I’ve decided to revisit some of my gig diaries. You may have heard or read this story before on podcast or something, but this is the first time it has been on this blog. This is part 3 or a little trilogy though. You might want to read part 1 and 2 first.

Fiddler’s Elbow

The first Tom Slatter Band gig was at The Fiddler’s Elbow in that London that they have, on a very proggy bill alongside the bands IT and Circu5. 

The run up to it involved rehearsing at the Amersham Music Studios, which meant I had to get myself from the City where I work to Amersham at the far end of the metropolitan line. A long, boring journey at the end of long boring days at work. I was frequently tired and half asleep for large parts of those journeys. 

Which meant that the first time I saw that green face with its multifaceted eyes, I assumed I had just fallen asleep. And imagined it, distorted and insectile through the curved window of the train somewhere near Wembley. 

But when, a week later, I saw it again, I knew I had to act. 

Gareth, being a guitar player, is not always the most organised. On one of the evenings we’d arranged to rehearse he texted us all to let us know he had in fact forgotten to leave the house and would not make it to rehearsal on time. 

We decided to give that evening a miss, which gave me a chance to pop over to The Horns in Watford for a quick visit. A few spilled pints and an insult or too and I’d successfully instigated a mini riot, which was the perfect cover for a very particular theft. 

The gig at the Fiddler’s Elbow finally came round and we all headed to sunny Camden, amidst the riches and squalor of that London. 

The Fiddler’s Elbow is a proper music pub, of the sort that has been rapidly disappearing across the country. The floors are sticky, the walls are covered with the optimistic promotional stickers of bands you’ve never heard of before or since. The soundman only understands loud, and things can only ever be turned up.

Nevertheless, the gig was great fun. There were plenty of people in for a prog gig on a weeknight, and most were properly into the show. Unfortunately some of the denizens of the Tom Slatter Immoral Supporters facebook group turned up, armed with plastic tentacle fingers and plans to throw things at me, but apart from those mewling sycophants it was genuinely a great night. Michael, Keith and Gareth played a blinder, with only myself making any notable cock-ups. We played a set mostly culled from Happy People, with a few other tracks thrown in. I’ve been waiting for years for the chance to play my songs with a proper band, and the gig at the Fiddler’s Elbow was hopefully just the first of many. 

IT rounded off the night with a great set of catchy proggish rock songs with a hint of 90s alternative rock (to my ear, anyway) and then we all headed off home, which for me meant heading to the overground station in a bit of Camden I had never been. I made sure I packed my wheeled case in a very particular manner, just in case. 

The train platform was deserted, and after waiting for several minutes I thought I’d gotten away with it, but then, with only two minutes until the train was due to arrive, he appeared.

Praying Mantis Dave.  

When I saw him through the train window, I realised he was still hunting me down. And  with the gig at the Fiddler’s Elbow advertised as widely as we were able, it was obvious he might find me. 

He emerged from the shadows and came slowly towards me. He was seven feet tall, biker leather draped over his green chitinous form.

‘I don’t know why you’re after me. I didn’t do anything to you,’ I shouted at him, playing for time as I struggled with the zip on my case. A mist was starting to form around us on the station. 

‘Didn’t do anything? You killed my son!’ Praying Mantis Dave thundered incredulously.

‘Oh yeah, that. Well, I didn’t mean to. It was an accident,’ I said, continuing to struggle with the case’s zip which had caught on something. 

‘And I won’t mean to throw you under the train when it arrives, that’ll be an accident too. Or at least, that’s what I’ll tell the police,’ Dave said. He stretched his arms wide, and clicked his mandibles.

I yanked frantically at the case’s zipper, but it wouldn’t budge. Mist was pooling around my ankles now, it had suddenly grown very cold. I tensed, ready to give it one last heave, but before I could the seven foot hell’s angel humanoid praying mantis struck. 

I was hurled backwards, striking the metal fence at the edge of the platform. My head struck the iron railings and for a moment I was dazed. When I came too again, Dave was dragging me by my ankles to the other side of the platform. I could barely see him, so thick had the mist become, but I could feel his claws on my ankles. 

‘You’ll regret what you did, Slatter. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life,’ Dave said. He grabbed me by my shirt and hauled me upright, putting my back to the edge of the platform. I could hear the rumble of the approaching train. 

‘But the rest of your life is only a few seconds,’ he said. 

I glanced behind him, and saw two glowing red eyes. 

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. 

There was a roar from behind Praying Mantis Dave. I felt his grip on my shirt loosen. I shoved him away and lunged for my case. This time the zip moved and I was able to pull something out. Something I had been to collect from the Horns in Watford on the night of our cancelled band rehearsal. 

‘What the bloody hell is that?’ Praying Mantis Dave shouted at the mist-wreathed apparition before him. 

‘It’s a demon. A demon that really likes rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia,’ I said. 

Praying Mantis Dave looked baffled. 

‘Here, catch,’ I said. I flung him the object I’d stolen. Reflexively he caught it.

‘What’s this?’ he said. 

‘It’s Brian Epstein’s letterbox, you green bastard,’ I shouted. 

With a hideous roar, the Demon from The Horns lunged down and bit the head off the seven foot tall insect. Blood spurted across the London overground platform. Tentacles and teeth writhed within the mist. Hooved feet stamped. Fur and talons flailed. 

Within seconds, leather, exoskeleton and flesh were crunched, and chewed and swallowed, leaving only the metal letterbox. A claw reached out of the mist and scooped it up. 

Then the glowing red eyes turned towards me. It started to advance. 

‘No, no. You’ve got what you wanted! You can leave now!’ I cried. But still it came towards me. 

In desperation I grabbed my guitar, which lay on the platform beside the case. I held it up to the demon as an offering.

‘Take this, take this! I know I’m not famous now, but one day I will be. 20 minute prog songs about metal spiders are bound to be popular soon! Think how much this will be worth in the future,’ I said. 

The Demon paused. Something like a snout loomed out of the mist and sniffed at the guitar. Then a sound, deep and baleful, echoed across the station. 

The Demon was laughing. It laughed for a long time, and then it left and the mist began to clear. 

It had left my guitar in my hands. 

Which was rude, but at least I was alive. Which is more than you can say about Praying Mantis Dave, but what did he expect? Such an over reaction. So I accidentally killed his kid? So what. It was only an insect.

The flags came down overnight, as unexpected as when they went up in the first place. 

It wasn’t me. I don’t own a ladder and I’m not brave enough. The sort of person weird enough to creep about at night attaching nationalist symbols to street furniture isn’t the sort of person I want a direct confrontation with. 

I was glad someone else pulled them down though – ripped them down judging from the tatters left on a couple of lampposts on the way to the station. It meant I wasn’t entirely alone in objecting. 

It was less than a week before new flags went up. 

The new set contained more union flags, rather than just St George crosses. Surprisingly they’re all the right way up too which isn’t the case for the ones just down the road in Waltham Cross. So maybe here in Cheshunt we at least have a slightly better class of nationalist weirdo.

I have a hobby of writing to my MP in character. I roleplay as an slightly ageing ‘proper’ one nation conservative. Why? Mostly cos I think it’s funny but also cos I figure he’s more likely to listen to disagreement from someone on his side than an actual lefty like me

Except my old one nation Tory MP stood down at the last election. The one I have now isn’t actually a conservative. The Conservative party doesn’t have conservatives in it any more. Instead I’ve got a racist far right Tory who recently wrote complaining about ‘unvetted men from barbaric cultures’ coming into the country. 

So he wrote back, but didn’t engage with what I’d said, just repeated empty nationalist bullshit. I’d specifically asked him if he could see a difference between legitimate patriotism and nationalist territorial marking. He can’t.

It can all feel a little pointless can’t it? There’s a chippy over the road from me that’s had union jack bunting outside for ages. Ostensibly the same symbol as what’s attached to the lampposts but that’s a shop that employs English and Turkish Brits, always has local teenagers working in it and is a proper part of the community. 

Their flags mean something else.

They didn’t creep about at night to put them up.

Here’s another English thing I bloody love. Little Baby Swastika by Skunk Anansi.

I’ve decided to revisit some of my gig diaries. You may have heard or read this story before on podcast or something, but this is the first time it has been on this blog.

Preston Biker Festival

In August 2017 Gareth and I played a gig at a biker festival in the North west. 

I didn’t know what to expect from a biker rally. My entire knowledge of biker culture comes from the TV show Sons of Anarchy, so I assumed there was a real danger of being killed by people with unconvincing Irish accents.

More to the point, are silly songs about aliens, tentacles and steampunk shenanigans really the sort of thing to play at a biker rally, even if it is the chill-out Sunday afternoon acoustic session? Might we get booed off, or worse?

It was with a slight sense of trepidation that Gareth and I headed into the gig at the Underworld Rally 2017.

I headed up to Nottingham, where Gareth lives and from there we headed off for a very pleasant drive up to the rally which was taking place in Preston. We drove through some lovely parts of the peak district park, including driving past what I think is my favourite place name I have ever seen – Gnat Hole Farm. Isn’t that a great name for a place? Gnat hole farm. 

We finally got to the venue, a farm quite a long way from from civilisation (being a lousy Southerner, I of course regard the interior of the M25 as civilisation and everything outside it as a bleak, desolate wasteland). A lovely chap greeted us and gave us wristbands. There was a woman with a baby at the welcome table with him. We drove in, still nervous, only to find a nice little group of people listening to the opening acoustic act, who was performing under a tree.

It turns out bikers like their rock music and a great many of them were wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts. I was obviously going to like them, wasn’t I? The event even had its own beer, a pleasant, rather wheaty affair. Apart from the bikes, which I have no interest in, this was the perfect event for me.

We were performing outside in the shade of a tree and an old carved statue of what I think was supposed to be a native American. It was the afternoon of the third day of the rally and the acoustic acts were the chill-out section before the final evening. We set up and started performing. All and all it was a nice gig, and wouldn’t have been worth remarking on in this gig diary if it had not been for the incident involving an insect.

It was during Self Made Man that I noticed a tiny green insect on my guitar neck, just by the second fret. That song involves a load of arpeggios on the bass strings and it was hard not to squash the thing. I did my best, but at one point I had to shift down to an F# chord and I accidentally crushed the little guy with my thumb. I thought I heard a little squeak as I did so, but I am sure that was just my imagination.  

I didn’t really think much about it at the time. We finished the set to friendly indifference and headed off for the long drive home. We said goodbye to our host Cosmo – all these bikers seem to have nicknames – I mentioned to him that it was fun playing outside, though I had squashed a bug accidentally –  and then we drove out of the site. 

As we headed out I heard the guy at the entrance – the one who had given us the wristbands – shouting something about Praying Mantis Dave – which I thought was an odd nickname. ‘Praying Mantis Dave has lost his boy’ he was saying. Or something like that. 

The drive back was very pleasant, although there were quite a lot of bikers leaving the festival too, so the roads were a bit clogged. Finally, we got onto the motorway and things thinned out a bit. Gareth pointed out one biker who was still behind us – he was on a big harley, had the leather jacket and black helmet you’d expect, but also looked to be wearing a sort of green jumpsuit. Not a very biker club look at all.

As we drove it became clear that green clad biker wasn’t going away. He kept trailing us, getting closer and closer. Gareth was a little freaked out, so he decided to get off the motorway. We ended up on some twisty little b roads, back in the vicinity of the wonderfully named Gnat Hole Farm. It looked like we had lost of the green clad biker, but then, just as we were about to make a turn, he appeared in front of us, roaring out of a turning and forcing us off the road, onto the little lane that served as an entrance to Gnat Hole farm.

Gareth gave a little girly shriek and slammed on the breaks. We both watched in trepidation, the car’s engine still turning over,  as the biker got off his bike and walked towards us. 

He wasn’t wearing green clothes. He was green. A bright green exoskeleton under a leather jacket. He took off his helmet, revealing black multi-faceted eyes and clicking mandibles. He was somewhere between insect and biker, with the leather and beer-belly of a motorcycle enthusiast twisted into the form of a gross, seven foot tall insect. 

Praying Mantis Dave. 

And as soon as I saw him, I knew what had happened. I had crushed his child against the neck of my guitar. I had killed Praying Mantis Dave’s son and he wanted revenge. 

The insectoid biker pulled something out of his pocket. It was a pistol. 

‘What do we do?’ shrieked Gareth. 

‘This’, I said. I reached over with my foot and slammed down onto the accelerator. We lurched forward, narrowly missing Praying Mantis Dave who dived out of the way, but crashing into his bike. I saw bits of motorcycle go flying. 

‘Get us out of here, Gareth,’ I shouted. 

‘Okay, boss,’ he said. We sped away from Gnat’s hole farm, with Praying Mantis Dave shaking his claw in the rear-view mirror. 

Hopefully, Praying Mantis Dave never speaks to Cosmo and doesn’t discovers who I am and where I live. Cos I’d rather not have a blood-feud with a seven foot tall hell’s angel insect. 

I’ve decided to revisit some of my gig diaries. You may have heard or read this story before on podcast or something, but this is the first time it has been on this blog. This is the true story of what happened after this gig.

The Horns – Watford – 2017

In August 2017 the Tom Slatter duo played at The Horns in Watford. Gareth Cole, a lovely chap, had joined me on guitar. That means we could play some of the songs from what was then my newest album Happy People, that could never have worked with just me and one guitar. 

We were supporting a band called The Far Meadow, who are proper prog. They have keyboards and long, multi-part songs and solos and stuff. They asked us to come and play, which was nice of them, so up we trundled to Watford, which as a committed Londoner for all but the proceeding 4 years of my life, I still regarded as the edge of civilization. 

Yes, I realise this is a silly thing to write. There is nothing civilised about Watford. 

The pub was nice though. It’s full of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, and its sign was a bull’s head – hence the name the Horns. At least I thought at the time it was a bull. Certainly something with horns and red, menacing eyes. I’d played there about two years previously supporting Lifesigns and had got chatting to an old bloke at the bar. Apparently the pub was built on the conjunction of two leylines and there were rumours that the landlord had made all sorts of pacts with dark beings in order to keep the business afloat. 

I remember agreeing with the guy that, yes, music pubs were hard to keep in business these days, but privately I thought the pub’s decision to book lots of high quality tribute acts might have had more of an impact on its success as a business. 

This was a pub gig. That means there was quite a bit of chat from the audience. I don’t mean that as a criticism or complaint, it was just that kind of gig, and it meant we had to win over the audience, which to a large extent we did. The song Self Made Man seemed to be the one to do it, I assume because it’s such an accessible song. We can all identify with a song about  a man who replaces all his body parts with mechanical alternatives. Which of us hasn’t wanted to do just that?

What made it a great gig though were the people who had come along specifically to see my set. That really did make my day, a really heart-warming affirming thing to have happen. I know I’ll forget at least one name, but special thanks to Andy, Andy, Mark, Matthew, Spike, Imhotep and Andy for all turning up – sorry If I missed you out – it was great to see everyone. 

After our set we had a breather outside to cool down over a beer – it was a hot night. The Far Meadow were just getting started, but we figured we could have a quick pint and still get in to catch their set. They were playing a two hour set and they are a proper prog band after all, so they would be getting through as many as three or perhaps even four songs.

Outside, we found ourselves talking to a bloke, Peter, who promoted live music at the venue. He told us about the rock memorabilia on the walls. The Horns was stuffed with it, guitars, pictures, album covers, everything. The weirdest and most interesting was Brian Epstein’s letter box. That’s right, the huge letter box that Brian Epstein had fitted to his front door that was big enough to take records so he could receive first pressings of Beatles LPs. A proper piece of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia. Imagine that. 

The bar had a pretty strict curfew, so at the end of The Far Meadow’s excellent set the call for everyone to clear the venue came. The punters – a sizable crowd for a hot August night in Watford – shuffled out to whatever hovels and caves pass for homes around there and the musicians were left to pack up. 

Now, it doesn’t take a lot of time to pack up an acoustic guitar, so once I was done, and while the others were getting their gear out of the building, I sidled up to the Brian Epstein letter box. Making sure no-one was looking, I prized the thing off the wall using my string winder and stashed it in my bag. I like a bit of memorabilia and I reckoned that was worth having. 

Once outside we bundled into Gareth’s car and headed off down the M25 towards the nice bit of Hertfordshire, the end as far away from Watford as you can get, where I live. 

We got in and pretty much went straight to bed, I to an actual bed and Gareth to negotiate with my two cats for whatever corner of the sofa he could find to curl up on. 

Once Gareth had closed the door to the living room, I sneaked down and took the letterbox out of my bag. I took it up to our front bedroom and had a good look at it. I’ve stolen a good few pieces of rock ‘n’ roll history over the years – David Bowie’s toothpick, Ron Wood’s vase, Steve Harris’s tutu – but this was Brian Epstein’s letterbox. What a great thing to have. 

I was just deciding where on the walls to hang it when the letterbox – which was made of metal – began to glow. I dropped the suddenly red-hot thing, shouting and sucking on my burnt fingers. 

As soon as it clonked to the floor it was black and cold again. At that moment something rattled off my window. I pulled the curtain aside and looked down to the street below. It was Peter, the promoter from the Horns, along with two of the bar staff. They waved their arms at me. 

I crept downstairs, clutching the letterbox to my chest. Taking care to be quiet so as not to wake Gareth, I opened the door.

‘What do you want? I said.

‘Give it back,’ Peter said. 

‘Give what back?’

‘You know what. Quickly, quickly, before it’s too late,’ he said. One of the bar staff was crying, the other was swaying slowly from side to side. There was a sort of fog forming behind them. 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ I said. 

‘Please, please, you don’t understand. Don’t you know how difficult it is to keep a music pub open in the modern economy?’

‘Yeah, but you book all those tribute acts,’ I said. 

‘And we book progressive rock bands too! Don’t you know what a dent that puts into our takings?’

‘Oi, steady on, I said.

‘We’ve made deals. Terrible deals. We have to keep it happy,’ The promoter said, as behind him one of the bar staff fell unconscious to the floor. In the fog behind them two red lights began to glow. 

And then they moved and I realised they were the two glowing red eyes of a creature that stood at least twelve feet tall. It was lumbering slowly towards us, bringing the fog with it. Strange appendages appeared and disappeared within the mist. Tentacles, hooves, teeth and spikes.

‘What is that? I said. In my hands Brian Epstein’s letter box began to grow hot again.

‘The beast, the creature, the one with the horns. It keeps our business alive, but there is a price,’ the promoter said.

‘What price?’

‘We need to keep the bar full of rock ’n’ roll memorabilia,’ he said, ‘it’s a big rock ‘n’ roll fan.’

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ I said.

‘We also have to sacrifice bar staff to it,’ he said.

‘That is a bit much just to keep a pub open,’ I said.

‘You want gigs to play don’t you? Now hand over Brian Epstein’s letter box before it’s too late,’ he said.

Behind him, I could see the thing’s horns, waving through the fog. I handed over Brian Epstein’s letterbox and Peter the promoter ran towards the beast, shouting at it in some incomprehensible language. The one conscious bar maid helped her colleague to her feet and they ran away too. The fog dissipated and they were gone.

The next morning Gareth said he hadn’t heard anything and had slept okay. Which I find unlikely, but there you go.

I woke up the other morning to a find a load of cheap St George cross flags tied to nearby lampposts with cable ties. They were all half way up, giving the impression that my little corner of Hertfordshire was mourning something, but also wanted to be disrespectful to whichever royal they imagine had died so had gone for the cheapest half-mast salute possible. 

If it was Prince Andrew who had died, maybe that would make sense, but that fucker’s still alive so it wasn’t that.

They stand in stark contrast to the cheerful little line of union flag bunting that was already there outside the chippy.

In related news, a swastika was graffitied near the station, our local MP has used some disgusting and unambiguously racist language and there have been small protests, in part organised by fascist groups, outside a couple of nearby hotels housing refugees.

I find this more than a little unnerving. Not because I personally feel threatened, or because I think this is a lot of people – far right activity on the streets this summer is smaller in numbers than last year. 

What unnerves me is the capitulation of the political class. We now don’t have any mainstream politicians, broadcasters or newspapers who oppose the far right. Our political class is ever more divorced from public opinion. We are moving in an ugly direction. 

That’s incredibly depressing. So rather than impotently complaining about politics, I thought I’d try to counteract the idiot nationalism by talking about English things I really love. 

Usual caveat when talking about country: I’m not implying other nations don’t also do these things well too!

In no particular order, some English things I love:

Heavy Metal

Obviously the origins of heavy metal are not solely English. You don’t get heavy metal without rock n roll and the blues – the influence of Black American guitar players especially Hendrix can’t be overstated. But it was The Kinks who had the first hit songs based on distorted power chords, it was Ozzy Osborne who suggested taking inspiration from horror films and making scary music, Tony Iommi’s riffs that started emphasising the tritone, and (in part) British punk that added the pace and aggression that gave us NWOBHM and later more extreme styles.

My personal favourite English metal band is probably Paradise Lost, who I’ve loved since I was a kid and first heard Icon (I think I heard Icon first. Might have been Shades of God).

Sitcoms

If you’ve been paying attention even slightly to the things I get up to, you’ll know I’m not the most serious of people. Seriousness is childishness, a symptom of not paying attention to the world. A large part of the way I understand the world is via sitcoms. Whether it’s the character comedy and mucking about with scifi of Red Dwarf, the the delight of Blackadder’s comic antihero, or the sheer foul-mouthed poetry of The Thick Of It*, I do love our sitcoms.

(* is The Thick Of It English? I mean it’s directed by a Scot and the most famous character is played by a Scot so maybe I’m being a bit cheeky claiming it. But it’s also inspired heavily by Yes Minister, which I also adore and about Westminster which is dominated by England to a fault in the view of many. I dunno. I like it, so I’m having it).

London

I bloody love London. It’s huge and messy and wonderful. Yeah, there are shit bits and yeah despite having a load of rich people in it, it is actually once again the poorest bit of the country after housing costs. I don’t care, it’s also wonderful. A genuine melting pot where people from all over mix together in one of the most successful multicultural societies ever to exist. There are people with every accent, every skin colour, and they all start restaurants, open bars and come together to cook up this wonderful place called London*.

There’s a trend amongst the far right extremists to denigrate London, to imagine it as dangerous and foreign. It ain’t. London is England. Not the whole of it, granted, but more than one in ten of us live in that ridiculous town. It’s the most English thing there is and it’s wonderful.

(*Okay, not all of them. I am still struck by an experience I had when we were living in a flat above an estate agents in Crystal Palace. We went for a long walk on a sunny day and ended up in a park in Dulwich. The people there, were not like everyone else. They did not mix. They wore red trousers and had names like Jasper and Araminta. The rich in London don’t really mix. They have always refused to integrate)

What’s the point of all this then?

There’s a small group of scary people who are itching for a fight. They’ve got loud cheerleaders in the press and for reasons I don’t understand both the Labour party and the BBC have decided never to oppose them. I don’t think these people can ever truly gain power here, but they can do an awful lot of damage and there’s no way they should get to call themselves English. You want to daub a flag everywhere? You want to wave the George Cross? A flag that’s only been used regularly in this country since a football tournament in the mid 90s? When our actual national flag is the union jack? And you don’t want to wave them proudly out in the open, but instead sneak around in the middle of the night, putting them at half mast on lampposts when no-one can see you do it.

I can’t think of anything less English.

Light A Spark And Call It Hope is out now! 9 songs about hope, magic spells, snow and rebellion.

Light A Spark And Call It Hope has been a labour of love and a true collaboration between me and my listeners, with them sending me pictures to inspire songs. I really like it. I hope you do too.

You can find a couple of blogs about the writing of the album here and here.

You can hear the whole thing for free and/or buy a physical or digital copy over on bandcamp.

I failed February Album Writing Month this year.

Can you fail a task that you set yourself and that isn’t monitored by anyone else? Yeah, the challenge with February Album Writing Month (FAWM) is to write 14 brand new songs in a month, but no-one’s policing it. There’s just a lovely site full of nice supportive people, sharing their songs and making comments.

But for 16 years I’ve been trying to get to 14 songs each February. I’ve only ever done it once and this year I got to 3. Yes, a whole 3.

All right, would those 3 songs have been written without FAWM? No, probably not. And am I proud of them? Yes, I am.

It’s not a failure at all is it?

The truth is, the first six weeks of the year have mostly been a write off for me. There’s a horrible set of winter colds going round I’ve had all of them. Even getting to three songs is a bit of an achievement.

So anyway, here are my three new songs! All rough demos, at various different stages of completion but all worth listening to.

1. An Ode to Joydon

One of the aforementioned lovely people suggested using phone numbers to come up with a melody – a 1 for the root note of a scale, 2 for the second and so on (ignoring the 0s). My mum happens to be moving out of the house I grew up on a road called Joydon Drive, so I decided to use that phone number.

Also I’d been listening to a Dvorak string quartet and watching some videos about Bartok’s axis of keys idea. And all of that got mushed up in my head and came out as a string quartet.

It has an ABA structure, with the As sort of in F minor and the Bs in B major.

Years since I wrote this sort of instrumental, and sure it’s a rough first go but I’m pretty happy with it. The recording’s just fake midi string sounds, sorry, but you get the idea.

2. Sun Stands Still

Sun Stands Still will be on the next Ashfeathers album. I’m sure you can hear why – it’s all acoustic guitars and singy bits. I’m really happy with the lyrics.

Late last year I asked people on my Ashfeathers mailing list to send me pictures that might inspire songs. People did and there were quite a few wintery pics. So I’ve had winter-song ideas running around my head for a few weeks now. Here’s what turned up.

The video is just a little loop of a lake near me that looked particularly still and wintery one morning.

Guitars are in open D major: D A F# A D

Lyrics:

Mrs Tatterhood, she digs a hole
And burrows down to lie under the snow
Mr Horace swims near every day
cracks the ice and lets his skin turn blue

And Lewis has found some fireworks
He’s lighting one and aiming at his sister
In a shower of sparks he misses and sets light to a tree

The sun stands still
The cold is not a thing to fear
The sun stands still
This time round will disappear
The secrets buried in the snow will melt away and let us go
Between the years we’re all still standing still

The winter’s a lonely time for John
The time of year his wife of 10 years left him
Every year he carves her sculpture out of ice
Then drinks some whiskey and melts it with a blowtorch

The Mercy twins know how to save the year
you sacrifice some creature in the night
At midnight you slit its throat
A sacrament
An offering that makes the daylight grow

The sun stands still
The cold is not a thing to fear
The sun stands still
This time round will disappear
The secrets buried in the snow will melt away and let us go
Between the years we’re all still standing still

3. In The Darkness

I only had an hour for this one. The main guitar idea was already hanging out in a rough bit of video on my phone, but the rest came together in that hour. Given the time taken, it’s all right isn’t it? I can definitely see this one coming together into a finished piece.

Lyrics:

Is this holy? Maybe it’s as holy as anything can be
Is it sacred? When the only prayers that mean a thing are to yourself
Here, here in the darkness that we both know

Floating here we orbit each other
The gravity’s what holds us near
Eventually we’ll crash or drift away

Is it empty? If it’s empty then you fill it up yourself
Is it broken? If it’s broken then you’re just like everyone else

Here, here in the darkness that we both know

Floating here we orbit each other
The gravity’s what holds us near
Eventually we’ll crash or drift away

But here in the dark we’re burning away
Here in the dark we’re staying
But here in the dark we’re burning away

Floating here we orbit each other
The gravity’s what holds us near
Eventually we’ll crash or drift away

So today is the solstice, the end of the year and the beginning of the new. It seems an apt moment to reflect on the 12 months just gone. 

Musically, 2024 was a big success.

Oh did you become a big star and sell lots of albums, then Tom?

No, no I didn’t. But that’s not how I measure success. 

It was successful because I released the first Ashfeathers album, World Building. 9 songs about fictional worlds, from the bizarre city where you can buy anything including metaphysical concepts, to the real one of online propaganda, and the lonely-yet-hopeful one where a reclusive poet hides his love odes rather than tell anyone about his feelings. 

The inspirations for Ashfeathers were twofold. I wanted to make use of the new acoustic guitar I had, and I wanted to do something in a very different tone to the solo music I’d released up to that point. Most Tom Slatter music is tongue in cheek, still telling stories, but sort of comedy horror/scifi rather than the more serious (albeit sometimes whimsical) tone of Ashfeathers. 

I think I achieved that, both with World Building and the follow-up EP World Ending. 

World ending also includes What You’re Aiming For, which I think is the best song I’ve written in the last twelve months. 

 What’s next for Ashfeathers?

I’ve got a new album in the works. The lovely people on my Ashfeathers mailing list have shared lots of pictures to help with the songwriting process and with their help I’ve got a brand new set of songs that I’ve already started recording. We’re well on the way there and I’m hoping to keep the recording process simple for this one so in theory it shouldn’t take long to finish recording. But as ever, I’m not going to promise a specific date. It will be done when it is done!

What about the rest?

The other big news of the year is the launch of my new band High Wire Act. If Ashfeathers is the nice, accessible acoustic side of my songwriting, this is the big loud electric-guitar-and-drums aspect. Big riffs, big feelings. That’s the idea. It’s trying to explore the idea ‘what if all those 90s alt rock bands I liked had had band members who were emotionally well adjusted, but still wrote the same kind of music?’. 

Two songs out so far, Lifeline and These Ghouls Won’t Leave Me Alone. More to come in the new year. 

What about a new Tom Slatter album?

Yeah, it had got to the point that I can now legitimately talk about Tom Slatter music as a distinct thing from my other acts. This has the strange side effect of making me sound like a pro-wrestler talking about themselves in the third person. Can you smell what the Slatter is cooking?

There will be more music under that name, but I’m not putting a date on it. It will happen when it happens!

There was a new Tom Slatter song on my bandcamp subscribers EP. It was called I Stagger Through These Stars and it does point me in the right direction I think. It’s from the point of view of someone making a rambling, half-coherent speech inspired by a drunken epiphany that he can only half remember. There’s something in the sort of sub-Beckett nonsense of the words that speaks to me. I’m wondering if the next Tom Slatter album should be a deliberate rejection of the very notion of meaning in song lyrics.

Aren’t all your songs that anyway?

Yeah, but this time it will be deliberate!

What’s next then?

I measure my success as a musician by the music I write and record. If I’m proud of those recordings I am successful. I’m very proud of this year’s recordings, especially Ashfeathers and High Wire Act. So that’s a successful year. 

2025 will be all about the second Ashfeathers album and the first High Wire Act album. I can’t wait for you to hear them. 

This is the second post about this album. Find out how things started in this post here.

I’ve got to an interesting point in the composition of my second Ashfeathers album. I think I’ve got a first draft track list.

9 or 10 songs (some of them still with working titles) that I think will make it onto the album. Probably. Possibly!

Are they all finished? Most are but not all. There’s a verse here or there that needs ironing out, at least one of them is more the concept of a song than an actual finished piece. Nevertheless, I can feel what this album is.

Does that mean the job is nearly done? No, not even slightly. Writing the songs is just the first step of the process. There’s still arranging and recording, mixing and mastering.

My next step is to get a first draft of guitar and vocal parts recorded along to a click track. That will give me a basis over which to try out different arrangements and parts.

My intention is to keep things pretty minimal and a little more organic sounding than the first album, but given that I really like the sound of acoustic guitar and synth, I can’t guarantee that combination of timbres won’t turn up again.

A sincere, hopeful song

One of the pictures shared in my call out for song inspiration was this pic by Richard Darby, a picture of two chess pieces, a white queen standing victorious and a black king lying on its side. That made me think of the idea of getting knocked down but always getting up again, so I started writing on that theme.

And you know what I’ve ended up with? I’ve ended up with a song that is unironically and sincerely trying to sound hopeful.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t also kinds weird. Another of the inspirations was a myth in this book about falcons, which tells the tale of a women who is in love with a man transformed into a falcon (or possibly a falcon who can transform into a man. A werefalcon) and her jealous sisters who try and trap him.

So the verses are about star-crossed lovers in myth and the chorus is about the idea of hope, of light in the darkness. At the moment I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the title track of the album, but we’ll see.

When do you get to hear this album?
Do I have a timescale on when I’ll have a finished album to share with you? No, I don’t think so. Next steps, arranging all the songs, maybe a first finished song in January. That’s not a promise though, you can’t rush art!