Former head reaches songwriting finals (From Watford Observer)

Former head reaches songwriting finals

5:40pm Friday 12th September 2008

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A former headteacher has traded classrooms for chord progressions and lessons for lyrics to strike gold in a songwriting contest.

Months after leaving his 12-year post at Maple Cross JMI School, David Evans has beaten around 6,000 people to reach the semi-finals of the UK Songwriting Competition.

Singing Gold Over My Shoulder into a handheld voice recorder before completing it with chords, David, 55, later had his demo “brought to life” by a studio’s session musicians.

Looking up to artists including Goldfrapp, Leonard Cohen and Regina Spektor, David said he was not seeking to be a successful musician but enjoyed writing lyrics.

Despite describing his competition entry as a simple love song, David says its title and words were inspired by an 18th Century painting by Nazario Nazari, discovered during a trip to the National Gallery in London.

Trips to the gallery and a chance to focus on his songwriting hobby are two reasons David said he was revelling in early retirement and life outside education.

He said: “There’s so much you can do when you’re not working. It’s great to have time to get the songwriting going. A lot of things have changed in schools in the last few years. There’s much more bureaucracy and paperwork. I most definitely won’t miss that.”

Although happily giving up his full time job, David will continue to balance the songwriting with occasional jobs as a visiting tutor in the University of Hertfordshire.

David lives in London Road, Harrow on the Hill. He has three children, Tom, 24, Alexa, 22 and Joanna, 26.

Following the competition success and his song’s steady rise up the radio playlists, David intends to find local bands to play his songs.