Imposter Syndrome Promotion Video
John shares his thoughts song by song on his new solo album.
“The album was written and recorded over a period of three years at my home studio as well as Colin McKays Achilles studio. The songs are all written by myself apart from Ghost Dancers which my good friend David Jones contributed lyrics to.”
Pulling Threads
I had the basic chorus idea for a while and I just sang some words over the chords. What came out was the phrase “Pulling Threads”, so I thought about what that could be about.
It seemed a perfect analogy for a break up, so drawing on past experience I made the song about that subject. The intro and verse came soon afterwards and then I was a little stuck for a middle eight. Colin wisely suggested I stop the song and go in a completely different direction. I wanted to have a drum machine in that section so we worked with that.
The bridge and keyboard solo was something that could take the middle eight back to the verse. When it was finished, we went back and redid the intro. I originally had a keyboard motif on its own, but we tried almost a “Steve Howe” guitar passage over it and it worked out great.
The King Of Yesterday
This was actually the very first song I wrote for the album. I saw a post on Facebook advertising an eighties weekend festival and right at the bottom was a chap called Owen Paul. He had a hit with a song called My Favourite Waste Of Time and I wondered what the hell he was going to sing for the other tweny five minutes he would be on stage. That got me thinking about what it must be like to be in that position. Perhaps having one or two hits back then and dealing with the aftermath, and making a living to boot.
The intro was originally all guitar but we tried it with a piano coming in and I really liked it. The guitar solo is Colin’s favourite on the album. I was going for Nik Kershaw meets Brian May…
I remember when we finished it thinking, “Oh my word, I’ve just written my first ever good song!”
Exodus
Ah, my “throw some bits together and see what happens” song… So, the first part of the song was written on keyboards. I had a gorgeous Mellotron sound and started playing some simple chords. It suggested a sense of dispair, so I wondered what the song could be about. I didn’t want to make it about a lost love or anything so I started thinking along the lines of a lost world. I parked that section for a while as I knew it couldn’t be a song on it’s own.
I wrote the second section (it was called Driving when I wrote it) which was going to be a song on it’s own, but I had the idea to link the two sections together. The question was how? I decided to fade the first section out and start with a drum pattern, which ended up being almost a drum solo.
The third section was a piece of music I wrote on the guitar when I was around 20 years old, but never did anything with. I love Genesis, and that is probably the closest I will get to sounding a little like them.
The final section was written in the studio as we needed an end section. Colin did a brilliant keyboard solo at the end of this.
Lyrically, I wanted to describe a race of beings who have made such a mess of their planet that they had to search for a new one. There is a twist in the tail at the end like all good sci-fi stories.
Imposter Syndrome
The title song of the album… Well I may seem like a confident person on the outside but inside is a different story. If you ever see me perfom live with Mama, or indeed Ellesmere, you probably won’t believe that. I’m terrified on stage. I get to work with some unbelieveable musicians and artists and all the time I’m thinking, “Why on earth do they want me?” I have become aware that an awful lot of people suffer with this issue and it surprised me when I wrote the song, just how many people said they did.
Like all of the songs, this was written on my trusty old acoustic guitar and I really liked the chord sequence.
Instrument wise, Colin suggested a mandolin on the bridge section going into the chorus, which works really well for me. The middle eight is an attempt at portraying the fear I feel inside so I wanted an ominous sequence. This is the most personal song on the album for me and I’m very proud of it.
Ghost Dancers
This was originally written for the Moonshot project I was involved in back in 2019 / 2020. Tim Bowness, who’s songs we were covering wanted an original song, “sounding like it was from the 1960’s.” I wrote the chords and the melody for the song and my co-conspirator on that album, David Jones, wrote the amazing lyrics.
The song was just verse, chorus and a middle eight which comprised a flute solo. When the Moonshot album was completed, there wasn’t enough room for the song on the album so it was shelved. I loved the song and asked David if I could use it for this album. I wrote another couple of sections for the song and it ended up sounding like something Steve Hackett would have put out in the 70’s. So I deliberately did a Hackett type guitar solo at the end.
I’ll Be There
I have a disabled daughter Emily, who loves music. She loves to sing songs when I pick up my acoustic guitar and sometimes she makes her own tune and words up. I was sat with her one day playing a few chords and she sang the melody to the first line. I grabbed my phone and straight away recorded it, me singing over the chords. Within fifteen minutes I had the song written. It came from nowhere and I knew I just wanted guitar and voice.
Almost a James Taylor vibe, when I played it to Colin he suggested at once, a “Yesterday” type treatment by adding strings. I was a little dubious at first but after hearing the finished result, I couldn’t be more happy with it. The keyboard solo in the middle was originally going to be a flute solo, but we had already done that on Ghost Dancers, so we picked a kind of seventies synth sound and it worked great.
The Big Conspiracy
In these times of alternative facts and fake news, it occured to me that some people want to believe in outlandish stories that offer a certain viewpoint on our world. It seems to me that the reason for this is that they want to feel special and in the know. I wanted to explore this a little so I started scribbling down lyrics and ideas.
Normally the music comes first with me but this song developed from those scribbles. Musically I wanted a driving, almost angry theme. So after bashing out some chords, I soon had the verses and chorus done. The call and response in the chorus came after the main vocal and suggests a group of people rather than one voice. The middle eight was just a guitar riff I had that we expanded on, going into another great keyboard solo.
In the end, I’m not saying I have the answers, but as one of my favourite content creators on Instagram says… “Google competently, think critically!”
Stranded
This was written in the car coming home from a Mama weekend where we played two nights in beautiful Kinross, in Bonnie Scotland. I had the chorus in my head so the first chance I got to pull in at a servcie station on the long drive home I dug out my phone and sang it into it. Most of my songs tend to be written like this by the way. Me singing in the car and grabbing my phone as soon as safe to do so.
I had the word “Stranded” and some nonsense words after it so it was fairly clear what the song was to be about. The verse and chorus came easily, but I knew I wanted to expand the song more, so many hours were spent trying to generate more sections. After a while the middle section came to fruition and I had to transpose the final chorus up a tone in order to make it fit.
The violent end section was an attempt to convey the protagonist losing his mind after so long spent in solitude. I call it my “Black Sabbath” bit.
So there you have it. I really hope you enjoy the album. It took an awful long time and a lot of work by Colin and myself to bring it to you. Thanks for listening!
John