Taking a Breath

I can honestly say that the art residency this year has been one of the best experiences of my life. I have left it with new friends, better skills and greater confidence. It was very hard to leave a world that I knew (pop music education), and strike out without knowing what would be on the horizon. I will be doing a lot more drawing, and music too. How odd to live a life where re-booting is a common phenomenon!

Anyway, recording with my brother James has led me to start to root through the store of artwork and magazines in boxes under the stairs. Periodically, I rummage through it all and chuck piles of stuff into the recycling bin. This time, I was looking for the book I made in my final year at Brighton Art College, A Handbook of Suburban Styles, where my poem Food first appeared alongside a drawing of a ghostly dancing Chef. It was called Ken Wood And The Chefs, after the then well-known food mixer the Kenwood Chef. 

After The Smartees split up, I went back to being a happy nothing. I was working in a shop, drawing, occasionally making comics, living day to day with no future planned. We had learned that as punks: do not expect anything, and you'll never be disappointed. You'll be dead by the time you're thirty, anyway. I had been an accidental musician for a few years, first in Joby and the Hooligans and then by evolution, The Smartees. The End.

One day, Carl Evans, who had joined The Smartees on guitar, came round. He'd contributed a song called Sweetie to the group and he wanted to know if I'd like to form a band with him. I was absolutely astonished because I didn't think I was a 'proper' bass player. He'd written music for the Food poem, and he played it to me. We also had Thrush, which I'd written for The Smartees, so we had three songs.

'What should we call ourselves?' I asked. He looked at me as though I was an idiot. 

'Well, The Chefs', he replied. 

A few doors down from the house where I was staying lived a Mancunian drummer called Rod. We asked him to be our drummer, and he said yes. So I was in a band again, my own (shared) one too.

And here is some of the artwork for posters, badges and the sleeve design of our first EP on the local label Attrix Records. Lots of this didn't get used, of course. The rest of the stuff I was looking for is buried too deep into the cupboard. That's for a rainy day.

By the way, look out for a vinyl Chefs album one of these days.