I am delighted to say that I took second place as a winner of Heat 5 in the current YouBloom song contest, so thank you to all that commented, liked and voted for my song Mañana. I now have another track entitled Kingfisher entered in the next heat.
The YouBloom song contest offers some wonderful prizes to the winner of the finals and has an impressive team of judges headed by Bob Geldof. “Sir Bob”, as he is often called, is of course famous for his past role as singer for the Boomtown Rats and for the charity single by Band Aid with the title Do They Know It’s Christmas? Conor McNicholas, who was editor of the NME between 2002 and 2009, is also part of the panel of judges for the contest.
My winning song Mañana is being entered in the Quarter Finals with voting starting on 29 June but before that I have also got my song Kingfisher amongst the entries for the current heat.
Kingfisher started life as an acoustic blues song that I backed with guitar and included a solo using a kazoo. This fitted with the quirkiness of the song. Although it uses a bluesy basis in its structure it is very much a fun song!
The song has always been one of my most popular numbers and has been covered by my singer-songwriter and busker friend Pixie Morgan. I remember hearing him belting out the words to shoppers in Cardiff centre many years back. On another occasion I heard Kingfisher blaring out of a chip shop in the same city. It was being played on Steve Johnson’s show on Red Dragon FM radio.
The new version of Kingfisher was recorded and produced on Tenerife and features my friend Alan the Harp on harmonica and production by Tony “JazzRoc” Duncan, who created the backing track. At the time we were calling ourselves Totem 3 because we used to meet at a restaurant with that name and which had actual totem figures outside it.
Like Mañana, Kingfisher needs your votes to win and I am hoping for a second run of success at YouBloom. Please listen to my song and vote for it here: http://www.youbloom.com/ybsc/entry/2367/
