THE STORY

CONTINUES…

Well, I’m supposed to be retired; trouble is, I can’t stop writing and recording.

After serving what I consider to be my song-writing apprenticeship with my fabulous former colleagues (Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson), and my long term playing brother Mark Brzezicki, I have spent the last 3 years writing and demoing a bunch of songs, with no specific intention and no plan. My ever increasing family, love of Golf, and my awesome local pub and patrons, gave me a glimpse of a comfortable future, of living an ordinary life.

Anyway, I have just blown that out of the water.

For years, I have been asked why Big Country never did a Christmas song (of which I never had an answer; not sure it was ever seriously discussed as a band), but in the mid-summer of 2023, I decided to have a go. The hardest thing I have ever tried to do artistically. Incensed by the material I had already written, I sweated buckets during that summer in my studio, and finally came out with ‘Christmas Time is Here’.

On Christmas Eve 2023, I plucked up the courage to get my local pub to play the song over their system, so I could gauge the reaction; I was stunned by the response. After a few minor mix adjustments and the addition of real drums played by my son Jakes’ best friend and drummer (Nathan Haynes) with their old band ‘Crowns’, I had what will be released on December 2nd 2024 (download only I’m afraid).

The accompanying track on this single was a demo of a previous Christmas song attempt I did back in 2021. I updated the lyrics, re-recorded it, but felt I needed to have a child like voice to compound the lyric, so I asked the young lady (Ellie Welch) who regularly served me at the local pub, to try recording for me; as far as I was concerned it worked, and I present to you ‘An Orphan’s Christmas Wish’.

Then came the next problem, what to do with the album.

For those who know, I kept my long time manager Ian Grant, not only as manager but life long friend, and occasionally got involved with projects he was involved with; one namely, the ‘Think Loud’ single, of which he is now busy curating the album version for the Parkinson’s Awareness project.

I felt that to engage him in what was originally intended to be a ‘vanity project’ on my behalf, was probably not a reasonable thing to do considering his illness. So I just resigned myself to just stick it out via the Internet and see what happened.

I then had one of those not very nice phone calls from long time friend and BC fan, John King, ringing to inform me that his wife Sarah (a huge Big Country fan and bless her, a TB fan) had passed away after a long term illness.  After a respectful passing of time, we had another call to discuss future stuff, which he had always wanted to do with me. John had been in management, for years in the Manchester scene; and I recently was reminded that he had his initial mentorship in management by Ian Grant no less.

This now brings us up-to-date.

I am current mixing the album, which will be called ‘No Profit in a Peaceful World’, with a view, courtesy of the Crowdfunding aspect, be released around March time.

The Crowdfunding exercise (which I have to say, was encouraged not only by John King, but the fantastic response to my ex-colleague, Stuart Adamson’s daughter Kirsten Adamson’s most recent successful one) will give me the opportunity to get the album to so many more ears; more than I could ever on my own.

Big thanks to John King and Andy Southern, a Social Media wizard John has got on board (he has made my website look incredibly professional).

We’re having a Zoom meeting with a PR firm later too. They concerned will all be from the Manchester area, so from now I will refer to them as ‘The Manchester Effect’.

More later.
TB