Stephen Fretwell

Hello, I'll have a go at this then. For anyone who wants to know..... I moved to Manchester in the year 2000 with three friends. I wanted to do music or something creative, I tried painting but it didn't really work-just throwing bits of paint on canvases and things was clearly never going to make me any money or interest any women. I had trouble concentrating on writing stories down too. Though it was fun. I enrolled in University and got my grants but only went to one class, which although silly gave me a bit of money and a flat in Salford with my mate Alistair. After a year going from cheap bar to cheap club to free bar to floor to bed and back again I managed to blag a flat above Matt & Phreds Jazz club on Oldham Street in Manchester (it was actually above 'the t-shirt man' two doors down but, anyway). Soon after moving in and finding a job at a local hotel as a laundry boy I started hanging around The Night and Day Cafe where I met lots of crazy incredible people who helped me out doing music. I packed my job in and worked the door at the Night and Day taking peoples money, and letting some people in for free. It was an amazing time, I thought I was living in Greenwich Village circa '56 or something. Looking back now I wouldn't change a thing about it. I'm getting sentimental, right i'll carry on. I wrote a load of songs during this period that my friend Jay Sikora made a record out of which we called '8 Songs.' We made the covers in the Oxfam shop on the photocopier, all 200 of them, then gave them all away. It went pretty well and I ended up being offered a publishing deal and a record deal. Then I made an album called 'Magpie' with Matty Watson, Jonny Lexus and Jay. We did it in Abbey Road Studios in London in two weeks - all live on a 16 track tape machine. A right old dude called Guy Massey was at the controls-he mixed it too. It was another lovely time, we thought we were the Beatles for a bit. That record came out and touring/promotion/boozing, stuff like that suddenly took over and whipped me up like a tornado or something. When said tornado dropped me down, at the end of the last bit of all that promotion stuff, I ended up in New York City. I decided I wanted to stay there for a bit and have a think about all the crazy things that had happened, I wanted to see if I could still write songs as well, It had become the last thing on my mind to do. I met a 'super cool' guy called Eli Janney. He helped me a lot with writing and ways to think about it, then we started to make a new album at his studio in Brooklyn. It happened pretty quick when we hit our stride, though you should really be the judge of whether it's any good, you being the listener and all. The album's gonna be called 'Man On The Roof' It was meant to be called 'Speak of the Devil' but I think that would be just plain silly. Then it was gonna be called 'Marcy' and several other names. But it's called 'Man On The Roof' I hope you like it.......