Daniel Lee Kendall
Almost without me realising, my song writing and musical paradigm had shifted. I was thinking more about how many people could like me, or how many songs I could sell – commercial success basically. It stagnated me and suffocated me. Songs that I would have liked to have released three to four years ago were left sitting on my computer because I wasn’t sure if they would be “successful” or not. It ended up stifling my soul so much that I actually resented being on stage at times. I needed to change something, because what was happening wasn’t working. I was dying on the inside. So I packed my bags and travelled to the Middle East and Sri Lanka, and even had a Motorcycle accident where I dislocated and fractured my right shoulder and lost all movement in my right hand. None of these things worked.
I booked myself into University. I needed to forget about music. I knew it was in me, but I also knew that it needed to take its right place in my life. I had to fall in love with music again, like I had when I first discovered songwriting. I wanted it to arise organically from within – with no other goal or thought than to create music that I liked myself. Discovering thoughts and ideas that I felt murmuring within me, and bringing them to life.
And so a year of study went by and music was somewhat forgotten, though always threatening to spill back out at any moment. The day I finished my Uni commitments, I felt, without any force of my own, a keen desire to look through the 50+ demos that I had written years ago and take the best of them, bring them back to life, and share them.
Now, there was no heaviness that had previously weighed me down years before: it was lighthearted, fun, and I was enjoying immensely the hard work of rediscovering these songs that I thought I’d missed the opportunity to share.
So here I am with an album of songs that I once loved and have learnt to re-love again. Though it’s a different love. It’s far more like I’m appreciating an old album of an artist in my youth. It’s almost as though someone else has written these songs, and I can appreciate and enjoy what this person has created and I wish to share them with people again.
I hope whoever else discovers them enjoys them as much as me.
DLK. x