrote it and that’s why it’s the first song on the album - We’re a little different now.
The lyrical imagery was inspired by the views of Albany Harbour, during visit to the Anzac War Memorial that got…
Read moreRebel Songs I wrote this song earlier in the year from a line that appeared (as usual out of nowhere), complete with melody: "We don't need no rebel songs 'cause we're already free". It was the day after Ian Paisley (the firebrand Northern Irish Loyalist Leader) retired. For the first time, as I don't watch much TV, I saw footage of him laughing away with Martin McGuinness (the Ex-IRA Sinn Féin politician and the current deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland), and learnt that these… Read more
The album title 'Songs For Sooner' relates back via the song title 'Sooner Or Later' to the dog I had when I was thirteen. Her name was Sooner.
Sooner was a beautiful jet-black Kelpie. I rescued her from a farmer who had beaten and abused her so much that she was terrified of everyone and everything. She was so terrified that she would spend most of her time hiding under the house. We called her Sooner because she would sooner stay under the house than come out.
I tried to love her back to life. I think…
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