Hello there, welcome to The Fishpie Sky. I am an unknown songwriter with a bunch of unknown songs. That much is certain. What is less certain is whether my songs are actually worth your time listening to. All I can say is I’ve tried to imbue my songs with the attributes I admire so much in the songs of my songwriting heroes;  Paul Simon, Ray Davies, Ron Sexsmith, Joni Mitchell, Andy Partridge, Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael and the guys who started it all off for me, The Beatles. So hey, put all that together and I’ve gotta be the greatest tunesmith that ever picked up a guitar to write a song, right? Well no, you won’t come to that conclusion. My mum might but you won’t. But, if you like the genre of music my heroes represent, melodic songwriting, unusual and rich chords, smart lyrics on a variety of subjects, you might find a song or three of mine to enjoy. I hope you do anyway. My songs would certainly appreciate being given a listen. They’re so needy. So feel free. Cheers song lovers.

Song-travel the Universe with my new album, "From the Big Bang"

I’ve read quite a few popular science books in a vain attempt to try and get my head round what Science tells us about the nature of Reality, how it came about, what it is and how it evolved. It’s an amazing story of human beings (the scientific ones at least) being brilliantly brilliant. The album celebrates what they discovered, what theories they developed and specifically what scientists call the Big Bang. The music itself is a collection of 17 songs in a kind of pop-rock concept album format, one track leading to the next capturing something of the stages the Big Bang and the Universe are thought to have been through so far. I imagine students, professors, technicians and theorists of astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics will happily gather at a karaoke bar and sing along to it. To help them here is a lyric video of the title track:

AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD STREAMING AND DOWNLOADING PLATFORMS

I Found a Quiet Place Today

“I found a quiet place today” is a line I found on Twitter; the opening line in fact to a lyric written by Joyce Jedlicka, a lady I knew not. I loved that line. It resonated. And I immediately wanted to write a melody for it. I “followed” Joyce on Twitter, offered the melody as a collaboration and, to my delight, she liked it. So here is a Jedlicka/Fishpie Sky song. Joyce wrote the lyric to help people find hope and optimism in difficult times. I hope my tune and the string arrangement I composed does her work justice.

Songs about The Arsenal

Ok, so this is a bit left-field; writing songs about a Football Club. But, if you’ve supported your team since you were wee, well it’s like writing a song about your very first love. Deliberately composed with singalong choruses for the lads on the terraces, the above is a link to a playlist of three songs I’ve written and released about Arsenal: Red Shirts, White Sleeves (my ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone” anthem), When Santi Plays, I Swear the Football Smiles (a song about my favourite player) and Au Revoir My Friend (a musical tribute to Arène Wenger who recently left the club after 22 years service). So put on your replica shirt and sing along, why don’t you!

You can download or stream these Arsenal songs from Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, Microsoft Groove.

They are also available at Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, YouTube, Claromusica, Saavn, MediaNet and Shazam.

Johnny Rotten I am not

Its 1978, or 1979. Punk has hit the UK, or spat at it at least. Not that I’d noticed at the time. I was still deeply in love with Joni Mitchell and her exotic guitar tunings. So much so, I wrote me a Joni kind of tune, with a bit of Paul Simon and a dab of Tir Na Nog thrown in too. A song about longing of the past and uncertainty about the future.

A love-gone-wrong song

Every songwriter has to write at least one of these. It’s just dawning on the guy in Walk-Out Shoes, a new original song, that he hasn’t been on the ball.

A song about songs

I love songs. I admire songwriters. They are my favourite musical people. The Song’s the Thing is a new original song and a homage to my songwriting heroes. There are ofcourse hundreds and hundreds of great songwriters. Referenced in this song are Paul Simon, Ray Davies, Ron Sexsmith, Andy Partridge, John, Paul, George (sorry Ringo), Joni Mitchell, Hoagy Carmichael and others. Not mentioned in the song but very much admired are Mark Nevin, Justin Hayward, Sonny Condell, Brian Wilson, Jimmy Webb and on and on and on…fabulously gifted souls. Thank you all for inspiring me to have a go myself.