Page 93 - ION Indie Magazine JulyAugust 2018 Issue

I spoke to Clatch to get the lowdown on what's going on with this prolific one-man stompin',
hollerin' blues machine:

What originally prompted your decision to go solo?

I’d been playing guitar in heavy rock bands for years, from being 13, in fact. I always loved being
in a band, but I loved writing acoustic songs and recording them for my own amusement too.
I’d give copies of CDs to friends then do nothing with the songs, even though they kept telling
me to sort a gig out. Then in 2010, a promoter friend pressured me into doing a solo gig at a
local pub. I put a few songs together, did the gig, didn’t hate doing it and decided to see how far
I could take the solo thing. I continued to play with Battalions until mid-2013, when I got too
busy with the solo stuff to continue doing both. That was when I made the tough decision to
leave the band and go it alone, but the band had always been totally separate to my acoustic
output, so no toes were trodden on.

I've got to be honest, I've lost track. How many albums have you released to date?

There's been ten full-length albums of original music and an EP or two. Then there’s loads of EPs
and albums of cover songs that I put out on my Bandcamp page as free downloads too. I officially
released my debut album “Who Needs Shelter” in 2012, but I’d done quite a lot of demos before
that. So yeah, ten albums in six years – I really like writing songs, I guess.

Are all these albums still available?

“Who Needs Shelter” is still available digitally from iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and my Bandcamp
site. The store link on my website redirects straight to Bandcamp. It’s long been sold-out on CD
and I’ve no plans on reissuing that. Same goes for “A Road Less Travelled” and “The Blues
Continuum” -- they are all available digitally though. Every “proper” album I’ve released is still
available, only the more recent ones are on CD.

That's quite a healthy output you have there. Do you ever get writer's block or do the ideas
just keep coming?

I haven’t run out of ideas for songs yet, and once the idea’s there, it’s usually relatively easy to
write the song. Sometimes I get stuck for verses. I’ll maybe write two great ones and a chorus,
then struggle to come up with anything else. When that happens, I usually leave the song a
while and wait for inspiration to strike, which usually does the trick. At the moment, I’m working
on songs for projects that probably won’t see the light of day for a couple of years. I’m way
ahead of myself. It helps that I decided to work more on albums with a story or concept rather
just individual songs. That gives my imagination a chance to run rampant which opens up lots
of compositional opportunities.