It’s been another quiet few weeks on the website which I apologise for – over 2 months without an update!
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in the US, and I’m writing this update in the luxurious surroundings of Bay Lake Tower at Walt Disney World.
I will dedicate an entire post to this at a later date but the only news I have to confirm about a forthcoming release at present is the autobiography of Clayton Blackmore, ‘Red White and Blackmore’, which is released in November. I will share ordering information soon.
So to the reason for this update. It isn’t really news but it is something really cool, as far as I think anyway.
Back when I started writing Peach as a book, I became consumed with a fair few things that I felt were important to me for the story to be as immersive as I hope it will be when published. One of those things was the idea of a soundtrack, and thankfully, with the assistance of the magnificent Charlie Baker, that idea got a green light.
I worked with Charlie on his autobiography and it was thanks in part to working with him that I was inspired to write Peach. It was also thanks in part to time I’d spent talking with Pete Yorn; I was very fortunate to have the time to do so over a few months and both Pete and Charlie provided me with a new perspective on life and the creative inspiration to try and document those ideas.
I asked Pete if it would be possible to use some of his song lyrics to serve as an introduction for the book and he said yes. (Back when I didn’t have a title for Peach, I had considered giving it the working title of ‘The Chase’ because Pete wrote a song of that name with themes which fit very well with the idea of Peach.)
I was thrilled about that, but then, he released a new record ‘Arranging Time’ where he wrote some incredible lyrics, in particular, the song ‘I’m Not The One’. I knew that those lyrics would have to be the ones that opened Peach and so I asked Pete again and again he was glad to say it was okay.
This past weekend, I went to see Pete play the last show of his tour in Atlanta, Georgia. Aside from the ultimate thrill of him giving me a bit of a shout out when he played his song ‘Old Boy’, I took the opportunity to ask him if he would mind handwriting the lyrics for Peach on a poster, so that I could have his actual handwriting of them feature at the front of the book. He was more than accommodating again and I’m thrilled to share the poster with you here.
The lyrics “In this world are we just strangers / When we fail to make a connection” really do relate to Peach and in fourteen words they express much more succinctly one of the strands of the story that I’ve written in approximately 100,000 more words.
Pete is my all-time musical idol. I became enamoured with his work after his first two records, musicforthemorningafter and Day I Forgot, going back almost fifteen years, and I know how much his music means to hundreds of thousands of people, because of how much it means to me. To have Pete’s support and backing is just an incredible thing and I still can barely believe it. His songwriting ability and his way of expressing himself through is a gift and to be able to feature some of the words which connect most to me and my own art is not only a personal thing that I treasure already but also it’s a pretty cool story and addition to the book, when it finally makes its way out into the world.
Here is a video of Pete performing the song “I’m Not The One”.
