"One of the finest folk works of the nineties."
Sounds Country, February 2000

  Lily's Bible came into my hands while I was browsing through some old books in a Trent Vale junk shop. It had a "25p" sticker on it. I picked it up and thumbed through the pages. A fancy red and gold label inside the cover told me it had been given to Lily Bradshaw for "Dedicated service to the Salvation Army".
My thoughts drifted back to Peterhead, the town where I was born and spent my early days. I remembered hearing the Salvation Army band playing carols on the corner of Jamaica Street. I would have been about five years old, crunching hard bits of snow with my new Christmas wellies. The big tree in Broad Street looked wonderful and the lights in the shop windows were just magic. The harmonies and lines the band played will never leave me. Cornets, E flat horns and rubber soles on snow is the sound of Christmas.
I gave the bloke his 25p and gave Lily's Bible to Kelly a couple of weeks later.

You feel down hearted and your sick inside,
You lost your woman or she hurt your pride,
You're out of luck, down on you're heels,
You got a feeling that nobody feels,
Hope's all gone and you're fighting for survival
Take a look at Lily's Bible.

You're in a corner and you can't get out,
You're not sure what it's all about,
Your head feels heavy and you're tired of it all,
No one seems to listen to you, when you call,
You never said a word but they're suing for libel,
Take a look at Lily's Bible.

You’re in a fix and there’s no way through,
Somebody's trying to get a message to you.
You’re on your own at the close of the day
The great salvation slipping away,
You don't know where and you don't know when,
It’s time to pick it up and start again,

Lily's Bible, Lily's Bible, Lily's Bible, Lily's Bible, Lily's Bible,
You got to listen to the word.

Now I see it all, I watch it slip away,
Still you're talking to me, I don't know what you say.
Well it's the same old words, from a different heart,
Now I must forget, and make another start,
But it's hard sometimes.

In the darkest night, I will think of you,
And I will be all right, I'll just start anew,
And when I'm feeling down, I'll find another way,
Take another chance, on another day,
But it's hard sometimes.

  A writer I know ran a workshop at the prison not far from where I live. He asked me if I would go along with him one day to talk to the group about songs and song writing. Going through the big gates and all the security stuff was very strange but once we got to the rooms where they met it all felt pretty much the same as it did on the outside. Talking to the prisoners was a real eye-opener. They were long-termers who had been found guilty of the most abhorrent crimes, but for the time I was with them they were just a bunch of guys writing poems and lyrics, each with a truly extraordinary tale to tell. The stuff they read to me was dark, very dark, and endlessly soul-searching. After exactly two hours a bell rang and it was time for us to leave them to it. I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that I could just walk out of the place and go into town for a cup of tea and a quick look around the shops. The people I had spent the morning in conversation with, of course, couldn't do that. I know that's pretty obvious but it's different when the whole thing's right in your face. It made me think long and hard about a whole load of things, especially my own freedom, something I had always taken completely for granted.

Lovers sing of moon in June,
The loner sings a different tune,
The cowboy sings of love and cheating hearts.
The strong man sings of breaking bones,
The weak man sings his song alone,
The poor man sings with hunger in his heart.
The angry sing their song of hate,
The humble sing a song of fate,
The traveller sings a song of being free.
The old man sings of times gone by,
The young man's song's still asking why,
The prisoner sings a song of liberty.

  It was a hot Texas night as the band pulled into town. The sky was jet harris and the stars shone like diamonds. We played pool and drank cold (crap) beer in a bar, then took a stroll under the big yellow moon. All of a sudden we found ourselves surrounded by police - pistols, shotguns and spotlights aimed at us from every direction. They'd heard gun shots on the other side of town - the situation was serious.
"You boys bin doon a lill shootin'?" drawled out the cop with the megaphone, a routine enquiry in that neck of the woods. Nick, our manager, raised his arms in the air and spoke out on behalf of "the act".
"Look here," he said with public school confidence, "You've made a dreadful mistake. You see we're BRITISH, we just don't do that sort of thing!"
The cops laughed out loud as they put their guns down.

It wouldn't do you any harm,
Take a walk at night,
In the moonlight.
Big old moon shining down,
We could walk a while,
Maybe talk a while.

When the stars shine like diamonds over Abilene,
On a fine night, doing all right,
Talking 'bout the way things might have been,
When the stars shine like diamonds,
Over Abilene.

  I went off to Andorra (yeah, to be fair, that place where the lad, to be honest, the 'keeper, threw the ball into the back of his own net a little bit) a couple of years ago on a bit of a working holiday. The guy who let us use his apartment had a great collection of old jazz stuff on CD - Hot Club de France, Sidney Bechet, allez! - so I spent most of the time just listening. He was obviously a gadgets freak and had everything linked to zappers - TV, hi-fi, lights, doors - you name it. The zappers lay around a big chair in the middle of the room with zapper adjustable foot rest and all-over vibrator/massage options. Lying there, in "full body" massage mode, with some vintage swing in the headphones was a total blast. It brought back a lot of fine memories. My dad ran a dance band called The Melody Makers in the forties and early fifties and used to send off for all sorts of records. He introduced me to Django, Stephane, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Earl Bostic and, of course, my all time hero, Gene Krupa. Thanks man! Dad was playing at the Palace Hotel the night I was born, working with a drummer called Gavin, bye the way.
I didn't write Sky So Blue, it just came out.

Underneath a sky so blue,
Where I first set eyes on you,
Too good to be true,
Underneath a sky so blue

But when I woke up in the morning,
You were up and gone.
Maybe I was dreaming,
Well, if I was, the dream must go on.

  I didn't realise how many times I had fallen over in public until a bloke from Liverpool called me the other day. He's working on a book about Liverpool Stadium and was looking for some quotables. The strange thing was, though I'd only been there once, I did have something for him. On the night I played there I fell off the side of the stage. I remember giving a farewell peace sign to the audience and stepping straight into a black hole. Coming out of the stage lights into total darkness, I had missed the steps by about three feet. Only the front row saw that one, so it wasn't too bad. Then there was the big one at the Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City. I was with the Suths and Quiver, opening for Elton John. It was the first time the giant football stadium had been used for a rock show and we were the first band to play there. Someone had heard we were "Scotch" so they put a whole load of Johnny Walker (Black Label) in our dressing room. Obliged to drink it - a matter of "chap abroad" diplomacy - I had an over the top swig at a bottle or two. By the time we got on stage the place was spinning and the heat was starting to get to me. Half way through the first tune I caught my foot on the cable between the Hammond and the Leslie, and bang, I was down. High above the stadium stood a huge screen, designed to show close-ups of ball game highlights and disputed plays but at that moment the cameras were fixed on me. Oh no! I looked up and there I was, about fifty feet long, floundering around the deck like a drunken Jock. The bastards were showing a slow-motion replay! When we finished the tune there was raucous laughter around the whole stadium. It's quite something when eighty thousand people laugh at you. Character building stuff. So I picked myself up, dusted myself down and went into clinical depression.
My greatest falling-over moment came back in the days of the Sutherland Brothers Band when I was publicly electrocuted in Birmingham City Hall. It was there, with a little help from a dodgy plug board, that I treated the audience to a high-voltage backward flip with twist and pike, ending with a spectacular crash landing in the middle of Neil's drums. Bash, clatter, smack, thud. Follow that! I was taken in an ambulance to the accident unit where they treated me for shock, burns on my hands and "voltage exit burns" on my feet. I'd never heard of voltage exit burns before. Education is a wonderful thing. A band called Amazing Blondel were topping the bill, but I think it's safe to say that it was our night. We sold a lot of records in Birmingham that week.
It worked better than the spaceship.

You hang me up and you put me down,
All God's children want to fool around.
And it's a mess I'm in, it's a mess I'm in,
It's a mess I'm in but I don't want to talk about
The mess I'm in.

You cut me out and you told me lies,
Didn't anybody tell you 'bout compromise.
And it's a mess I'm in, it's a mess I'm in,
It's a mess I'm in but I don't want to talk about
The mess I'm in.

Bad old blues in the back of my head,
A hole in my pocket and a rock in my bed.
And it's a mess I'm in, it's a mess I'm in,
It's a mess I'm in but I don't want to talk about
The mess I'm in.