I was staying with an old friend, Susie Stockton, she used to be my manager when I was young and got me my first big break as fiddle player with the Shetland band Hom Bru

I had played Susie some of the demo tracks of my songs a few months before when she was visiting, and when we were down at her place she asked me to sing some of my songs and then thrust her guitar into my hands. I sang loads of my songs and Susie said she thought that they should be heard and that I should make a song CD. We had a good talk the next day and I left with instructions to think of who I’d like to produce the album and how much it would cost to record.

I went away and I had a good think. I decided that I would like Martin Simpson to produce it and I told Susie. She told me to contact him and see what he reckoned, so I did.

I had gigged with Martin and recorded with him, so I called him and asked him if he’d be interested in the project. He said he wanted to hear demo’s of the tracks and we arranged a meeting.

I’ve been working on a solo album of songs and it’s just been released. Martin Simpson and Andy Seward produced it and Andy engineered and recorded it at his studio.

This album has been a long time coming, I recorded demo versions of some of the songs in my own studio in 2002 and then I didn’t know what to do with them.

I had a selection of songs that I’d written but no money to make the album, so I shelved it. I tried to have a normal, quiet life and see what life was like on the other side of the monitor speakers. Things were good until I had an encounter with the gutter press… It was very damaging what they did and I let it hurt me. They told me I wasn’t entitled to privacy.

So, I decided that I had to go back to my music.

I started doing some gigs and then I had a problem with a tendon in my left hand and I had to stop gigging. I thought that my career was over and it was hard to accept, I’ve always been able to make a living playing music and I’d ever thought what it would be like if I couldn’t do it anymore. I cancelled all my gigs in the UK and the USA and just kept my fiddle teaching going and a few gigs with my dance band. I shelved my trio and rested my hand. I had 3 cortisone injections and they didn’t work and so the next step was surgery.

I really didn’t want an operation so I rested my hand as much as I could and stopped taking calcium supplements, which kept my nails tough for my guitar playing. After a while, things started to get better.