“We usually approach each week like a couple of Paratroopers jumping out of a plane - ‘Drop and Roll!’. We drop a song and roll on to the next one without any chatter or blurb. This song kinda demands a bit of back story. Not the easiest back story to share but we know that there are people out there who might glean something from it or at the very least maybe feel slightly less alone to know that someone else lives with a pain that they also live with...

There’s a place in my mind where I go to from time to time. We hold hands, we laugh, we talk, she hugs me like a daughter who’s glad to see her Daddy, and I hold her tighter than I’ve ever held anyone. As with all my daughters I was the first one to see her, meet her, speak to her, and kiss her. Strangely enough it’s the only birth that didn’t bring forth an avalanche of tears or emotion from within me. It wasn’t a joyous time. It was probably the toughest day of my life and it was the day I became a ‘Man’ if I’m being honest. A man isn’t allowed to fall apart when people around him are falling apart. A man isn’t allowed to cry when there are people close to him who have earned the right to cry harder. For some bizarre reason I found myself in the disabled toilet of the hospital, on my knees, worshipping an invisible God who by all accounts didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. I don’t know why I did that... but it felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t curse the sky, I didn’t ask for any help, I just knelt in the dark, sat in the stillness, and mustered up whatever smile I could pretend to wear. My wife at the time had just gone through hell and I had sat in the front row. It was traumatic to say the least. We called our little darling ‘Finn’.

On the way home from the hospital we stopped at McDonalds to get our eldest daughter lunch. I remember they had a ‘Family Meal Deal’ on offer that day - ‘Two Adult Meals & Two Happy Meals For £9.99’. It’s funny how you remember the little details. Me being the human eating machine I was at that time thought ‘I’ll eat the extra Happy Meal’, and let’s face it, when you’re a human eating machine one McDonalds meal just breaks the seal on your hunger and always needs to be followed by another. As we got closer to home I could feel the heaviness starting to descend on me. I curled my lip in an angry snarl as if to tell the wanton emotion to stay buried. When we sat at the dining table I looked at the empty space at the table where a single Happy Meal sat...and I broke. I felt robbed. I felt cheated. I felt like I should have been sitting at my table with two daughters. It angered me that I couldn’t hold it together in front of my wife and child. I had fought depression on an almost daily basis for a lifetime up till that point and was used to burying emotional darkness and putting on a fake smile. But sometimes you gotta break. Sometimes the little boy has to pull his finger from the hole in the wall of the Dam. Sometimes you gotta let the water burst forth.

Over the following months I began to write music and lyrics in a way that was different to me. Words flowed, melodies flowed, and somehow the process of songwriting became a way for me to deal with whatever darkness was buried within me. One rainy Saturday afternoon I had what I would call my first ‘Channeling’ experience. I sat down alone, picked up my guitar, and a song fell outta me. It was a letter from the daughter who’s hand I never got to hold. She told me not to worry about her. She told me to celebrate her birthday every year in whatever way I wanted to, if I wanted to. She told me to look after her Mum and her little sister. She told me that she was sending me another little angel soon and that when I would met her and look into her eyes I would see the ‘Forever’ that was Finn’s new home.

Just over a year later my youngest daughter came into the world. She has the bluest eyes you have ever seen. She brought healing and joy in a way I can barely describe. Of course I’m open to the idea that what I thought was me ‘channeling’ a letter from my departed daughter was all just a manifestation of grief, or perhaps it was just my big dumb coping mechanism. I don’t cling to any labels or ‘isms’. I don’t claim to be religious nor do I cling to any specific creed, religion or doctrine. I have been ‘that guy’ in the past. The birth of my first daughter blew those ‘ideologies’ outta the water. When I held her I knew I had to leave all that I thought was ‘Absolute Truth’ and set out in search of what was real... because I now had a beautiful impressionable soul in my charge and I couldn’t just hand her down beliefs that were handed down to me. I had to know for sure that anything I told her or passed onto her was something that I KNEW to be real, not something that I had just accepted on someone else’s authority. My youngest daughter, when she arrived, solidified that need to know Truth and pushed me even further into the search for what was real and what was fake. And Finn, who appeared briefly in the middle of those two births, taught me that being angry at God was a big fat waste of time. Finn taught me that it was ok for a man to cry as long as he did it in private when everyone else was at peace. She taught me to write. She taught me to never give up. She taught me to smile... even if just for a little while. She taught me that God is unconditional Love. And you can’t put a label on Unconditional Love.

Sixteen years later, as we approach Finn’s 16th birthday, the realisation that I should be celebrating a 16th birthday this year hit me like a sledgehammer. It shocked me that I was still so raw about the whole thing. I thought I had made peace with it all. A wise woman once told me ‘You never get over the death of a child. You just learn to live with it every day. And every day it will get a little easier.’
So one night I went into my studio, alone, and sat with the pain. I observed it, felt it, and let it loose. The song ’16’ just fell outta me. Two days later Jordan came down and we sat working on the song. To be honest we sat like two hormonal women - no offence to all you women out there; we know the hormone struggle is real and we salute you :-) - confused at all the emotion we were feeling in our attempts to get this song up to the PN9 standard. It was kinda funny to be honest - two grown men who think they’re all manly and tough, reduced to tears over something that happened 16 years ago. Yeah, life can be a strange trip.
If I’m being totally honest I didn’t want this song to see the light of day. I don’t like tapping into that level of sadness. I don’t like showing a vulnerable side. After years of figuring out how to be happy I try my best to avoid any kind of negativity or sadness. But there’s always that nagging little thought that someone else could be going through the very same thing at this moment in time. Someone else could be on the path to celebrating a 16th birthday with no Birthday girl there to blow out the candles. So here we are...
Life really sucks sometimes. But it only sucks because we don’t get to see the whole picture. Sometimes it takes years to see the whole story. And sometimes pain can be our greatest teacher. The best thing any of us can ever do is laugh and smile through the pain... and cry when we need to. xx xx ”