I think I can safely say that this past Christmas and New Year has been the busiest and most productive in my entire working life.

To be fair, I’m used to grafting over the festive period whilst others are sinking into the sofa debating which Quality Street are which and how many variations on a theme you can get out of the remains of the turkey.

As my upcoming debut album is all mixed and ready to be mastered and then released in early 2013, I thought I'd give you a flavour of where these 15 tracks come from and what they mean to me.

Enjoy!! :o)

SOULMATE

My Twitter timeline flashed up some news yesterday that wouldn’t have had too much significance for too many in the football world – namely that Walsall manager Dean Smith has been given a new 2 ½ year deal to manage the Saddlers after a highly pleasing start to their League 1 campaign. The season before, Smith had worked brilliantly to help Walsall beat the drop despite the usual restrictive budget that managers in that part of the Midlands have always had to deal with.

Well, the album is almost fully recorded and ready for mixing & mastering – not before time!

The last session I’ve just done at Arkham Studios with wunderkind Alex Cooper at the controls was particularly productive. 2 guest guitar solos recorded along with my best vocal efforts on 1 of the 3 tracks I’m singing lead on myself, called Prove You Wrong.

Back in February this year (I think) I first entered Arkham Recording Studios in Birmingham with the aim of recording an album full of original Ian Danter compositions.

6 months on and I'm delighted to say that the project is really starting to come together - it hasn't been possible to block book 4 weeks straight in the studio to get things done in one 'hit' as my life & career simply doesn't allow that - nor did I expect it to when I began.

My dear and trusted friend Phil Docker recently put a link up on one of his social networking pages to the film “The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years”, a documentary filmed by Penelope Spheeris (who went on to successfully direct Wayne’s World) in and around Los Angeles during the Glam rock & Metal explosion that occurred on Sunset Strip in the late 80’s.

It’s a perfect social document of the time; decadent, free-spirited, unapologetic, amoral and was probably just as much fun to be in the thick of as it looked – at least in the short term.

Being a drummer means never having to say you heard what the guitarist asked you to do in rehearsal.

There, I’ve got a gag in early, seeing as us sticksmen are almost always the butt of the jokes. Like…

• What’s the difference between a drum machine and a drummer? You only have to punch the information into a drum machine once…
• How do you know when there’s a drummer at your front door? He knocks out of time and never knows when to come in.
• How can you tell when the drum riser is level? The drummer dribbles out of BOTH sides of his mouth.