How to Be a Substack Musician...?

A prog-rocky singer-songwriter from Belfast takes the plunge

‘Roses ’

Artwork by Me

Well, I was always going to do it at some point wasn’t I?

Just last night, after wrapping up a lengthy essay on ‘changing the world’ and musing about what my next topic might be, I cast an ear over a few musical ditties I had composed over the past year. Needless to say I had something of a revelation. You see to be a musician¹ in the current era, much the same as trying to be a writer, can represent something of a Sisyphean struggle. I have long since made my peace with this, but I decided that rather than simply let my musical output languish on Bandcamp and Spotify, and hope that some wandering soul may stumble across it, I would delve more deeply into the world of possibility that Substack seems to have opened up.

I’m not quite sure how I’ll go about this, but to begin with I’ve decided to intersperse my written output with a few tracks now and then, and thus work through my ‘back-catalogue’. God knows, it’ll give me a good excuse to finish a lot of the material that’s currently under ‘creative quarantine’, and if it should fall on the ears of even a few souls willing to listen, so much the better. If things pick up steam I’ll start uploading some ‘warts and all’ content of composing and recording etc.

My recent music falls broadly under three categories; ‘upbeat prog-tinged pop/rock’, ‘mellow folky acoustic songs’ and ‘ambient instrumental guitar-scapes’. It’s a mixed bag, but hopefully you’ll find something that tickles your fancy. The song embedded above, Roses, is from my debut solo album, We Don’t Live Here, and represents the second ‘category’. Below are some deep cuts of the other two, and a couple of links should you desire them.

Thanks for reading and listening, do subscribe if you’d be so kind, all my content is currently completely free, but if you like what you hear there’s always the option to throw me a few quid on Bandcamp. Let’s see where this goes!

God Bless

WL

‘The Strings Will’

‘Through The Window’

1. not least one who’s ‘terminally unhip’ to quote Geddy Lee