Welcome to the music room. This time in the music room.

I was sort of transfixed by that on vinyl very early on, and the fact that my dad was on the cover, it's almost set, set things in motion in a, in a, you know, sort of hero's journey sort of fashion. It's like, well, your father is on the cover of this record, therefore you must be on the cover of a record,.

Hello, and welcome to the Music Room, the show for music creators, where I chat with guests working in the music industry to find out more about them and their beginnings in music. And stick around as I ask all of my guests to leave an item and a piece of advice in the Music Room for you to find, what could they be? Anyway. Today's guest is composer, songwriter and musician, Rich Chance who has new music out. Rich will be talking about the twists and turns of his career and the effects those twists and turns and social media had on his mental health. I've popped links to Rich's stuff in the show notes. So I urge you to go and take a listen, follow his updates on the socials. He's such a nice guy. And he and I have been trying to get coffee in the diary most of this year. So when we finally met albeit virtually, I thought it would be a good idea to hit record. By the way talking of links, you can find all the links to everything Music Room at musicroom.community. That includes things like the podcast website with all the podcast apps; ways to support the show with a one-off tip; the newsletter; the lovely Facebook group; Instagram; merch. Yes merch go and take a look. Uh, and there's a link for me there too, as I do all this myself and also for other podcasts. So there are links to my stuff to at musicroom.community. And thank you for listening. It would be a bit pointless making this show if no one listened to it. So thank you for keeping this train on the tracks. I really do appreciate it. Right before we head into the music room to chat with Rich here are some music stories. From moviemaker.com composer and Music Room guest Segun Akinola had never heard the story of Milli Vanilli when he was approached to score the biopic Girl You Know It's True. He was too young to remember how... hang on, feeling old. Uh, in the late eighties two exceptionally good looking dancer models, named Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were recruited by German dance producer, Frank Farian to lip-sync others' music and become an international pop sensation. Girl You Know It's True named for their irresistible breakthrough hit is the story of how Rob and Fab made their faustian bargain and how it all fell apart when they refused to lip sync anymore. The film from director Simon Verhoeven is the first major successful attempt to tell the story on screen and follow stalled efforts by the likes of Rush Hour director, Brett Ratner. Uh, now I don't know if you follow another Music Room guest, composer David Lowe on the socials, but he's been posting behind the scenes walkthroughs of his famous works. Uh, if you've heard his Music Room episode you'll know that David is responsible for the BBC news theme, the One Show, Countryfile, Grand Designs and so much more. If you're on Instagram, he's davidlowemusic, that's a Lowe with an E on the end. Uh, So check that out. And if you haven't heard his Music Room episode, put that in your queue. It's a great listen, and David is a wise and generous guest. And those are the music stories. Born into a musical family, Rich Chance learned the tools of the trade and the family business, before moving into a career of composing for TV and film. Credits include Agatha Raisin, Absolutely Champers, The Warren: Breakers Law, Jennifer Saunders: Back in the Saddle and loads more. After a more recent downturn in work opportunities and a spell in therapy, Rich is back with fantastic new music. The link for which is in the show notes. Without further ado, let's get into the Music Room to hear from the man himself.

Rich Chance, composer, songwriter, musician: welcome to the music room

And creative hack. Thank you very

to lead with that, but you know,

Pleasure to see you,

how are you today?

Yeah, I'm doing good. It's, uh, you know, we've got the sun is shining up here in Preston, which is usually rainy Preston. So that's, uh, that's one thing that's different and I'm feeling good. I'm very nervous about being on this show because I listen to this show and, uh, as I was just saying, while we were chatting, it's sort of like, ASMR for musicians. It's that sort of calming, you can lean in and get the information or you can lean back and just have the pleasant noise sort of go, you know, drift over you and, and just, so, you know, it sort of feels like I'm on a, I'm on some sort of famous TV show as we, you know, when we were growing up, so thank you for having me.

yeah, hopefully it will turn out to be just a nice chat that people can take things from if they want.

Well, you've been very calming and, uh, you've already done the neural linguistic programming on me to calm me down before we came on the air. So,

can I add that to my CV?

yes, absolutely. NLP expert.

All right. so Rich, if you'll allow, I want to read your Facebook post to promote your new single. Um, because I think it's important for people to hear. So it reads, I thought I'd never play another song of mine to another person last year. I was broke, creatively washed out, scared to express myself and a shadow of who I am right now. I'm still broke, but I'm alive in all the ways I'd ever want to be. Wherever you are on your creative journey, listen to the voice that guides you towards the light and pushes you forward. I think that's just such a beautiful statement and tells us a lot about how important this is to you.

Right. It's fantastic. I mean, I don't know who came up with those words, but I wish I was that guy. Um, you know, I think, um, It's this, this career and mine has been quite sort of, uh, it's taken lots of interesting twists and turns over the years, but, uh, I think we spend a lot of time being people pleasers and especially when you work in, I don't know what we call it these days, but applied music for, you know, film scores and television music and library music and that sort of thing, where you sort of honed your craft to a degree so that you're able to deliver quite high quality music quite quickly. Uh, and you're almost always doing it at the behest of somebody else, and you are almost always going to get a few rounds of notes and a few corrections on your creative process, and you know, I think there's a, there's a lot of shame around feeling, uh, hurt by those notes, or feeling insulted by the idea that, you know, your, your music is going to get corrected, but At the heart of us all, we're all approval seekers, you know, and we go into this and we thought somebody gives us a piece of film without any music on it or maybe they give us an idea of the sort of music they want us to create. And I think the first place that we go is into the ethereal and into the very personal to try and drag that out. You know, we might talk a good game as, as sort of tough composers that know that we're basically just, it's craft, craft, craft, none of it's art, you know. But you do go and visit that little place inside yourself where you're still a child and you're still, you know, you're still trying to sort of catch things from your subconscious and the ether to try and create something that's, that makes you feel great. And so then you have to immediately steal yourself for delivering that to somebody that is going to see it objectively and go, Yeah, can you make it more pink? I mean, you know,

in this case where you're creating songs for your listeners, your audience, it's not a commissioned thing. know, You're not getting notes back from a label. Joker Like Me, I might have to call it, might be one of my favourite tracks this year

oh, thank you so much

And part of that is, it was clearly a song that is personal to you and written from the heart. And, uh, it really shows. And I think those kinds of songs really do show you can kind of immediately sense the honesty can't you, from things like that

Thank you. I didn't quite realise that it was going to have that impact with, with people around me when I wrote it and I wrote it very quickly. I can't say that about some of my other stuff, you know, there's some of it, you know, you can might call it contrived, you might say it's, uh, just it's the particular style, but yeah, that, that one sort of came out in one writing session and was brutally honest and sort of wrote itself, which I know we hear a lot of writers say that about, about good stuff, don't we? Um, but it's true and, I suppose I've reached a place where I went away from social media for a few years. I went through, quite a significant period of unemployment and not having any money. We have a neurodivergent household and we home educate my son and my wife was doing a degree and we just hit a very difficult patch in life where, you know, it felt like we couldn't quite get out of the hole we were in. Um, happy and a loving household, but, but still that. You know, that sort of cloud hanging over your head of, is anyone ever going to hire me again? You know, and because I'm sort of socially awkward and not somebody that enjoys networking and also living in the North. So a lot of the networking stuff was sort of happening in London and that kind of thing. I also wasn't really able to mobilise to change that. So I sort of felt myself disappearing from the career as a, as a film composer and TV composer. And so that obviously had an effect on my mental health. And I withdrew from social media to kind of help that really, because as we're all very aware, the comparisons are there daily of people sort of filtering their lives in a way that says, Hey, I'm doing this new film. I'm in Abbey Road. I'm doing this. And I don't, I don't decry people wanting to celebrate their achievements. I think it's a great thing. And really, it comes down to your own personal filter with that stuff. If you are predisposed to immediately compare yourself to others in that situation, then, I mean, which I was, then it started to make me feel terrible, really, you know, because I thought, well, they're doing that, and I'm not doing anything, and I can't change that, you know, so, so I went away and didn't really go away to go and live in a cave or walk through the woods and pluck out some amazing songs or anything, I just, I just sort of thought, well, I can't fix this, I can't control it, so I'm just going to go away, you know. and so that and I also went into therapy. I've been in therapy before for various reasons because I've I used to run a family business and it was a big theatre show give

Oh, Oh, we're going to get into that.

Yeah. right? Yeah. But but for the sort of for the present day, I found a really great therapist by by virtue of the fact that Leanne, my wife was studying psychotherapy and she sort of had some great leads on the sort of therapist I should go for.

So what

And so,

the therapy?

um, it was this time around, it was more of a self development mission than in previous cases where it's been, um, perhaps because my mental health was poor at that time. You know, so, and, and there's been, I've had a few misses with it. I mean, if you go on the NHS and you feel depressed and anxious, they're going to tend to send you for CBT therapy. And I've got, you know, I'm not a psychotherapy expert and I'm not going to broadcast. You know, all, all opinions are held by the, uh, by the songwriter, composer, creative hack alone. But, um, it's more of a, it's more of a quick fix than getting to root causes. And so this time around, I went more into my childhood. I went more into trauma and shame and all these kinds of themes. Um, and by the end of that process, which was about eight months, I, I sort of felt like a different person. And I felt like I sort of felt less of a need to people please. And I felt sort of more like, the fear of failure, the volume on that had just really turned down. I sort of thought, well, what, you know, what am I actually afraid

That's a really. really good way of putting it. The volume of failure was turned down. I love that

Well, yeah, because it never, it never sort of disappears from your mind. But, you know, when you really break it down, a lot of the people, a lot of the sort of supposed critics that you're worried about, they're not in your life on a day to day basis anyway, they're these imagined sort of dragons, that are, you know, there might be that you've worked with someone who's quite judgmental or quite outspoken about the stuff that other people are doing. Oh, what are they doing that for? Why are they releasing songs and putting clown makeup on? What an idiot. You know, so I think what happens is you sort of build this, this wall around yourself and you start judging everything around you. Oh, goodness me, I couldn't possibly make a fool of myself in that way. I must, I must stay within the confines of what everybody expects from me. But those imagined ghosts and dragons and monsters, whatever you want to call them, they're not showing up for you when you need them. They're only showing up for you when you fear them, you know, and so, so I sort of, in the end, if I'm absolutely honest, I've done a few of the videos and written a few songs and I had the plan for the album and I was still bottling it a little bit, I wasn't, I wasn't able to sort of make the step to go, I'm going to post this and, you know, and I, you know, I think it might have been my wife or somebody close to me just said, you're just going to have to put it out there. Just do it. Just press the button and put it out there. And ever since then, it's sort of like the taps have been on and I can't stop making an idiot of myself. I'm quite enjoying it. I don't know if that, I'm actually not sure I've answered your question. That was quite a long, uh, long answer.

that's bang on. And, uh, I think you hit on something that affects any music creator, which is, is it ever good enough? What are people going to think of me and all that? And, uh, Yeah. If there's a way of turning the volume down on that, then, um, I think people would be more bold, more confident to

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we may touch on neurodivergence and I think that it probably exists, you know, in certainly in many people in the arts, because we see evidence of the hyperfocus and the magic that comes from it, um, but there's definitely a component of, overthinking the, the sort of results and the consequences of showing people the results. So, uh, you know, I mean, clear examples are, you know, you won't let go of the mix because it's never good enough. You know, you say, oh god, suddenly those dragons come back and they're like, somebody's going to hear that bass and they're going to realise I haven't properly controlled the subsonic frequencies and, you know, whatever it might be, and actually letting go of that stuff is, is not a musical process at all. It's a, it's an emotional process. And it, you know, uh, what helps me, what's kind of a positive trigger for me is I sort of think, well, I think I'm bang average anyway, so somebody, and somebody out there is not going to think this is good enough anyway. But what do I think? And who am I now? Let's meet me where I am now and let's go, well, actually, no, that's the best that I could have made that right now. So I'm going to put that out. And that goes for my writing, my mixing, the mastering of the tracks, the videos. The way I might look

And actually that's only half of it, isn't it? Because you're talking about the technical stuff because music is subjective. So, you know, the other half you have no control over anyway.

Exactly. I, I already know that at least 50 percent of the population don't like what I'm doing right now and I may never meet them and that would be great,

But it's not

you know, so

it?

no, no it's really not. It's not on all of the all of the attention and the let's couch it a little bit. I'm, I'm, I've not become a rock star overnight, but the, the traction I'm receiving and the nice comments that people are making about my music, it's all really, really lovely. And I'm very, very grateful for it. I also am pleased to report that I don't need it to continue.

Hey.

I am doing it for myself, uh, and that can possibly sound pretentious, you know, but it is where I'm at. And I think maybe that is what's resonating the most is that I'm not trying to And you can't please everyone, and if you try and please everyone, I'm not even sure that anyone would want to listen to that. What is that? That's some sort of Frankenstein music, isn't it, that nobody

But then it's, it's, I mean, it could be part of the Alanis Morissette song, couldn't it? If you try to please your audience. You it's going to make you less likable a moment. You stop caring and just do what you want to do. it immediately makes you more likable and relatable. I think

I hope so, yeah. I mean, I think I'm trying to please everyone on this podcast by speaking fast at the moment. Ha ha ha ha ha! Nerves! Ha ha ha ha!

They're just listeners. They don't, I'm sorry listeners. I didn't mean that.

You're not just listeners! Ha ha ha ha!

Friends of the show. Let's call them that. So let's talk about the actual music, uh, because you've released, is it four tracks so far,

Yeah, I released Picture Show in June, and then after that was Azalea Close. Uh, that was in July. And then you get in the theme here in August. I released a song called Schlong. I'm not coming out. All right. To say that on here, maybe won't tell everybody what that's about, but it was a slightly politically skewed, um, track and then the latest one Joker Like Me, which is the one that you've, you've just been referring to yet.

So you're releasing an album. You've mentioned these are the singles from the album. Are you going to keep releasing every month or is there a,

until I've, until I've completely spoiled the album.

Well, you know, it's, there aren't any rules when you're doing it yourself, are there? So you could release a single every month until it's an album and then release the album if you wanted.

Well, to be honest with you, I had sort of thought about not releasing an album and just releasing a track a month for the rest of my life because I've got so much material that I could probably finish off. And there's a great artist out there, if you've not checked him out, called Bill Wurtz. That's spelled W U R T Z. And he, I don't think he's ever released an album, everything he's done has just been a single song with a video. And he's an absolute hero of mine. He's somewhere between Beck and Steely Dan and just, he just blows me away. So I'd sort of thought about doing it that way. And then I don't know, maybe it's my age, you know, I'm 45. I can still remember the smell of vinyl and all the rest of it from the first time around. Um, so, you know, I think I've sort of fallen into my own nostalgic trap of saying, well, you know, let's, let's, let's make an album. But I suppose one upside of it is it can sort of be a document of where I was musically this year and I could box it off and move on

yes, absolutely. And that comes with its own narrative really, doesn't it? Because you're in a certain frame of mind at a certain space in time. So it's kind of a timestamp.

it is and it sort of gives you permission to change the tone if you wish to on the on the next installment in a way it?

Change your DAW template.

Yeah, just sit fiddling with the you know, the reverb on on the percussion group. Yeah, absolutely. But by the way, I'd love your stuff as well and you released an album didn't you? And I think I said it was, um, or if it wasn't an album, you've had a couple of tracks that are absolutely gorgeous, man.

thank you.

Yeah. Really lovely. And reminded me of Bill Frissell.

Right. Oh, yes.

I

you

to you at the time. Yeah. So, so definitely, if you're listening, check out

Oh, that's very nice. I'm, I'm bang in the middle of exactly what you've been talking about, which is I've got probably got enough for an EP.

Right.

But I keep doubting it. I keep, because it's songs I used to, you know, I used to be in a band and, did the circuit in London for a few years

Right.

songwriting was my thing, but it was a different life. And so to revisit that style, that songwriting skill set seems a little bit alien now.

Well, that is funny. You should say that. Yeah. Because it had been a while for me as well. And, uh, yeah, it's a muscle, isn't it?

but I'm glad you did it. So maybe that'll give me the confidence to just chuck it

Thank you. Well, I have to say, I don't really think, I mean, I've had friends over the years who have enjoyed my demos and stuff that nobody's heard of my songs, but I don't really feel like I had all that much to say until I was 45, and that's not an ageist comment because I do admire a lot of young artists, Ren in particular, I just find absolutely mesmerising to watch his journey. But me personally, I think having gone through some stuff and some stuff that was not great and some stuff that was really not great, um, it just feeds the creativity like nothing else. And so for me, now was the time. I don't feel like it was too late or, you know, It's all sort of come together for me at 45.

Oh,

don't know if that

it's that the name of the album?

The name of the album is actually Robot, Spider, Zombie, Dog, but I think I've said so many deep things today that it should be the name of the album.

Nice one. So. Are we ready to go back in time?

Let's go back in time, Gareth.

Insert sting here. Here we are back in time.

This is it. So dream, dream sequence. So yeah, so I grew up in a, in a musical family. From an entertainment background, my mom and dad were both theatrical agents. Uh, before that, my dad was a singer. He was managed by Don Black, who used to write songs with John Barry, of course. And, um, he was signed to RCA Victor and he was quite big in the world of the crooners. He worked with Buddy Rich and he knew people like Matt Monroe and Tony Bennett.

That's amazing.

So he had a very, very rich musical heritage, most of which actually took place before I was born. So, uh, by the time I sort of came on the scene, dad was, more involved in, uh, managing people and, you know, agency stuff and

for his crooning, when were you first aware that he had that history? Was he quite open about it or was it something he didn't talk about

I mean, I had to seek out the records. He wasn't someone that talked, wanted everybody to use quite a, he's quite shy, my dad, and I'd say he's an introvert, but he didn't really know it. So, you know, he would never shout about his achievements in that way, but the records were there when I was growing up and, you know, there were these records that had, you know, Christopher Gunning who was a great composer who we lost recently. He was one of the arrangers on the album. you know, these great things, London Symphony Orchestra, and I would put this stuff on and it was just magical. It was absolutely magical. The arrangements were, some of the arrangements were by a guy called Bob Cornford, who also you look him up, was an amazing arranger. Um, um, And so I was sort of transfixed by that on vinyl very early on, and the fact that my dad was on the cover, it's sort of, it's almost set, set things in motion in a, in a, you know, sort of hero's journey sort of fashion. It's like, well, your father is on the cover of this record, therefore you must be on the cover of a record, you know. but also, It was just quite natural. It was just something that, you know, show business chat was always in the house. It was always a case of, I understood the entertainment business very early on. I used to answer phones in the office. I would do the photo copying of the music for the session musicians. I would be the kid that had the flight cases for the band and I was lugging them into the theaters and all that sort of stuff. So I sort of grew up around the multidisciplinary. nature of it all in that way. And when I got to 16, I was in the middle of a performing arts course at 16 in Lee college, which is, Lee's a small place up here in the North, up in North. Uh, and. And dad had an opening for me on, the theater show to come and come work as a musician on it. And I, and I refused because I didn't want to be nepotistic. I wanted to be my own person. I wanted to be an actor at the time. And then he offered me money. And that was brilliant because I needed money. So, so I joined the show and, And that is kind of where my career was for, for quite a few years. I sort of, If I wasn't doing the keyboards, I was working on the tracks for the show. I was working on the, you know, sitting with the sound engineer and learning about sound or I was working with the lighting designer or I was, you know, all these various roles until the point where I sort of took over running the show in my twenties, which became quite a big operation. And we did shows for royal family. We did shows, arenas, you know, all sorts of stuff around the world. and it was during the course of that work in theatre that I started to branch out and do other things as a session musician. And, uh, I also worked with my sister. My sister was a, or is a, an actress and an improv performer who used to be with the comedy store players, if And she's very, very artistic. So I was a founding member of her improv group. So alongside, I started to work in doing quite a lot of improv stuff where we would, uh, make West End musicals up on the spot with audience suggestions, a little bit of that very, very similar to Showstoppers if anyone's been to Edinburgh festival, probably running as long, actually. So I had this, these sort of all these diverse areas of my career going on. And at a certain point, a film director came to film the show, and I got quite friendly with him and I gave him a CD. And it was just a CD of songs, and I didn't hear from him, and he just, I kind of forgot about it really, because it was, it was that time, that time in history when we gave people CDs. And, uh, and so, and then he got in touch with me one day, and he said, can you write music for a TV show. And I said, yes, knowing full well that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I mean, who wouldn't say yes, you know And he said, well, we haven't got a very big budget. Can you just give us a couple of tracks, you know, so it was 500 quid or something. Can you give us a couple of tracks, you know, and because I'd never done it before, because I was desperate to sort of, get involved in that kind of stuff. Because like everybody, yeah. I'd grown up listening to John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and all these, you know, just thinking, oh my God, how do you even do, who does that career? Who actually does that? You know? so I just gave it my all and I gave him two hours worth of tracks and I just sat, you know, just sat, just sat there, just, you know, furiously hyper focusing and what about this idea? What about that one? Do you want another one? Do you want another one? You know, Uh, you know, all just because it was flowing out of me and I thought, wow, somebody's giving me this incredible opportunity. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pass up on it. I want, I want to. And, you know, also, because I just didn't know what was right and what wasn't. I was just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what would stick. So from there, and that director's name was Will Yap. And he, he had previously worked with, uh, Louis Theroux and done a few great things. I've done up to date, I think I've done about 10 films with Will. And I did, straight after that, I did, um, a great show with Jennifer Saunders called Back in the Saddle for ITV, which was on primetime. And then a few more primetime things for ITV, and then one or two things for Sky, BBC, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, so it just, I was very, very lucky. I was definitely, you know, I've got to say to anybody out there who is, being tortured by the eternal question of how do you get ahead in this business? I was one of the lucky ones in terms of, you know, rubbing shoulders with somebody that was able to give me an opportunity and I'll never forget that. Um, now I do think that in order to keep that gig, you've got to learn how to do it. You know, somebody will open the door and say, here's a job. I don't think I would have necessarily got the other jobs if I hadn't continued to try and get good at it. Um, I, I, well, I mean, I don't know if I am actually any good at it, but nobody's found me out yet.

well, I think the proof is in the hiring, isn't it? You know, people have obviously hired you and you've done the job and you've been hired again. So I think that proves it,

and it's a strange thing because, you know, some of that is musical talent and a lot of that is, is playing all of the other games of life, isn't it? It's about, um, you know, communication skills. I mean, I only recently found out that I'm neurodivergent and I don't have an a, a formal diagnosis. There's about a 10 year waiting list for one, but having lived with a therapist and gone to a therapist, you know, they've sort of looked at some of the comorbidities and we sort of know where I fall on all of this. But I used to, I used to shake to the point where I couldn't speak if a production manager called me to discuss the fee for a TV

right.

I was, I was absolutely in fight or flight mode every time the phone rang, you know, and I sort of started at the end of the noughties. So people still rang you, you know, I don't think anybody rings you anymore, but, but the landline rang and

The

was at The end of it, you know? Yeah.

the landline.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it was that one thing, made me terrified. So what am I going to say? Cause if I, if I say I'm too much money, then, then I'm going to lose the gig, and you know, I think a lot of, emerging composers struggle with this stuff in terms of understanding their

a lot of, experienced composers struggle

lot of 45 year old creative hacks still,

the other day, um, I responded to a, a post that someone was looking for a composer. So I said, I'm a composer, emails were exchanged. And the first thing that they said was, what are your rates? And this was a little short film. You have enough experience to read between the lines that it's probably not going to be a very big budget. So I, I wrote back and said, look, rather than me just saying what I last got on a TV show, which will probably price me out of this project. Let's just have a conversation about what the project is and, what your current budget is for, for the music, because I can easily price myself out or, you know, I want to get it right. I'd rather do something because I like it for less, you know, didn't hear back. Just so well, you know, there's, I think there are, there are things to be learned on both sides.

It's, that's, that's really interesting. Yeah. And, and what it also teaches you is that you're not really in control of those decisions as much as you think you are. You're not going to ruin your own career by coming in too, too hot on the price in the way that you fear you might, you know, the game I play with myself is if I take this on, what is the minimum amount of money I'm going to need so that at nine o'clock at night on a Thursday when I've decided I've got no ideas and I don't even know why I said yes to this and I want to throw all my gear in the bin. I'm going to be able to tell myself, Oh, well, at least you got that, you know, and I'm, that might be a slightly pessimistic and cynical view of the whole process. But, and then there are other things where you get into a creative situation and it fills your cup so much creatively that you're not, you would just do it for free. And we, we have all had at least one of those where we've gone oh God, This lights all of the lights in my brain up, I'm being allowed to write the music I want, I, you know, everything's just working, I get on with the director, I can see where this is going, you know. But for those ones where you're sort of like, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure. That's usually my barometer. It's like, well, when it gets dark, what do you wish you'd said?

it's really tricky, isn't it? Because it's not like, um, being a composer in particular is such a, uh, a strange kind of, there are no job salary bands. There are no, you know, every project's different. You can't just apply to a job you see in the newspaper. Um, it's all to do with. Networking and who you know, and, and, and then the kind of Mexican standoff of negotiations of, well, how much do you want? Well, how much have you got kind of thing? And it's really difficult, really

Yeah. You sort of, you've sort of signed up to be an entrepreneur without realising it. Cause all you wanted to do was to

it's the last thing you want to do, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. I had one recently actually, where I knew that they didn't have much of a budget and I knew that they were also themselves finding it difficult to have the conversation, which I think is the benefit of age. Sometimes you can detect where it might be going, you know? But I, well, I just sort of said, because I didn't know what they had and I didn't really want to say what's your budget. Cause I knew what the answer was going to be. It was going to be. So I just said in general, 10 to 15 percent of the budget is sort of where, the composing fee would be

I like that.

If you can't quite make that, then let's have a chat anyway. But that, if that helps you, that's roughly where you should be looking. And then someone came back and went, we can't give you 10 percent of the budget. We haven't got it. And I went, okay, well, what have you got? And then blah, blah, blah. And

That's a really good way of kicking things off. Because it's kind of non confrontational, isn't it?

that was just going to say, it's like distancing language where nobody's actually, no shots were fired here. But we've, but we've discussed the ballpark of what we need to

like that, like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, at least I've been useful once. You're going to edit this whole thing down so that Richard Chance's negotiation

absolutely. Put it in the, uh, the episode title. well, Rich, I ask all of my guests to leave an item and a piece of advice for others to find in the music room. What item would you like to leave?

Okay. So I've thought about this. I need to reread it because I'm guessing there's going to be some outdated references in it. But a book that really meant a lot to me at various stages of my career. is Never Too Late To Be Great by Tom Butler-Bowdon. And that book is a sort of document of all of the people that succeeded at a late stage in their lives and at a late stage in the game. it's obviously got some, some capitalist overtones and it's got a few self help overtones, but it's still a great read for anyone that's thinking What am I doing? Should I be doing this? Should I be doing something else? So that's the thing I'd like to leave

That's fantastic. That'll go into the music room. and, so, what piece of advice would you like to leave?

Well, I think based on where I am now and what we've discussed, the best advice that I've ever sort of taken on board is to be authentic and to be yourself and to lead your own journey because, you can't do this for somebody else. You can't try and please the crowd. You have got to find the thing that lights you up and just do it. As they say, find what what you love and do it till it kills you basically. So I really, honestly, with hand on heart, everything that I've done in my career, all the times I've tried to get a leg up through networking or tried to make a wise business decision or shout about something I've done in my career, the happiest I've ever been is just following my own dreams and following my own lead. So that is the advice

Oh, talking about, following your own journey. You mentioned in a post about, uh, a little tour, maybe next year.

Yep. So, yeah, we've only actually got one date in at the moment, but I'm working on all the date sheets at the moment. So, um, my hometown of Preston has got this great original venue called the New Continental and I will be there on Friday, the 10th of January, 2025. And then following on from that, we're going to start putting dates with my band in for the rest of the year. Hopefully one a month. We've got a few festivals that we're looking at as the IPO festival in March, which is the international pop over through a festival, which takes place at the cabin in Liverpool. And it's a, it's loads of great. bands from the power pop and new wave sort of genres that people may not know about and i'm hopefully included on that so i will obviously be keeping people updated on my social media which has been rather busy of late

absolutely. I'll put your links in the show notes as well for people to find you. But for now it's been such a joy chatting with you, Rich. And, uh, thanks for joining me in the music room.

it's been amazing thank you so much mate

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