This project was spawned during many visits to Italy over the last 10 years. It came together over a period of time and I started writing tunes that I thought would fit in this harmony-less trio format that also played to the strengths of the three of us. I love harmony so, when writing tunes for the band I tried to write tunes where I could play harmony behind the melody. As much as possible anyway. I’d never had to do that before and it sent me off in different directions to ones I’ve been to lately. Also, technically, some of it was new territory for me.

A lot of vibists start young, have many youthful years where it’s all about learning technique. Then they go to college and have another 4 years to refine those skills even more. My life and career have taken a different route. I had a full time job when I first started playing vibes aged 24. It was only when I left the job & around my 26th birthday when I started to use 4 mallets. That was the time when I started practising more intensely. Although my time was limited as I had a young baby, no money and a part time job. Two years later (after cramming in as much basic practice as possible as well as learning about music theory from scratch) I managed to scrape the money together for a car & 3 days later did my first gig. Since then I’ve had so much practising to do for the specific gigs that I was doing (so I could make a living) that I’ve only had a limited amount of time to work on music and technique that wasn’t directly related to the gigs I was doing. I missed out on a lot.

It just goes to show that as you get older it’s still possible to learn new things and also see music from a slightly different angle!