Tracks from "Tim Ambler"

(Click a track for full lyrics)

This was written in the middle of the night back in my university days. I can’t remember what I’d been up to that night, but it must have taken me to another planet!

This is about taking that leap of faith to follow what your instinct is telling you to do. I wrote it around the time I left the legal profession to go into music full time, so the song is really me advising myself.

Written around Vince Edwards’ piano in Barnes, South West London. We put a melody of mine and a melody of Vinnie’s together and worked out the lyrics together.

I was living (no kidding!) in a converted dog kennel near Gatwick Airport in 1989. I was working on another song when this just suddenly leapt out at me. The story is based on something that happened to a close pal of mine, who thankfully recovered. It took a while to fine tune the lyrics, but the melody came in one piece in a matter of minutes.

Based on a conversation Padraic O’Beirn had with a taxi driver one night. The driver believed the tragedy of losing his daughter at age 7 was the work of karma punishing him for his wrongdoings. Padraic gave me the lyric and I wrote the tune.

A cozy winter love song written with Celine Carroll at the IMRO Songwriting Workshop, November 1998. I’d had the melody for ages but got stuck with it and Celine helped me complete it.

This is so long ago I can hardly remember. I think I was 17 and I’d found this riff on the guitar and the song just came from there.

Written at the piano in my living room in Dublin. Semi-autobiographical – the pain of failed relationships etc. There is a positive twist at the end though.

The basic riff and melody came from my oldest friend Colin Barlow. It was around the time of the Kosovo conflict, people fleeing in fear from their burning homes. The lyrics came to me while out walking on Sandymount Strand.

Not so sure there’s a positive twist here! I found this strange eastern-type riff on the piano but couldn’t finish it off. I took it to Aengus Devine and he developed the song with me.

The tune was written on guitar in a flat in Rathmines, but for months and months I couldn’t find lyrics for it. I gave the tune to Padraic O’Beirn and together we finally formulated the words.

Constantia Instrumental #1

This tune popped into my head while walking round Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. The colours were amazing and I hummed the melody into a Dictaphone.