I was born in the UK in 1973 – the year of the 3 day week, Sweet, Slade, Bowie, Roxy Music’s two classic albums; ‘For Your Pleasure’ and ‘Stranded’, and the year that Sam Tyler was transported back to in Life On Mars!

I grew up in the Midlands town of Burton On Trent, and during my school years, learnt to play the classical guitar. This soon gave way to a more ‘self taught’ method, namely playing along to my parents’ remarkable and varied record collection, and trading riffs with friends from the guitar class, when we supposed to be learning scales!

I’m afraid to admit that I was actually a 1980’s pop music fan, until I started listening to John Peel in 1987. It was around this time that bands were formed at school, gigs were played in back gardens, and first demos were recorded at Ken McPherson’s Track Station Studio in Burton On Trent. You ask any musician from Burton On Trent – they all recorded at Ken’s!

After University, in the mid 1990’s, I formed Roller, in which I was the sole songwriter. We were a four piece guitar band, and tried to be as ‘archetypal’ as we could. We played classic guitar pop with an almighty edge, and yes, the ‘archetypal’ antics of a young band unfortunately came to be our undoing. We fell out, basically. After five years spent building a considerable live following, producing some timeless EPs, and gaining London based management interest, we split up! However, Jason Orme & I went on to record the notorious ‘Magpie / Settin’ Sun EP’ as Roller, which was released in the US on the Heyday Records label.

During Roller, in 1998, I joined local covers act, The Mysterons. Though primarily a covers band, Nigel Sutton & David Barber from The Mysterons joined Jason and myself to briefly form The Jinks – an acoustic based act, we recorded my song ‘Aeroplane’, that would appear on the Burton Mail ‘Off The Record’ compilation in 2004.