Do you ever bite off more than you can chew? Do you ever take on tasks that you just know you’re unlikely to complete? Yeah, me too.

So like every year since 2008, I’m taking on a challenge that I have yet to successfully complete. I’m trying February Album Writing Month.

What’s that?

It’s a songwriting challenge (and a very friendly online community) where you try to write 14 brand new songs in the month of February. Or, as it’s a leap year this year, 14 and a half.

Lots of my songs have been written for this challenge in previous years. Wizards of this Town, Some of the Creatures, Happy People, Flow My Tears, more than half of my released songs began life during this challenge.

This year I’m also recording videos for each song – just live ‘in the studio’ run-throughs. The guitar and vocals are live, drums and bass pre-recorded.

I’ve got seven songs so far. Of course, they’re all just rough versions, but I think there are some pretty strong contenders. Favorites are probably Even Here, Rats and Keep it Close.

You can hear them all in these two blog posts:
FAWM part 1
FAWM part 2

I feel like I’ve started strong and I’m pretty much halfway there, so I think there’s a good chance I’ll get to 14.

I hope you like the new songs. Let me know what your favorites are as at least some of them are going to be properly finished and end up on ‘proper’ releases in the near future. Hopefully. Probably.

Thanks for listening!

Tom Slatter

PS. It’s my tenth year as a solo artist. I have a ’10 of the best’ playlist up on Spotify. Here’s a link if you want to hear it.

PPS. It’s getting close to spring when I do the next subscribers only CD and ‘Indoctrination Kit’. You can learn more about that here.