Dear friend,

About a year ago I thought I'd never write a song again.

It was creative blockage to the extreme. Days of not writing turned into weeks of not writing turned into months of not writing.

The truth is, a lot was distracting me at the time. My job was on the line. My love life was on the rocks. I was struggling to settle after moving house twice in the course of two months. And during those two months my band released our first album. I was burnt out.

So songwriting - quite naturally - took a backseat.

But this made me uncomfortable.

And of course it did. Songwriting was my natural state. I had written around three hundred of them since moving to York in 2021. There were days when I'd write one song and immediately bounce onto the next. And then the next. But then... nothing.

So - one Sunday in June 2024 - I decided to do something about that nothingness. That nothingness had gone on too long. And after rotting in my tomb all morning, I chucked my phone against the wall and rolled that old boulder away.

Through hours of inertia, hours of forcing myself to write, the song I am sharing with you today came to be. It is called "You Will Never Get That Feeling Back" and I think it is the best song I have ever written.

This song was realised live on the 23rd of January this year, with additional overdubs taking place on the 24th of January and during March.

The band was myself, Ollie Howland, Adam Holmes, Tom Burgess, Dan Lucas and Ben Crosthwaite. It was recorded by Joseph Futak at Crooked Rooms and in his studio in London.

His expertise in recording and production, combined with the band’s skill and artfulness, allowed this song to become better than I ever could have imagined it being.

Happy listening,
Rowan.