Westy

About Westy

http://www.westymusic.co.uk

A recording artist.

Posts by Craig Westwood:

Wry Smile
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What’s behind the… WRY SMILE?

I wrote Wry Smile in 2017, after I’d seen enough of the antics of a certain Donald Trump who was in the White House at the time.

To be honest, I was more than a little concerned as to why he’d been elected in the first place. Then, I saw such a parallel with our own situation in the UK at that time: incompetent right-wing leaders, too guided by lining their own pockets and those of their friends, than that of the welfare of the average person.

That certainly showed itself in the few years that followed. Especially when covid-19 hit the UK shores. Especially when Britain decided to leave the European Union, fueled by propaganda that preyed on racist fears and not looking at the reasons why the EU was set up in the first place: to bring about Peace in Europe.

As Trump began putting the walls up, so Britain retreated from the strength of a united Europe, and used it’s island seaboard as it’s wall. And so both America and Britain became weaker as a result.

I didn’t use names in this song, but it was directed at ALL politicians, that misuse the powers of the positions they’re elected to, and use their office to further their own selfish interests and not those of the people.

And Donald Trump, Wry Smile speaks directly to YOU.

I sincerely hope that the US electorate votes for the Voice of Reason, and not for the self-serving billionaire, you know what I mean?

Good luck, America. The World is watching.

Wry Smile is out NOW. Have a listen, or watch it here

ADDENDUM:

It’s Nov. 26th. Trump has been re-elected. It beggars belief as to why the voting public in America would support such a man, but he’s there, and I’m sure soon enough we’re going to see – again – what kind of a President he is.

For the song Wry Smile, I guess it has another four years of validity. I should be grateful, but I was rather hoping Kamala Harris would be the first Female U.S. President. America clearly isn’t ready to advance that much – yet. 

Yes, Donald Trump can soon enough sit smug and smiling as he wreaks his own brand of havoc from behind the desk in Washington’s Oval Office.

And what’s behind the Wry Smile?

With-the-Sky_slim
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With the Sky

With the Sky was written in 2011, just after I checked out as a pilot. It’s had various tweaks and changes to the lyrics since then, but essentially the tune has remained the same.

I wrote it as a nod to the ballooning community, especially for those people who gave up their time for free and helped me to train to be a pilot. the majority of these belong to the British Balloon and Airship Club (BBAC), and for people in the UK, if you want to get involved with ballooning, then that’s a good place to start in terms of finding people near to you who will help you take part. 

Craig on Balloon Burner

It’s very much a “pay-it-forward” community, in that it’s best to find a balloon team, help out with being part of the chase-crew, whilst you decide whether ballooning as a sport is really for you. Claire and I got involved in ballooning in 2001, and we were crew members for a number of teams until late 2007, when Claire ‘checked out’ as a pilot, and then we bought our first balloon, enabling me to train afterwards.

Essentially then, it took me nearly 4 years to train as a pilot. Partly due to the fact that I was sharing balloon time with Claire, who was still a novice pilot herself.

What I hoped to convey in the song, was life as a balloonist (or is it a “loonist?”). The fact we’re always watching the sky, looking at weather forecasts, checking out the wind speed, looking toward the tops of the trees even, in the sheer hope that the winds will be calm enough for us to fly. A lot of the time, especially when we lived in the UK (and we were up North as well….), those hopes were often dashed by turbulence, fog, and, more often, rain.

Balloon Stack at Chambley,2011

I don’t think that there’s been another song written about ballooning as such since Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” in the 1960s. So, it’s really a modern slant on ballooning, from a pilot’s perspective. There’s no doubt in my mind, and I’ve seen significant changes in the weather since 2001, that the weather patterns are worsening. There are far less calm flyable winds since we began ballooning in the. early noughties. Some of our ballooning colleagues who’ve been flying since the 60s, 70s and 80s have said that those weather changes are even more significant since they began flying even. 

So the “Give me another window in the weather” line in the song is a plea for just the chance to fly, which is becoming more and more the balloonist’s anthem, I think.

With the Sky was released on March 8th.

It’s on Spotify:

You can find the video here:

Only the Good Ones Go First
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Released…!

So… finally, they’re out there!

At least three songs released so far:

Released…!

Only the Good Ones Go First, made sense to me to release it first, despite my initial reservations. Although the root of the song is about loss, it’s bouncy and it’s positive, and it sends a message that – more than anything – the people close to you are the most important. Click the image to view.

Watching the Rain, is a moodier song. It’s about many things: about living in your head; about the struggle to communicate outside of that; about losing someone because of the breakdown of communication and being able to explain your actions. Select the image if you haven’t seen it yet.

Released…!
Released…!

On the Rise, is getting more positive. It’s typical me I suppose, always there’s an aside questioning the good stuff, always; but it’s also projecting the positive above the negative. On the Rise is literally about manifesting a good future in your mind, and if there only was a bit more ‘light’ in everybody, then things would be better…. wouldn’t they? Click the image to see and hear it.

It’s been a lot of work: the videos, the graphics, the ads, contacting playlist curators, radio, media… some bits worked, some didn’t… I had the intention of getting one song released per month. This was too much. I still have a day job as such, so I’ve settled at aiming for one song every two months. If I can get the marketing periphery more streamlined, then I’ll get them out quicker.

I’m surprised as to the response – all of it is positive – and in the most unusual places. Brazil likes it a lot (way to go, Brazil!); then the UK, then France, U.S. and then… Israel, are the top 5 countries. Quite an unusual spread. The numbers are growing track by track – that’s positive I think – and I assume this trend is continuing upward as people get to know who I am, and my music. Huge gratitude to each and every one of you who have played my songs and especially those who have liked them, shared them, and saved them to your playlists.

There’s more to come.

Craig x

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Life, the Universe and Music…

Leading up to the release of my first few songs, I’ve decided to make some informative short documentary videos about the journey so far. Starting with the decision to make a serious effort to improve and get the music ‘out there’ that I made in early 2016. 

Look out for Life, the Universe and Music on YouTube… Episode One is out NOW!

Screenshot 2023-04-27 at 17.13.51
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Making videos…

This Summer of 2022 I’ve been concentrating on filming some videos to go with the songs I’ve recorded, mixed and had mastered.

The first one I’d started with was Whispers of Home, which involved the use of some discreet footage I shot from a train window on my way to King’s Cross in London, actually at the beginning of my trip to Los Angeles, after I’d won the All Guitar Vero Contest.

I decided that I’d look at some creative and cost-effective ways of making my music videos, so I have some very different ideas for all of them, some a little more ambitious than others!

Making videos…

The next video to have a go at has been Only the Good Ones Go First. I’ve had this idea for a long time to have a posterised approach and to make it a lyric video too with cartoon bubble text. As it looks and sounds at the moment, it’s got all the energy I was expecting, and I think it’s going to look great…

Making videos…
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Building a New Studio – Part 2

It’s been a busy few weeks. The first issue with the new space was removing some rotten carpet that was falling apart.

Building a New Studio – Part 2
Building a New Studio – Part 2

On taking this up, I found a tensioning bar for the roof which had pushed its way up through the screed in the floor. Thanks to my friend Steve, we got this sorted pretty quickly, and I could think about what I wanted on the floor. 

Building a New Studio – Part 2

Screeded by Steve – Great job!

Studio – Grade Flooring

Acoustic-grade carpet was my first choice, but finding a fitter who was prepared to come out during covid restrictions was difficult. Firstly – carpets aren’t very popular in France, they prefer tiled flooring, due to the warmer conditions here and the need for cool floors in Summer.

I found an English-speaking carpet fitter about 3 hours away, but his quotation was ridiculously high. He was still trying to get his carpets from the UK. Problems with UK suppliers now they’ve left the EU means there are hold ups at the ports, and a hefty tax is now put on imports. Thank you again Brexit. This will ultimately kill UK exports into Europe.

The lead time he was giving me was also 3 months until he could fit the carpet, which was way too long, and mostly I think due to the supply problems I’d already mentioned.

In the end, I decided to order some acoustic grade carpet tiles from a French supplier online, and opted to fit them myself. This was going to be far quicker. the tiles arrived in a few days, and I could get started.

In the meantime, I’d already removed curtains and fittings and painted the walls.

Building a New Studio – Part 2
Building a New Studio – Part 2
The Mezzanine Studio
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Building a New Studio – Part 1

Buying a house in France that has been vacant for four years has had its issues. Happily most of them are superficial, and involve mostly decorating and some minor refurbishment to get the house to what we we’d like.

The first issue is that I’m here on my own. Problems with Claire’s Dad’s failing health has meant that she has wanted to be with her parents in the UK. Though originally she talked about coming out of teaching by December, she has now decided she wants to stay on for another year and a half until she is 55.

So – I’m working on the things I can… especially the studio. The space I’ve got is interesting, but not everything is practical…

Craig Claire & Sophie
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Moving to France…

The long-suffering nightmare that has been Brexit (often renamed Brex-shit by many) really pushed Claire and I to reconsider our future options, and the decision was, if UK wouldn’t stay in Europe, then we would physically move there instead.

We’ve always loved France. We started visiting for holidays in the late 1990s, and, especially once we became balloonists, kept wanting to go back, and often wondered what it would be like to live there. We’ve made many friends there, and simply love the countryside, the food, the wine, the lifestyle. If we were going to get out of the rat race and the “grind-the-worker-down” environment that is so typical of the United Kingdom, then it would have to be soon. Brexit just made us decide to go sooner.

We started looking at houses in 2019, rather tentatively at first, with the help of our friends Pete and Alison, who live in France. But in March 2020 we found a lovely house that suited our requirements.

Then, everything went into lockdown.

This made the house buying process a whole lot slower. Firstly, we couldn’t view the house. Once the isolation restrictions were lifted in France, though the borders were still closed, Pete and Alison could go and view the house, and kindly videoed it for us. We loved what we saw, and we bought it subject to being able to view in person as soon as the borders were open again. We eventually went out in August to finalise the deal.

Though we sold our UK house within a week, moving house during a pandemic also posed its problems. We had a few months wait from August until the legals processed, and we completed on the house via video in early December. We had already briefed a removals company and had a date in mind, again amidst rumours of another lockdown imminent. Luckily we were able to move finally on the 18th December. I drove across with Sophie, our dog, and arrived on the 19th to let the removal guys in. Claire came on later with our balloon in tow on the 20th. We’d made it! 

Now all the hard work begins. Music-wise, I have a studio to build. While I originally thought our cellar and garage space would be best for creating a new studio, now I’ve been there a while it’s not the best spot sonically for recordings, as there’s too much pipework and a large boiler in the next room. 

Instead, I’ve chosen a mezzanine space on the first floor, which again needs work, but could be great for recording and even has a space suitable for performance and video-making.

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Thinking On Your Own – Part 2

For a while now I’ve been a (somewhat quiet) member of a community called “Produce Like a Pro“, run by the Los Angeles-based producer Warren Huart. I joined PLAP (as it’s affectionately known) primarily to continue to improve my recording and mixing, and thus end up with a set of quality songs for my first album.

After the upload of my song ‘Thinking On Your Own’ onto YouTube and Facebook, I was contacted by fellow PLAP-er Tim Ellifritz, based out in Johnsburg, NY, who loved the song and asked if we could collaborate and he would produce and release it. Well…. what do you say to that!

Of course, it was “yes!”

In just one day, Tim had a group of guys ready to record and work on the song, and by then, Tim’s selected drummer, Patrick Peeters, in Belgium, had made a guide track from my Youtube video, all set to 162bpm for the rest of the guys to record in their DAWs.

On the 28th March I had my first Zoom meeting call with Tim, and his fellow American Dave Merkel from Billings, MT. We got on really well, and a ‘lockdown project’ was formed. Tim had managed to recruit Dave, then Patrick, and a bass player from the Netherlands, Peter Süoss. We became a band of producers.

This just shows the power of the internet and the fact that you can work with a bunch of guys you’ve never met in person, and come up with something incredible.

P.ii band members meeting - July 2020

Over the lockdown period, each of us went to work on our respective parts: I recorded two acoustic guitar parts for a stereo mix and five vocal tracks – one lead and two-part stereo backing vocals, plus some keyboard vocal ‘ooooohs’; Patrick recorded several tracks of drums; Peter’s track used his fretless bass; Tim provided lead guitar and a rhythm electric track, plus a low vocal; then Dave provided an organ track and some strings also.

We each decided at the outset to film our performances, for the video to follow.

Building the song involved a couple of drafts from each of us, then discussion via Zoom. We shared our tracks on the cloud, and each of us could mix according to taste and add things on top for the band to hear and review. What was most fascinating to me was how different each of our mixes were. Here we had five different versions of the same song.

Thinking On Your Own – Part 2

By July we had the song finished. We decided that we’d ask another PLAP-er, Sara Carter, to do the final mix from our tracks. Sara had years of prior experience with the BBC, and had recently started her own mixing business ‘Music Mix Pro‘, and the result was amazing.

Release date was July 31st. We spent a great deal of time building up to the release, with the creation of a Facebook group, and a number of promo ‘reminders’ that appeared on both Facebook, and our other respective channels elsewhere. I produced a load of graphics and visuals for the release, and the other guys worked on video material too for our new fans. In the 11 day build up to release day, we’d got over 300 followers.

Thinking on Your Own - All band members assembled

We’ve enjoyed the entire process so much, from start to finish, that we are determined to have a go at some more music together. We’ve also started a P.ii video channel with an episode each Friday, called ‘Friday is P.ii-Day’. I’m not sure how long we can sustain this series, but we’re certainly going to give it our best shot.

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Thinking On Your Own – Part 1

March 19th. The UK was going into lockdown with rising cases of Covid-19 being reported. The media frenzy at the time was on how people were panic-buying in the shops, with various photos and video footage of people stockpiling shopping trolleys full of toilet roll, pasta, bread, milk and other groceries, and in doing so, depriving the most vulnerable in our society. 

I was angry at what I saw, and I felt I had to write a song about it. Sure, people were scared, none of us really knew how Covid was going to affect or change our lives. But, depriving others at a time of real need, was selfish and unnecessary. Global crises really show us how base and primitive the human race can still be.

It didn’t really matter to me that the song was probably just going to be labelled as ‘another from the glut of songs written in lockdown’; it was heartfelt, and I felt strongly about its message. I wanted to get across that, in isolation, we are still able to think of others and should be concentrating on them, not thinking on our own. It was asking people to consider: “Who else can I help?”

If, in listening to this song, it makes one person think again, and decide not to act selfishly, giving the more vulnerable person a chance – just for once – then it will have done it’s job.

I posted it on Facebook. I wasn’t sure what to expect really, but I asked people to like and share, and a few people did. Thank you to those who did, because what happened next was a complete surprise.

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