After my partner died of this terrible tumour called an ACC (Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma) in 2019, I was lost and didn't know what to do with myself, how to vent my anger, frustration and grief. As I have so often done before, I turned to music and penned a song. As with most of the other songs I have ever written (and that's a fair few), as well as photos I have taken, stories and books I have written and pictures I have painted, it ended up being left in a space to turn to dust. In the case of this song however, this frustrated me no end. I didn't want her memory to just lie in the corner and disappear.
I vowed to get the song recorded somehow and at least try to do something with it for her, or in her name, and for a worthy cause.
I needed a studio and musicians who would work for free and offer me their time. I put adverts out and reached out to people, admittedly rather halfheartedly. I wrote to organisations to ask about raising funds for them an if they could help me or advise me. I got no reply.
In frustration, I decided I would do it myself. I got myself a music program, an audio interface form Focusrite and set about recording the demo, which is still online on my Youtube channel and on the website. I decided to play all the instruments myself.
Ok, this wasn't a big deal. It's not like I had absolutely no clue about music. I've been playing and singing live with my guitar alone, and with a partner, for years. But doing the whole lot myself with no great help was both daunting and liberating.
So, the demo went out on Youtube with a chucked together video and people liked it.
I knew what I wanted from the video and I kept the essential idea when I came to do the new video. I wanted it to be a tribute to Trish and I wanted it to show my love for her and her effervescence. That's what the video ended up as and that's the way it is in the "new" version.
Having now played around a bit with the Focusrite and the program, I became aware that there were other projects, I had always wanted to do, that I now had the possibility of realising.
I had always wanted to do an album of (sort of ) psychedelia inspired songs. So, I set about doing that and spent every minute I could recording. I already had the songs from years ago. This idea had been brewing for years and years. It was only now able to become reality.
There were a few songs too that didn't really fit to that project, but that I quite liked and didn't really know what to do with. So, I just recorded them for the hell of it.
My lovely daughter, Naomi, who I had spent years trying to get to play an instrument, eventually came to me and said she wanted to learn guitar. So, I taught her the basics and she went off to do the rest, She would, like me, sing for herself, learn songs and so on. She started bringing songs around and we would play some together and had a handful that we wanted to go and and gig with. But then Corona came and gigging was no longer an option.
One day, she was telling me about a guy who asked her her name. She told him it was Naomi Adjuna Stevens. He replied, it sounded like a magic spell.
I thought this was hilarious and it eventually drove me to write the song "Magic Spell (the girl with the name like a), which is on the music page and on Youtube.
I decided the song needed a video something I had never done before, and so we set about doing a video to go along with it. Baring in mind all of this was just for fun and I had no idea what I was doing or how to do it.
That video was fun to do.
We enjoyed it so much, that I thought I should try and write other songs that we can do the same with. this is how the idea StevenStevens came about.
Now we write a song. The style doesn't matter. There is no one set style. It is whatever is interesting or fun at the time, and then we go and shoot a video for it.
The last one was the song Rising, which just appeared one night out of the blue. the video is sort of dark and gothic. It is not quite the original idea, but I was not able to do that, so had to settle for something less grand. But that isn't our style. As I said, there is no style. The next song is Bittersweet, which is more of an electro-pop number.
The next one might be acoustic or rock or a ballad or whatever. I don't want it to have a style. I want it to be free to be able to be whatever it chooses to be. I hope i constantly changes and evolves. If it doesn't it is dead.
That's where I am at now musically. Trying to get the video for Trish out there and get support for cancer trusts and research organisations. At the same time trying to get other songs finished so that Naomi and I can make, what I hope others will find to be, fun and entertaining videos to good songs.
I eventually go around to making a half decent website with interesting stuff on, which I hope, just gets better and better. There are lots of things I would like to do and everything is so time consuming. Making a song and video takes ages. Just writing this blog takes time.
There are designs to be made in to prints that I would like to do. Pictures to turn in to wonderful prints, portrait and illustration work I would like to do and, at this moment, I am editing The Devil's Workshop a book to be released on Amazon along with Heaven on Earth which is already out.
I have another book also on the go which needs to be finished.
ad hoc ad loc and quid pro quo- so little time, so much to know!
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