Introduction: Through this article, I hope to examine, and draw attention to, my influences and motives as a songwriter and travelling musician, through the 18 years I spent performing with The Whisky Priests, the group I founded with my twin brother Glenn, at the age of 182 to the various acoustic and solo projects in which I have been involved in more recent years.

Although I have spent the last two years living in the small rural village of Paxton in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders region, my heart and roots are still very much in the once heavily industrial area of County Durham in the North East of England, where I was born and raised and lived for most of my life. …