Track By Track: Trev on his Monk Days EP

I got the name Trev from my late father who - apart from being my Dad - was also my best mate, and the person who had the biggest impact on me loving music. It made sense that the name should be a homage to him, even when he was ill he’d still try to make it to every gig of whatever band I happened to be in at the time. Total legend. Releasing the album under my own name just never felt quite right to me.

I’ve been playing in bands since I was a teenager but Monk Days is my first solo release. All of the songs on the record have been written in the last couple years and come out of a period of time where I’ve felt pretty lost. I think the temptation in those times can often be to just try harder, or to put on a better show, because we’re all terrified of being honest about what we really think and feel. It’s taken me a long time to realise just how toxic that is. I think we can spend most of our lives trying to avoid admitting that we need help, that we haven't got life sussed and that, ultimately, we just want real love without all the bullshit and conditions. The album in part is about that. I just wanted to write something that was honest. Oh yeah, and I also applied to join a monastery once…

Prologue (Liminal)

This track quite purposefully sets up the rest of the album. One of the other big themes on the record is about how many of the situations/times in life that seem most disruptive or contradictory can also be where the most beautiful stuff happens. Liminal space is all about the space in between two things; two places, two times, two ideas, two convictions. It’s often uncomfortable and disorientating but I’ve discovered that it’s regularly in that space where true life is found, where the really important stuff grows and where we can encounter the Divine.

St. Francis

You’d never guess it but this song is about a dude called St. Francis - St. Francis of Assisi to be exact. It came out after reading a book that my friend Matt lent me which again, believe it or not, is based around St. Francis. As well as being ‘Trev’ I’m also a trainee vicar in the Church of England, and the life of St. Francis has had a big impact on me over the past couple of years. He was a person who seemed to put aside those grandiose ideas of fame or importance and just gave himself in the service of others, the poor, the sick, the lost. It’s kind of about coming down from the pedestals and platforms that we build for ourselves and just getting back to simply loving one another. Especially when there’s no one around to applaud us.

Middle Man (feat. Wesley Triffitt)

I wrote this song with Wes Triffitt who is one of my best friends in the whole world, and also one of the best musicians and songwriters that I’ve ever met. Wes, along with Dan Lucas who produced the album, was super involved in the whole recording process as well. This song was written at a time when Wes was preparing to get married and I had just gone through a really difficult break-up. The paradox of our two situations threw up loads of questions around certainty, love, freedom, commitment etc. It’s a right stream of consciousness kind of affair.

Wires

Wires is about not feeling good enough to be loved and being loved anyway. It’s a song about God, about grace, about unconditional love. That no matter what we’ve done, how shitty we feel or how confused we are, we’re totally and irreducibly loved.

Tinkerbelle!? My Dad Used To Call Me Tinseltown

This by far my favourite song title on the album and I didn’t even come up with it. It was something that my fiancé Kate said when we were having a conversation once. I think I might have called her Tinkerbelle and this was her reply. It obviously had triggered some childhood memory for her and I remember saying ‘that’d be a great song name!’. The song itself is all about memory, the things we remember, how we remember them and how they spill over into our lives, both happy and sad and in-between. As soon as the song was written I knew I had to call it this, it just made sense.

The Things I Hate

This song was originally written at a time when a few mates and I had decided to make a pact to stop watching porn. We had all come to the conviction that porn was a pretty destructive industry and was also damaging us and the people around us. Despite this, all of us, at one point or another, failed. This song was written out of that and is basically about the tension between what we resolve ourselves to do and what we actually do and the self-hatred that can ensue as a result. The song ends with condemnation being confronted by grace and love, that brushes us off, puts us back on our feet and tells us to keep going.

Epilogue (Prodigal)

This song is based on the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. The story is about this son who demands his inheritance from his dad so that he can leave, turn his back on his family and go and make it on his own. The story goes on to say that after a while it all goes wrong for the son and he ends up wanting to come home but is convinced that his father wouldn’t want anything to do with him. When the son makes it home however, his dad has the exact opposite reaction and runs to hug him, throws a party for him and is just happy that he’s come home. The song is kind of a re-telling of that story, reflecting on a bunch of my own experiences and how I often see a lot of myself in the story of that son. It’s about real love.