It’s February! And that means I’ll be writing 14 brand new songs, as I’ve tried to do every year for the last 12.

As a warm-up I wrote a new song, Faceless Men.

You can hear it over on bandcamp (it’s up as a pay-what-you-want download):

Faceless men was inspired by a picture one of my ‘fans’, Barry shared. Last November I put out a call for weird pictures that might inspire a song. Lots of people shared them, and this was Barry’s contribution:

I assumed that these faceless men were a weird cult who decided to hide away in a bunker until the inevitable apocalypse had passed. They’re down there now, eating tinned food and refusing to admit how scared they are.

There will be more FAWM songs! Here’s a the latest studio diary which will tell you more:

In my last post I shared the highlights from the first 6 months of 2020. Let’s take a look at the rest of the year.

July

This month saw the release of three – yes, you heard me right, three! – bootleg releases for my lovely subscribers. This included two acoustic songs that were previously unreleased, a draft mix of a new version of my song ‘Through These Veins’ and a bootleg recording of an entire acoustic duo set Gareth and I played in 2017.

August

In August I had a go at creating a lyric video for my song Satellites. I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

September

My mate Graham shared a photo and said ‘write a song about that’. So I did. Here it is:

October

The main problem during this month was the Union of Bloody Andys.

But also in this month I released my new version of my song IronBark. Which is well good and you should listen to it.

November

Inspired by Graham’s picture challenge, I asked for more pictorial inspiration. Here’s another song inspired by a picture shared by a lovely online person.

December

The Union of Andys were vanquished (and a couple of hundred quid was raised for charity) when I released my first, last and only Christmas single ‘Our Very Final Christmas’.

So there we are. 2020 is done. Was it a good year? No, no I don’t think I’d say that. Was it a productive year? Yes, I think it was. I wrote and released some music I’m really proud of and I think that’s helped me figure out what 2021’s music will sound like.

2020 also saw all sorts of silliness committed by my ‘fans’, not least the nonsense with The Union of Andys. That was a lot of escapist fun that helped make an unpleasant year more bearable.

Huzzah for music and silliness. Hopefully there’ll be lots more of both in 2021.