ALBUM

A MAN WALKS
INTO A PUB

A warm, humane and wry collection of songs, led by a title track about solace, memory, companionship and the small rituals that help us carry on.

Featuring fourteen tracks, including Man Walks Into A Pub, The Justice Bus and Pennypot Lane.

ABOUT THE TITLE TRACK

This is the oldest song on the album, written maybe in 2007. It hadn’t been officially released before simply because it didn’t really seem to fit on any of the recent albums.

I clearly remember how it got started: I was in the Beehive in Brentford, and this old boy tottered in, made it to the bar and hauled himself safely onto a barstool, like a ship making harbour.

The bit about “me and Dave” in the middle-eight section is me and Dave Floyd, singer with original west-London punk legends Riot Clone, planning a joint tour of Germany that of course never happened, one night in the Cross Lances in Hounslow.

I recorded the song twice for the album. The first time it seemed a bit slow and maudlin, plus there were some noticeable tuning problems with the Thornbury bottom string.

I thought it needed to be a little more positive, so I did a new version with a capo and the Brook guitar, which is the version on the CD.

I usually try to avoid using a capo, but I thought, for this album, maybe I should make a bit of an effort and do the songs in the optimum key for the vocal effect I was hoping to achieve.

Man walks into a pub, and smiles.

TITLE TRACK LYRICS

Man walks into a pub,
You’ve heard this one before,
I know it’s not that funny
Or that clever anymore,
But he sits down like a sailor
Who’s been shipwrecked quite a while,
Man walks into a pub, and smiles.

Man walks into a pub
And you can see the little boy,
With his pockets full of sixpence
In a sweet shop full of toys,
Back before the smoker’s cough,
The beer gut and the piles,
Man walks into a pub, and smiles.

The lads are watching football
On the pub’s big silver screen,
And until that final whistle
You can forget what might have been,
The chances never taken, the numbers never dialled,
Man walks into a pub, and smiles.

And it isn’t just the football,
And it isn’t just the beer,
Me and Dave are smiling too,
We’ve got this big idea,
And if it comes to nothing, that’s because
Next day we can’t remember what it was….

Man walks into a pub,
Leaves his troubles at the door,
Shakes his old head wisely
At the lads still trying to score,
There’s the pint of compensation
For the final homeward mile…
Man walks into a pub, and smiles.