READY TO BELIEVE is really just a song about meeting someone, and wondering if they feel the same way you do. No relationship comes without its complications and my own was no different in the beginning, largely because of where I was emotionally. But underneath it all I knew that this was who and what I wanted and that made everything else easy. As much I love to be loved, and to be IN love, I've never really been lucky in love and there is a part of me that always thinks something is going to go wrong. Luckily for me I have found a partner who is so grounded and secure in herself that she can look past my insecurities and see them for what they are and then she can convince me otherwise, because she is so patient and so strong. She makes it so easy for me to finally believe in someone. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to come home to that;)

Ready to believe

SOMETIMES is a song I wrote about 11 years ago when I was still with my old band, Ichabod. I was in a difficult relationship at the time and that's really what inspired it. It never made it onto an album and I always felt like it was missing lyrics and I was never able to write more because I'd moved on emotionally. Part of the lyrics had also been added by one of the band members back then and it wouldn't have been right to use them. I knew I'd need to rework the whole song and the inspiration just hadn't come to me. When John Ellis heard it, he loved it and was determined it needed to be on the album but he also felt it was missing something lyrically. That night I went home and picked up my guitar and within about 10 minutes I had a chorus and a bridge for the song. It literally poured out of me. I quickly recorded a demo of it and took it with to the studio the next day and John loved it. And so SOMETIMES ended up on the album and I love how it's turned out. To me it's reminiscent of one my favourite bands, Fleetwood Mac. It's very easy listening and it's also my wife's favourite!

Sometimes

Krystle T is a good friend who is currently working on her first album. She's young, she's enthusiastic and she's passionate and she reminds me so much of myself when I first started doing music. I didn't have a lot of support back then and that's why I'm so glad that we met when we did because I can help where I can to give her a bit of the guidance and support that I lacked. She asked me if I'd be willing to do a duet with her and I said sure but I wasn't really sure where the idea would take us. And then one day, I sat down in front of my keyboard and YOU'LL KNOW came about. I definitely wrote it with her in mind. The lyrics are based around someone who's already been down a certain path, giving another person advice and encouragement. The song has an overall positive feel to it and I love how Josh Klynsmith interpreted it with his drumming. He lifts it to a whole new level. I knew almost from the beginning that I wanted a choir singing at the end. There are few things more uplifting than hearing a chorus of voices singing a positive, uplifting message. It never fails to give me goose bumps when I hear it. And what's so amazing is that that choir is made up of just 4 female voices!

You'll know - featuring SA artist, Krystle T

THINK I'LL STAY and READY TO BELIEVE are really just songs about meeting someone, and wondering if they feel the same way you do. No relationship comes without its complications and my own was no different in the beginning, largely because of where I was emotionally. But underneath it all I knew that this was who and what I wanted and that made everything else easy. As much as I love to be loved, and to be IN love, I've never really been lucky in love and there is a part of me that always thinks something is going to go wrong. Luckily for me I have found a partner who is so grounded and secure in herself that she can look past my insecurities and see them for what they are and then she can convince me otherwise, because she is so patient and so strong. She makes it so easy for me to finally believe in someone. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to come home to that;)


Think I'll stay

What feels different for me about this album is that, even songs like LONELY NIGHTS, SPACE TO BREATHE and UNDONE, which are not terribly happy songs, also have a sense of anger and rebelliousness to them, lyrically, that implies that I've changed and that I will no longer take nonsense from anyone. I'm not drifting around, feeling sorry for myself, drowning in my own despair. There is an overall feeling that I've had some kind of epiphany, that I've discovered a sense of self, that I've made some changes and that I'm angry enough to talk about it. And I have made changes. I think there's definitely been a shift, musically and, if you listen to all the lyrics, there's also been a shift lyrically. It comes from a shift in attitude. I like to think I've grown and this album, for me, is a direct result of that growth.

Space to breathe

Undone

Lonely Nights

This is the first time I've had the freedom to express myself the way I want to, on an album. The songs are a little more rough around the edges than usual. We haven't cleaned up too much because I wanted to keep the organic feel of the songs. SONG FOR KELLY was definitely one of those organic tracks. If you listen with a trained ear you'll realise the drums are not even played to a click track. They've hardly been edited. Josh just sat down and played while I sang and strummed my guitar and Greg Bedford recorded it. It never really had a structure to start with aside from how I'd originally written it and that's how I wanted it to stay. I wanted to capture the emotion of the song, because it is coming from a very emotional place. I wrote the song for a very good friend of mine who was killed in a horrific accident two and a half years ago. We loved the same kind of music and she also loved my music so I knew she'd appreciate how I recorded the song. I literally handed it over to the universe and John intuited where it needed to go and suddenly the song took on a life of it's own. It was one of the hardest vocals I've ever had to record because I kept getting a lump in my throat but it didn't bother me too much because that's exactly how I felt and we used the whole vocal take, hiccups and all. When I first gave John a list of 30 tracks to choose from for the album, that song was a non-negotiable. It was going on the album regardless. It's Kelly's song and, in my own way, I'm immortalising her I guess, because I believe music has that power and we'll always have this connection.

Melanie Lowe

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