Some excitement

This is one of the rare occasions when I blog about something other than gardening, because one of my tracks got played on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone on BBC 6 Music yesterday, and I'm very excited. It may not mean much to you if you're outside the UK, but Stuart Maconie is a very well known presenter and it's a big achievement for a small independent artist like me to get onto his show. I've been played on regional BBC radio before but this is my first time on a major national station.

What made it even better was that the Freak Zone is one of the few radio shows I listen to, so I actually heard it come on. I had a few confused moments of "hang on, I know that song ..." and then I had to stick my head against the radio to convince myself that really was where the sound was coming from.

The track he played was from a new batch of songs which I've been working on with a collaborator, Dick Langford, who plays guitar for me, writes with me and does complicated arrangements and production way beyond my capabilities. On the surface of it we're a bit of an unlikely pairing, given that I've built my credentials as an ethereal English folksinger and he's a rock god. But somehow we really inspire each other and the songs have been flowing. Including some weird and wonderful hybrids from our cross-pollinated musical backgrounds. We've done everything from ukulele-driven cockney comedy numbers to full-on psychedelic freakouts. It's a wonderful experience to have the opportunities to explore all this different music.