When I first wrote "Home" in August 2015 it sounded no different to what every other aspiring singer-songwriter is writing these days; the same four chords! It's very hard to be original these days, because no matter what you look or sound like, or what you sing or write about, as long as you've got an acoustic guitar everyone will always compare you to Ed Sheeran. I love the guy; I've seen him live, I covered his song "Lego House", I learned to play guitar by playing along to his + album, but I definitely didn't want to be known as "The Next Ed Sheeran". Billy Bragg once said: "When music becomes bland, the way forward is to go back to basics"; so when I teamed up with producer Tom Blashford to record my album Dreamer, we explored a new direction, experimenting with older folk elements and combing roots of Americana and country, with a boppy harmonica hook, progressive rock and even influences of classical to my pop sound. When the song was released no longer did anyone ever compare me to Ed Sheeran again. Now they were comparing me to Bob Dylan instead!
It all started in June 2015. I had just released my debut self-titled album and graduated from Bower Grove School, and was already eager to start writing new material, but the stress of studying GCSEs for the past two years had left me drained with writer's block. But I began to develop a strong interest in country music, though I was into aspects of it beforehand - some of my earliest encounters being through Disney film soundtracks; such as Robin Hood, which featured songs by country singer-songwriter Roger Miller, and The Fox and The Hound 2, which featured country acts such as One Flew South, Little Big Town, Reba McEntire and Trisha Yearwood - going out and about and exploring the country areas of Kent offered a whole new perspective of the genre for me. It's one thing listening to Woody Guthrie singing ("This Land Is Your Land") about endless skyways, golden valleys and wheat fields wavering as you look outside your bedroom window and imagine that exact same picture in your head, but to actually walk down those country roads and through those fields yourself, and look up and watch the clouds go by and feel the cool breeze and warm sunshine on you is what gives you that buzz that makes you think to yourself: "Maybe I could write a song like that". (Hence why a song like "My Beautiful World" - the tenth track from Dreamer - exists). One day in July, I was walking through the country area of Barming, making my way home, having missed the bus (I won't reveal the exact location, but my house is miles away from Barming) and I had the songs "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" a traditional Jamaican folk song, popularised by Harry Belafonte in 1956, and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver stuck in my head. It was through the combination of those two classic songs - and of course, my desperate and tiredly desire to get home - that "Home" was born. Obviously, the lyric "Daylight come and me wanna go home" from "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" speaks for itself with the lyric "I wanna go home". By the time I (eventually) got home, the song was almost fully written in my head already, now I just had to get it down on paper.
The song was finished by August, and I recorded an acoustic demo on my phone, which was later uploaded to YouTube - and subsequently released on Apple Music and Spotify - along with another song I wrote "The Drinking Song", on 30th January 2016. At this point, Tom Blashford and I had already started writing and recording songs for the album Dreamer. After hearing "Home", he expressed interest in producing a re-recorded version for the album. My initial thought was that it would just been a professionally recorded acoustic track with just guitar - and maybe keys - like a song from Ed Sheeran's + album, or George Ezra's Wanted on Voyage, or something more indie in the vein of Jake Bugg or Ben Howard, but at the same time I pictured it being something more along the lines of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", or one of Elvis Presley's country rock hits - like "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto" - with a similar '60s vibe (you can probably hear that slight rock and roll influence in the song). Tom wasn't a big fan of pop music or too familiar with country music, he was more into progressive rock bands like Yes, Pink Floyd and Genesis. I had never heard Yes at the time when we started working together; I knew Pink Floyd and some Genesis (more so the poppier era than the progressive rock years), but as far as oldies went, I was more into bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. So of course, working with Tom meant I had to update my CD collection, and buy all the big progressive rock albums - like The Wall and The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd, Trespass by Genesis, The Yes Album, Fragile, Close To The Edge and Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes, you name it.
The first draft of the song Tom played me was an interesting blend of both progressive rock and folk; almost like John Martyn - one of Tom's all time favourite musicians - and the combination of keys and guitar reminded me of something along the lines of a stripped back version of "The Conqueror" by Genesis from their debut album From Genesis To Revelation, which ironically is Tom's least favourite Genesis album, but I love it! (If you listen to the 2019 album version of "Home" though, the outro on that was inspired by "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight" from Genesis' Selling England By The Pound album). What also gave the song that distinctive progressive rock sound was the use of Hammond organ and mellotron; famously used in "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles, and "Heart Of The Sunrise" and 'Roundabout" by Yes. As far as we were concerned, the track was already a lot more experimental and authentic than what most contemporary singer-songwriters in the charts were making, but we still needed something else to help it stand out even more.
When "Home" was released on 3rd February 2017, a lot of people, namely MidKent College lectures like Laura Beck (Performing Arts Level 2), Ben Gurney (Music Technology Level 3) and my lecture at the time, Stephen Clee (Music Performance Level 2), compared it to Bob Dylan. When they asked if it was inspired by him, my answer was - yes and no. It wasn't written with Dylan in mind; in fact, it wasn't until after the acoustic demo was released that I heard him for the first time - I knew who he was beforehand, but more so through other people's covers of his songs; for instance, "All Along The Watchtower", covered by The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1988, and Billy Joel's cover of "Make You Feel My Love" which was released in 1997, ironically one month before the original by Dylan was released, and eleven years before the famous cover by Adele was released. But when I later started collecting and listening to all his early albums religiously - my first Dylan album being The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which features classics such as "Blowin' In The Wind", "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" - I became so enamoured of his work, and intrigued by the combination of harmonica with his acoustic guitar, that I just had to suggest to Tom that we add harmonica to "Home", which finally fulfilled that missing ingredient we were looking for.
The funny thing is, I never actually thought of the song as "folk"; I don't think I was even aware of the term until Tom told me about it! I always thought it was just British country, acoustic country, or just simply singer/songwriter music. Basically, the way I see it, it really could have been any type of song. I always thought it sounded more like a song from The Beatles' debut 1963 album Please Please Me or The Rolling Stones' 1964 debut, England's Newest Hit Makers, than a Dylan song, both of which also feature blusey harmonica hooks (Please Please Me was another album that inspired the idea to add harmonica). It could have also easily been an old country western song by Hank Williams, or a rockabilly song by Elvis, Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison, or even an old blues song by Robert Johnson or something!
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