Acerca de

About the song...

I wrote this song back in 2018 with Ben (Jonesy) Jones, while in Nashville.
The night prior to the songwriting session with Jonesy, I was in a bar downtown and ordered a (FatBottom) beer. It was a good looking beer but came in a schooner (2/3) sized glass. So my first question was ‘does this come in pints..?’. The reply from the bar maid in her smooth southern accent came back; ‘no way, that’s a high gravity beer…!' I’d never heard the term ‘high gravity’, but have later learned it’s an Americanism and just means a high alcohol content ABV 6%. After a few more scoops of the high gravity I woke up the next morning with a rough head, struggling to get out of bed thinking... 'this high gravity is holding me down...' And ping. The lightbulb lit up!
I took the idea to Jonesy, he loved it and a few of hours (and strong coffees) later in the writing room of Fort Houston, the song was born! I was keen to have the song sold to an upcoming country star on the Nashville circuit, but it turns out, it’s hard to flog a song in music city, they already have a lot to chose from… So, fast forward four plus years and I’ve finally got around to recording it myself. It’s a fun number to play live and brings back some good memories. The talent of photographer Jonathan Davies brought my quirky artwork idea to life (with a lot of fishing wire and photoshop). I hope you enjoy listening to High Gravity as much as I enjoyed writing and recording it. Share it with your friends and family, kick back and put it on repeat...
a good companion with a high gravity beer!


Value For Value : Fan - to - Artist exchange

Pretty much all artists have capitulated to the idea that their music will be listened to for free… with streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, as great as they are as a consumer of music, it leaves the artist with little or no revenue for producing it (unless you’re clocking up millions of streams with the likes of Ed Sheeran and Adele). This is putting independent artists like myself in a strange situation and forcing us to rethink our business models… Live gigs and physical merchandise are the main income streams you’re left with, but gigs haven’t been the same since lockdowns and CDs are becoming less and less relevant… With this release I’m experimenting with a new concept I recently came across called ‘value for value’, a term coined by Adam Curry, which is the idea that most people who listen to your music will be reluctant to pay if they have the ability to access it for free, but a small percentage of people will. To take the metaphor of a busker on a street corner, if the occasional passing person doesn’t throw some money in the hat, the music will stop… I think people realise that and will support you if they get value from your music. The capabilities of digital opens up this proverbial, physical street corner into a global, digital stage and small amounts from individuals, in aggregate, could add up to a meaningful, material amount (especially when compared to the current streaming models). Micropayments and fan - to - artist value exchange is the solution to this problem in my opinion. If there was an easy way to send a small tip (pennies or even a fraction of a penny) from a fan to an artist without anyone in the middle of the exchange taking a cut, it would both enhance the relationship of the artist and their fans and also support the artist financially. For instance, for every 1,000,000 streams on Spotify the artist sees approximately £1000. You could make that with a fraction of those listeners tipping a one off payment of a few pennies… Micro transactions can’t really be done with the legacy payments infrastructure of credit cards and PayPal and it is clumsy and cumbersome to send such small value transactions. However, this is about to change with the introduction of the Strike app soon to be released in the UK. It will be as easy as downloading the app, entering your bank details and you can start scanning QR codes for payments with no lower limit! It is currently live in the US, so American friends you can do this right now! In the meantime for the rest of the world, if you have been intrigued enough to venture into the realm of bitcoin and lightning, you can tip me here any amount with lightning.