I began playing guitar at the age of eleven and by the age of fifteen had formed a band with my friends. We played covers of rock and metal songs and put on a couple of gigs around schools in the Bristol area. For our age we were pretty good playing songs like Master of Puppets by Metallica and Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. After getting in a new singer we started writing our own music under the name of Ad-Nauseum.

Me and the guitarist wrote all the music and together we toured the South West. We played countless gigs, some on big stages to huge crowds, some out the back of grimey pubs to no one but the sound engineer. After another line-up change and under the name of Vespertine we tried to break into London playing gigs around Camden.

We never really got the momentum up in London and for a number of reasons we decided to call it a day.

I started singing from a young age and was in a number of choirs often taking the lead vocals. For some reason when I hit 15/16 I completely lost confidence in my voice and stopped singing. During the years of Ad-Nauseum and Vespertine I was always writing acoustic guitar parts, I recorded everything I had but never managed to put them into songs.

After living in Bristol all of my life I moved to London with a new job at the age of 23. Whilst in London I suffered from health issues which meant I was put on a very high dosage of steroids for a prolonged amount of time. Steroids are very effective drugs but they don’t half make your head run fast. If you’ve ever met me you would know that I am already quite a “whizzy” person so this was a step to far.

After 6 months on the steroids I was signed off work and didn’t go back for four months. The steroids had left me unable to think properly and really messed with my head.

After being on and off the steroids for over a year they eventually put in hospital for a month with much of this in solitary as I picked up a nasty bug. I was pretty ill during that time but one of the things that helped me stay sane was the fact they let me bring in my acoustic guitar and a little microphone I had recently bought. I set about recording every single thing I was working on and was amazed to see that I had over forty incomplete acoustic songs.

This time in hospital was a real eye opener as it forced me to sit still for once and take stock of what I was doing. I realised in a number of different areas I was running around like a headless chicken never really completing anything that I started. After a lot of thinking I decided I would take a new approach and try to live by the motto ‘build a life you can look back on with pride’. I know that sounds like something out of a cheesy Hollywood teen movie but hey, if it helps to keep me focussed then I’ll bloody take it :).

When I got out of hospital I was determined to push my acoustic work so I bought a vocal mic and started experimenting. After a lot of trial and even more error I started to find my voice. I bought a shed load of new instruments including a twelve string, cello, trumpet and midi keyboard and started trying to turn my ideas into actual songs complete with lyrics. This process was harder than I thought so I decided to look for help. I still hadn’t told any of my friends that I was writing my own music so I couldn’t go to them. This is where mylittleheadspace came from.

I made this website to host all of my demos and provide a space for people to comment on what they heard. I went around all the musician forums I could find on the internet and asked people to help. The response was amazing with people helping me with everything from lyrics, song construction and recording techniques. I ran this website for about four months after which I felt I had enough to put together an album.

I realised that it was going to take me months to write and record the album during evenings and weekends so I booked five weeks off work and headed to Brecon.

I rented a little stone cottage in the middle of the Brecon Beacons and drove there with a car full of instruments, my laptop and a couple of mics. Although I was amongst some of the most stunning scenery in Britain, I barely left the cottage clocking up on average fifteen hours straight a day. This was a huge experience for me. I taught myself the tools of the trade from a sound engineering perspective and used the advice generated from this website to record my first album “A Constant Work in Progress”. I put the album on line for free download and finally told my friends what I had been up to. Everyone was massively supportive although the vocal performance wasn’t brilliant.

I started playing live gigs by turning up to a little open mic night in Bath on Thursday nights. I remember the very first time I ever sang my music in public. I didn’t know anyone there and was so scared it was untrue. The set was pretty poor and my pedals packed up halfway through but I loved every second of it. After a few more open mic nights my confidence grew so I started booking proper gigs. The rest as they say, is history.