There Goes the Sun...

Music, in many forms, has always been part of my life. As a chorister, playing the cello (badly), singing on the terraces at St. James's Park (really - that was music?), and in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But priorities shifted, and music became only a listening experience. Then, in 2021, Victoria Paterson and her team of (then unemployed) musicians brought music and hope to the Javits Vaccination Center, playing for everyone who was in that mandatory 15-minute wait after their Covid injection. Due to varying degrees of isolation, many people had not been in close contact with anyone for months. I saw tears, I saw dancing in the aisles, and I saw exhausted medical staff brighten as they listened. I saw at first hand the power music can have. And "Here Comes The Sun" would greet me when I came to listen. So when Victoria said we should make an album, and I thought, "I've never done that — why not," the Beatles song was an obvious inclusion.

The other songs I've recorded were a couple of familiar North Eastern England folk songs which my grandfather sang to me (Wor Nanny's a mazer, Lambton Worm), songs about Newcastle (Meet Me on the Corner by Lindisfarne, Coming Home by Busker and Big River by Jimmy Nail) and then a couple of my favorite ballads (Fields of Gold by Sting, and Anthem by Leonard Cohen). A real assortment of music, all with different vocal challenges, but they all have special meaning for me.

My voice is not what it was, but as the saying goes, "a man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams." While there may be some regrets, there are still dreams to fulfill, and many years ago, it was a dream of mine to make a record.

Here it is, warts and all.

-Alan Steel, December 1, 2025