The Collector

We are a band called The Collector, The Collector is a book by John Fowles about a repressed bank clerk whose hobby is collecting butterflies (amongst other things) – we liked the book and borrowed the title ~~~ Chapter 1 ~~~ After several years in bands together guitarist Simon King and keyboard player Alan Stubbs found themselves staring at a computer in Alan’s flat with some of Simon’s songs and not a lot else. Simon’s ambition to record an album of his own songs was looking unlikely. Despite having some success with previous bands with some of the same songs, both Simon and Alan knew they needed something new, perhaps someone new. ~ It was 2003, and we had seen Simon Mole playing bass and singing backing vocals in a couple of other bands before but we didn’t really know him. We got his email address and we wrote him a simpering email asking him to join our “band”. If course we weren’t really a band, we didn’t even have a name just a hundred versions of the same 4 songs – but he didn’t know that. So he came along and we nervously played him the songs – he said he liked them and we were surprised. ~ So in early 2004 we rented some rehearsal space and approached Steve Thorpe a drummer we had worked with before to help us out. We rehearsed the songs and they sounded good almost immediately and better still, we all seemed to get on. Steve seemed keen to stay, so he did. ~ Simon K set about the business of writing some new songs. Inspired (if that’s the right word) by day to day life, real emotions, rainy grey days, failed relationships and sadness, it wasn’t long before a there was an albums worth of material written. ~ Sarah Clewer joined us for a while in 2004 to provide some backing vocals and Melodica, despite her beautiful voice the songs didn’t seem to sit right and we seemed to lose a bit of direction. Sadly, we drifted apart from Alan and Sarah 2004. ~ We re-grouped as a three-piece in the summer of 2005 and started to record the songs - Alan came back and provided some proper keyboards which helped complete the final sound and we finally finished the album in spring 2006 – Simon K had achieved the ambition of recording an album of his own songs - we called it (eventually) "Nine Songs". ~~~ Chapter 2 ~~~ In January 2007 we found ourselves at the BBC in Brighton talking about the album when we met Gary Holder ~ He was playing Double Bass on a session being broadcast live while we were there ~ very impressed with Gary’s calm playing and intrigued by the prospect of also doing a live session at the BBC we hatched a plan to record an “unplugged” EP and see if we could get Gary along to play on it ~ Alarmingly, it all fell into place and before we knew it we had 4 songs recorded (with Gary) which we imaginatively entitled “Acoustic” which was released in June 2007 ~ More by luck than judgement we were then asked by the BBC to play 3 of the songs on BBC South Live Lounge session on 3rd June 2007 ~ our plan had worked and another ambition was achieved. ~~~ Chapter 3 ~~~ Sadly, Steve Thorpe decided to leave the Collector in August 2007 leaving us two Simon’s to continue ~ we had some new songs we had been kicking about and some idea about how we wanted them to sound ~ So, in between the occasional local “Open Mic” appearance we set about recording the ideas but it soon became apparent we still needed some drums ~ With broad outlines of the new songs recorded we approached a couple of excellent drummers we knew and asked them to help us out, thankfully they both were happy to do so ~ So now we have an EP (entitled “Silence and Sound”) which was released on 25th March 2008, featururing Pat Collins and Steve Needham on drums. ~ As ever, the EP will be available free to whoever would like a copy, just message us here through MySpace or send us an email (to [email protected]) and we will be happy to send you a copy ~ We are friendly so come and say hello ~