The Music of Ben Walker
"If Anything…":
A Shortobiography
1: Formation
On 18 September 1968, I was born in Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, London.
On 15 March 1983, I wrote my first song, entitled 'I'm a Banana'. I still perform it.
On 20 June 1985, I left school and got a summer job in a factory, before embarking on a 2-year course in Classical music in Colchester, Essex. It was here I wrote, and ate, 'Vegeburgers', an early classic.
2: The Big Drop
On 9 September 1988, I started a Graduate Diploma course in Jazz and Contemporary Music at Leeds College of Music. A member of staff at the Civic Theatre, which shared a bar with the college, expelled me from the premises for dropping my trousers during a lunchtime performance I was giving. It was here I wrote 'This Boy's Dead' and dropped out of college.
On Good Friday 1990, my collaboration with Daniel Simmons, collectively entitled 'Daylight Dog', resulted in a cassette album called 'Defence Cuts'. This included my most popular song to date, 'Gorgeous'.
On 28 September 1990, I embarked upon a BA Performance Arts course in North London. It was here that 'Deep Sea Diver', a song that was important to a few people I knew, was written.
3: Back - And 4th
On 21 January 1992, I disembarked from an aeroplane in Newark, New Jersey, in order to participate in a student exchange programme. During the summer which separated the two semesters I spent there, I wrote a miniature travelogue song called 'Bus Stop Slowly'.
On 26 February 1995, 18 songs were recorded in an upstairs bedroom at my parents' house in Suffolk. I played them, while Daniel Simmons engineered and produced. This was to be the 4th of the cassette albums, and it came from 'Under a Rhubarb Leaf'.
4: The Last Gulp of Tea
On 29 October 1995, I started writing a song called 'Acoustic Blanket'. This marked the beginning of a writing period that lasted over 14 months and resulted in 3 more cassette albums, 2 of which were home recordings, put together while I was waiting for 'The Novelty Age', this being the 7th, and most distinguished, cassette album.
I call these recordings 'cassette albums' rather than 'demo tapes' because their purpose is not to demonstrate potential. It is to achieve self-expression. In this respect, they are finished articles.
On 29 May 1998, I gave up on the idea of playing other people's music for a living. In my efforts to earn money as a performer, I have participated in a rock covers band, a classical mandolin and guitar duo, a bluegrass mandolin and guitar duo, a jazz and pop keyboard and sax duo, a jazz vocal and piano duo, and I have been a solo piano vocalist. Even the term 'Daylight Dog' has applied to, at one time or another, 4 different memberships, 4 different styles. Now I would prefer to be known as a 'Singer Songwriter', if anything.
Ben Walker
10 June 1998
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