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in a relationship and then realising that the guy was actually interested in somebody else, and
it was a fruitless exercise trying to keep it going. So ‘Wish Her Well’ is about giving up
somebody and saying you can have him. I wish you well and it’s quite a traditional swingy,
blues, almost a 12-bar. My band say not everything’s a 12-bar, but it’s almost a 12-bar. Then
out of that, when that was played on the radio in an acoustic form, it gave me the confidence
to write more, and over lockdown, I found voice recorder on my phone and just started
singing into the phone. Singing, singing, singing. Repeating ideas and thinking of stories and

looking out the window and thinking, what does that mean and where’s that person? I ended
up with ten songs and that is the album.

BiTS: You share using the telephone with a lot of other people who I’ve spoken to. Lots of
people have used that as the core of writing a song.

EW: It’s amazing - I read a lot of biogs
about musicians and song writers and
they talk about waking up in the middle
of the night and writing it down. Getting
a piece of paper or the back of the
cigarette packet or whatever, and we’ve
got the luxury of having a phone there,
pressing record and if you can think of
your melody at the same time, diddly
dee, diddly da, or whatever, then you can
play it to an instrumentalist. I don’t play
an instrument. I play the clarinet, which
isn’t great for song writing [laughing].

BiTS: Doug MacLeod, the acoustic artist,
told me that he’s used a mobile phone
for years. He writes all his music using

his cell phone.

EW: Amazing. We’re so lucky.

BiTS: Tell me about the band that you’ve got there. First of all, Mat Hector, who I greatly
admire. He’s a terrific drummer.

EW: He is a terrific drummer and I go to know Mat because we did some gigs in London long
before lockdown, quite a few years ago and we got on really well and more importantly, we
got on on stage. We worked great together and when I was working with Mat as a singer, you
get this certain energy from drummers, and I could feel this great energy and very supportive
energy from Mat Hector. He’s a singer’s drummer because he listens, and he listens to all the
nuances and whatever. We were talking on the phone during lockdown as I think we all talked
to our friends more than ever in lockdown - it’s quite strange. We were chatting away and he
said he’d built a studio and I said I was at this hiatus with these songs and Mat said, let’s give
it a go. Come down. Mat played the drums on the tracks, and as you know, he’s got an
incredible pedigree. He’s worked for Iggy Pop and lots of great people and Mark Neary is also
part of the studio. He is a great bass player. Again a very groovy but sympathetic to the vocal
bass player. He also plays keyboards and did a lot of the production in the recording and then
their friend is a guy called Adam Chetwood, who I haven't met before, who’s such a lovely
man. Quite quiet, but when he plays, it’s like releasing a sort of demon [laughing] because he’s
so great. Yes, he’s one of these guys that is incredibly sweet and quiet and sits there, and then