Biography

Well....here it is....my biography...so far. It feels weird to sit down and write this, but people have asked about my musical and spiritual influences, so I thought I'd better put something on the website.

Thinking back to my childhood I guess I've always been more interested in music than anything else. While my friends were all busy trading football cards, and reciting that famous playground mantra, "Got, got, got, haven't got, got, got, haven't got" I was off watching Top of the Pops (which was the only music programme around at the time) and singing along to the Sweet, Slade, and T Rex. I was always drawn to rock music, although my parents (my Dad particularly) did his bit to wean me on a diet of John Denver, Don Williams, Glen Campbell, with a bit of Rolling Stones thrown in for good measure.

I really wanted to learn the bass guitar. I loved the rock n' roll bass lines that give the guts to a lot of rock songs, so I asked my parents if I could get one. In one of those life-directing moments, my parents refused me, saying that, "You can't sing along to a bass guitar, you need a band to play one of those. If you learn the 6 string guitar, you'll probably be able to play any instrument, given time." Then I clearly remember my Dad saying to me, "If you learn how to play an instrument, you'll never be alone." Those two pieces of guidance have really led my life ever since.

So at the age of 8 I began to learn how to play the guitar. My guitar teacher's name was Tim O' Leary, an Irishman, and I was his first student. He couldn't read music, so taught me using the oral tradition (I still can't read music, and have since learnt that the Bards used the oral tradition as their teaching method. So even then things were taking shape). He taught me Irish folk tunes, jigs and reels, and really guided my own style from those very early lessons. When I was a teenager and got my first Fender Stratocaster I couldn't play it at all! All of my efforts had gone into folk guitar, and I just couldn't get the feel of an electric. However, what I discovered was that I had natural rhythm, so for a number of years I put my guitar to one side, and took up the drums.

After moving in and out of a few (mate-next-door) type bands, I joined an existing heavy metal band called Targa. We did the usual supporting roles on the London circuit, particularly at the Wellington in Shepherds Bush, and finally got our break - a headlining slot at the prestigious Marquee Club - just as one of the main members left to go to greener pastures, so whatever success might have been, slipped through our fingers. To be honest, I'd had enough of bands by then, after taking all the bullshit that comes with working the support circuit, I felt it was time to move on, and so my musical life went into a sleep.

But as my music was drifting off into the Land of Nod, so my interest in magic, and the occult was growing. I'd always been fascinated with magic, ever since I saw the Hammer Horror film The Devil Rides Out with Christopher Lee. There's a great scene when Christopher Lee is watching a Black Mass, and the Goat of Mendes appears, half man, half goat, sitting cross-legged in the classic Eliphas Levi 'As above, so below' pose. I watched in wonder. Something within me stirred, and I found myself thinking that something that powerful, that beautiful, could not be evil - they'd all got it terribly wrong! Then one day a friend of mine (the bass player in Targa) came into my house declaring that he was now a Neophyte. I laughed, but then he showed me the teaching documents of the group he had joined. They were called the Occult Church Society, and they based their teachings of the work of Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn. Well, needless to say I joined straight away, and followed their teachings. For four years I studied, and gained the grade of Philosphus, but just as I began to feel a bit silly working with Osiris in an end of terrace in Porslade, so the group went through a big change, and quickly faded away.

I was left wondering what to do next. Where to go? I had started to become a bit uncomfortable with foreign Deity - that had been one of the reasons I had moved away from Christianity in the first place. So I bought a copy of Prediction magazine and sent off for everything in the small ads section - The Pagan Federation, Guild of Pagans, Fellowship of Isis, everything, including a small advert asking me if I was "Interested in Green Spirituality", and said that if I was, I might be interested in joining the Druids. I must admit that I gave this one no real thought. Druids were fantasy, or were Masonic gents with secret handshakes.

Well, when the stuff started to come through I felt like I had come home. I opened the booklet for the Guild of Pagans, and there was my Man, sat on a rock, cross-legged, playing his pipes. This was where my life had been heading all along. I joined the PF, the Guild of Pagans, and then I read through the leaflets sent through by the Druids. As I read about the tradition, of the stones, the love of nature, and then the Bards, I felt like a doorway was opening into a new reality (how right I was!!) so I sent off for further information. This Druid group was the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and it was April 1994. Over the years I worked through their entire course, finally finishing (at least the written course!) the Druid grade in February 2002 - and what a ride it's been!

Whilst I was in the Bardic grade I fully immersed myself in the tradition. I picked up my guitar again, learnt how to play the mandolin, and then, after seeing the great Bard Fiona Davidson play and tell stories at the 1994 PF conference, I bought a Celtic Harp. This was a very intensely creative period of my life, things that I seemed to have no control over were happening. I began to write songs, Pagan songs. There were only a few Pagan bands around at the time, Silver on the Tree, the Dolman, Heathens All, all of them were fabulous, but I couldn't help but feel that the Bardic/mystical element was missing in Pagan music. What I loved were the stories, not just of mythology, but of the land, so I put pick to string, pen to paper, and began to write. I played a few of the songs at local Pagan events and at PEWC (the Pan European Wiccan convention), low and behold, people actually seemed to like them. The first three songs I wrote were, Tomb of the king (will be on the forthcoming CD), Noon of the Solstice, and Oak Broom and Meadowsweet. I got the lyrics published in Touchstone (OBOD's journal) and the local PF mag called The Path, then took the songs to the Avebury Gorsedd, and sang them in front of 150+ people on the Spring Equinox of 1997 in the Avebury stone circle.

In the Summer of 1997 I competed in the first Eisteddfod to be organised on English soil for 200 years. It was held in Portsmouth and was organised by the Insular Order of Druids in conjunction with Portsmouth City council. The venue was a big, open-air bowl arena, and as it was a free event, there were about 800 people watching. Lots of great poets, musicians and re-enactors competed during the day for a replica Iron Age torque, and the title of Bard of Wessex. I went along to support the event, and to my amazement, walked away with the torque, and the title!

Then in November of 1997 I was asked to play at the OBOD 10th anniversary party, supporting the great Bard Robin Williamson. Well, I jumped at the chance! About this time I bought a little four track mini-recording studio and began to lay down some songs for a tape of my songs. As they were built, layer upon layer, instrument upon instrument, I became aware that they would sound great played by a band. I was blessed to have some really good musicians as friends within the local Pagan community, so on New Years Eve of 1997, amongst bleary eyes, drunk guitar playing and raucous singing, Spiral Castle was born.

I already had the name of the band in my mind, and the band was formed, at the time, to play the one-off gig with Robin Williamson. We got rehearsing, putting together some great renditions of the songs that had been pouring out during the year (I did say it was a very creative time, and I wasn't joking!!), plus a funky version of the loved (and hated) song The Burning times. I remember our first get together even now. For all of us it was a first to sit down with acoustic instruments and simply play for the love of playing. It was a magical night, and at the end we all held hands in a circle and thanked the Gods for the gift we had been given - the gifts of friendship, creativity, and musical magic.

Well, we played the gig, and to our surprise we went down extremely well. Sure, we were very ropey, my voice hadn't been trained to project, but afterwards people came up and asked if we were going to record anything. This hadn't been something we'd considered, but the seed had been sown.

Spiral Castle was never a band that could be described as 'hard working'. We played together regularly for a while, played another couple of gigs at the local moot, but then things dwindled out, and we didn't play together at all. We could have thought that we had done our thing, and the band was no more. But fate being as it is dealt the band an unexpected card at the Broomstick Rally in 1998. The booked band, The Dolman, didn't turn up - the singer had a cold. So there was a Pagan camp, with 90 people, and no entertainment for Saturday night. However, all of the members of Spiral Castle were there, and so the organiser put two and two together (literally!), and asked if we would play. We were asked at about 2pm on Saturday afternoon, due to play at 8pm that night, we hadn't played together for 6 months, so of course we said yes....

We gathered in the corner of the field and played, and it felt like the breath of inspiration flowed through us that afternoon. We even learnt a new song on the spur of the moment, The Winter King, ready to perform it in the evening - that's what it was like in Spiral Castle at that time, it was awesome. So we played the gig, and then more requests for recorded music came our way. We couldn't deny it to ourselves any more, we were a popular Pagan band, and we now had an audience to please. There was no other choice, and the CD None but Seven was the result.

It's strange thinking back as I write this that the finished CD brought with it a change to the band. Spiral Castle was like a perfect square, each corner, or member was vital to the overall vibe, and sound, so when Rob announced that he was moving to Yorkshire it was like once corner of the square had gone, and the band felt like it was going to topple over. On top of this we had been booked to play the National Pagan Federation conference, the first to be held in the Fairfield Halls, to an estimated 1500 people. Carl, Chris and myself tried to swap around and see if the square could be made into a triangle, but it simply didn't work.

Rob had always added the picked melody lines, and the solos to the songs, and without that element the band sounded flat. There was a band around at the time called the Space Goats who had a hammered dulcimer player, it's a flat bed instrument and the player hits the strings like a drummer hits their skins. Now we happened to have a friend (surprise, surprise!) who was an excellent drummer, so I asked if he thought he could play the hammered dulcimer, he said he'd give it a try... So as we had made some money from the sales of the CD we bought one and gave it to him to try. Guess what...he was a natural player, so we asked him to join, he agreed, bam, capow we were off again.

When the day of the PF conference arrived I was, well, very nervous... We were due to play the lunchtime slot on the main stage. The venue was huge! Abba had played there 25 years ago to the day (apparently) and Jethro Tull were playing the next night. All those things were going through my head as we walked on stage, the huge stage, just four mates. The super trooper lights were blinding (thanks Abba!), thankfully, as I could only see the first three rows of the audience. We started our set and I began to notice the doors of the hall opening and closing. I thought people were leaving, but then I realised that they weren't - more, and more people were coming into the hall to see us! Then, during a quieter moment in the song Blodeuwedd, they put the house lights up, and I was face to face with a hall that was two thirds full, about 1100 people, all watching us. I very quickly asked if they would turn the house lights down please!! After the gig we sold out of all of the CDs we had brought with us, and the organiser of the Beltane Bash and Halloween Festivals, both major events in London, asked us to play at both the next year. Spiral Castle had truly arrived.

During the following year we played at both the Beltane Bash and Halloween Festival, the PF National conference, the South East and South PF regional conferences, and the Midsummer gathering at the Rollright Stone Circle. However, life being as it is that next year also turned out to be extremely turbulent for me on a personal level, and those problems sometimes seeped into the relationships within the band. Add to this the increasing difficulty in getting four people to the same place, at the same time, and then Chris moved to the New Forest. Things weren't looking good for the band. With work commitments and other everyday life hassles, the playing together finally did grind to a halt. Who knows what the future holds, but for now Spiral Castle has returned to Caer Siddi, and lies sleeping..... Spiral Castle will always hold the fondest of memories for me.

Another effect I felt during 2000 was 'creative constipation'. I just couldn't write any more songs until the others had been recorded. It's like giving birth to a child really, the child is hidden until it is fully born into the world as a recorded song. So I had started to put together Herne's Apprentice during Spiral Castle's quiet time. Throughout the time with the band I had carried on playing to people on my own. During this time I played at the OBOD annual assemblies, Eisteddfodau, camps, festivals and other Pagan events, so it just seemed like the natural step for me to finally branch out on my own..

The CD 'Herne's Apprentice' was the result, followed in late 2003 by 'The Hills they are Hollow', you can hear MP3s here.

People have been using my songs in rituals, and playing them around campfires - I cannot begin to tell you what an honour it is to hear another person play one of my songs! It totally freaks me out! I can't believe it! People have been asking for the chords to my songs, so I will be putting together a complete songbook during 2004 entitled 'Pagan Songs for Campfires and Gatherings'. So watch this space.....

Well, now that you've reached this point, why not have a listen to the MP3s and see what you think. Email me if you like, it would be great to hear from you.

With respect, peace, and blessings,

Damh
xx