the girl

I was born in 1967 in a little fishing village on the South Coast of England where I enjoyed the freedom and adventure of an idyllic childhood, climbing trees, building camps in the woods, skimming rocks and swimming from the breakwaters.

My theatrical career began as an angel behind the manger in the nursery school nativity play. I played guitar from age five but gave it up in favour of hockey at age twelve with little else than a very well rehearsed classical piece and Bobby Shaftoe in my repertoire.

By the time I reached Sixth Form I was singing lead at the End of Term Party at the Carioca Club in Worthing backed by covers band Knightshift, who insisted on wearing black shirts with white ties at all times. Well, it was the eighties.

I continued to sing with Knightshift, also auditioned for another band who promised to take me off to somewhere exotic but mum insisted I stay at school and finish my A levels so I was restricted to writing teenage angst ridden songs in my bedroom for a while. I think I wrote my first song at age eleven, in the back of my maths homework book.

Things started to hot up when school friend Imogen Ryall joined Knightshift on piano and backing vocals. We started to expand our repertoire from The Beatles and The Shadows to include songs by Kirsty MacColl and Aretha Franklin. My brother Paul is himself an immensely talented guitarist and musician. He had a pretty successful local band at the time called Joint Decision and eventually what was with hindsight inevitable, the best parts of Knightshift joined with the best parts of Joint Decision and myself and Imogen on vocals, Paul on guitars, Dave Lewis on drums, Lou Rubera on bass, Chalkie White on trumpet, Jo White on tenor sax and Dave Adams on alto sax became Brass Tacks.

Brass Tacks were quite an outfit. We played an eclectic mix of stuff by The Eurythmics, Sade, Matt Bianco, Katrina and The Waves and taking full advantage of our coveted brass section, some Jump Jive.

I left University with a 2:1 in Communications and Media Production and my first recorded song writing credit for the title track for my final year short film, „Be With You Sometimes‰.

When I moved to London I hooked up with an old college pal, Mandy Keegan and we started to jam together and write. To encourage my song writing I began to relearn the guitar. With our own compositions and a few covers we got ourselves a string of gigs performing under the name of Blame it on Pam.

Not wanting to miss out on the massive country music comeback of the early nineties, I also paired up with Justine Wilde at this time to become Rodeo Rose. This was probably the most prolific song writing period of my life - in just a few months I wrote 'go on believing', 'country girl home', 'the last waltz', 'like you said', 'close the door', 'two moons ago', 'gift boxes', and for me the quintessential rollicking good country sing along 'come on home'.

For my 26th birthday mum and dad bought me three days in a recording studio where I managed to get most of these songs recorded so it was time to write some more.

I advertised in Loot for a band and am surprised (not to mention relieved) by the results. Mike Stock approached me after a gig at the Mean Fiddler all gorgeous and cool with long hair and a cap on backwards, looking clean and smiley and enthusiastic. Fortunately he turned out to be a superb bass player who happened to know an excellent drummer, Dave Hattee, and a superb guitarist, Ian Morrison. Within weeks we‚re a gigging London band, playing The Mean Fiddler, The Borderline, The Dublin Castle. But it was at a gig at Upstairs at the Garage that things kicked off for me. I was opening for a guy that lots of people seemed to know but that I hadn't heard of. We were sharing a dressing room and he listened to my sound check. Afterwards he said he really liked my voice and we shared a packet of sunflower seeds. Then he introduced himself as Jeff Buckley.

I knew there were some music industry types in the venue and after my set two guys approached me. One with a big smile and shiny shoes and one with long shaggy hair, dirty jeans, cowboy boots, a leather jacket and raggy scarf. This was Alan Cundell and Roland Harris of Mabley Street Productions who effectively allowed me to record my first album. At last - fruition - at last.

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