July’s choice of song to introduce is Cinders.
It’s the song from the album that goes back the furthest, as I came up with the initial idea in early 2020, just before Covid-19 and lockdown arrived. At that time I was starting to record my second Jaggy Nettles album of songs based on children’s fairy tales, so I started on a lyric telling the story of Cinderella.
However, the music felt more like the kind of song I could imagine playing in The Felt Tips and, possibly as a result, the initial lyrics didn’t so much tell the story of Cinderella as draw on certain elements of the fairytale.
Although I wasn’t sure what kind of song I had, I started to have a go at recording it as a possible track for the (Jaggy Nettles) album. The recording didn’t quite have the rhythm and sound I wanted it to, so I abandoned the idea – besides, I already had enough songs for an album.
In 2022, I reworked the lyrics into what is now ‘Cinders’, joining together the theme of Cinderella with that of climate catastrophe. The experience of lockdown influenced the curfew element in the lyrics too.
Continuing the link with stories, a recent review of Virtual Virgins described the storytelling in my songs as ‘long-winded’. It’s a really good write-up of the album, and I agree with the description in the sense that the songs don’t have simple and repetitive lyrics about the usual subjects. Maybe that won’t help in terms of getting my music played more widely, but I’m doing what I love and won’t be changing any time soon.
If you want to hear my Jaggy Nettles material see this bandcamp page. Doing songs for children was a nice way to integrate being a dad of two small boys with creating music. The boys were involved in a lot of it, from suggesting which fairy stories to write about to starring in my videos. The best bit of all was singing their bedtime songs.
Making those albums taught me a lot about arranging, recording and mixing (mind you, I’m still learning) and it’s thanks to Jaggy Nettles that I’m in a position where I can now produce my own records from start to finish. I may still return to fairytales at some point.