May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

Interview with gribbles

“Challenging yourself is usually a good thing – it changes things.”

NHAM: Na’then our Graham. First a quick reminder that you’re playing live on TIBtv for NHAM in Concert on Thursday May 21st at 7pm UTC! Yes. Can’t wait. Now then, more about you…

This is becoming quite a theme for a first question of a NHAM interview but you’ve got to tell us where the lovely name comes from?

gribbles: It’s a very old nickname. In the early 90s I was in a band called “The Guild of Thieves”. During a rehearsal one of the other chaps just referred to me as ‘Gribbles’ – and it stuck! So, around that time online stuff was starting to grow and when I needed a handle, I just used gribbles. Without thinking, really. By the time I got round to doing music solo, I just used gribbles because it was my nom de plume online. I just carried on.

To be honest, I’ve had a few second thoughts. I sometimes think it’s a bit daft – it sounds like something you would call your pet hamster. “Look at little Mr. Gribbles running on his wheel. He’s so cuuute!”. I kind of wanted something a bit….well, cooler. I look at other artists names with envy, sometimes. But it’s established now I think. I think it’s here to stay – though I may do other side projects under a different name…

NHAM: You streamed a live set across the Fediverse just last month via @thisoccasionalsociety’s 3rd W3dn3sda5y gig, at the end of which you teased that this upcoming gig for us is going to be completely different and that the writing of it would take place in the month between the two shows. At the midway point of that in-between month how is the new set coming along?

gribbles: Well. What can I say. It’ll be an interesting night. 😉

I have a set, which is 80% stuff that hasn’t really been heard before outside of my spare room. There’s some work-in-progress tunes I’ve knocked into shape to do live and the intro/outro are brand new – written for the session.

It was a bit of a gamble. An experiment, even. On two fronts – can I put something together in about 5 weeks around the usual work/family stuff, and can I do a more long-form piece unlike the stop/start nature of my usual set where I load each tune up and have a bit of a natter in between songs.

At the moment, there are definite “this one stops and the next one starts” transitions – what I do is write tunes, so there’s no getting away from that. So not quite the long-form improv I had in my head – but I think it works. I’ve still work to do, but it feels like I have time to get things performable so 1) folk enjoy it and 2) I don’t embarrass myself. Too much.

This is me living my ‘Say Yes’ philosophy. Just over a week ago I was wondering what I’d committed to, but like I said in the 3rd W3dn35day live stream – I’m not really your slick, seasoned entertainer. I’m a bit more rough & ready, and I kind of like that. Harks back to the punk/post punk DIY, get up and have a go ethic I grew up with. There may be some bloopers, but it’s all part of what makes gribbles gribbles.

NHAM: As well as the live stream gigs from Studio Gribbly you try to play live out in the wild world too. Have you got any real world dates coming up?

gribbles: No – unfortunately not. I was aiming to do some EMOMS (I did Hull last year and loved it), but I’ve simply not got my act together. I will have a CD coming out at some point, so there’ll probably be some live stuff around that time. But not sure when that’ll be yet…

NHAM: You describe your music as downbeat pastoral meanderings, though to upbeat dad-dancing workouts, which is a pretty-good (if perhaps somehow slightly self-deprecating) summation, because you have some gorgeously, nostalgic quintessentially English (almost-Constable-esque) tracks; some proper ravey (Raven!) tunes and everything in between. When you’re writing what is it that makes you decide, ‘I’m going to write this sort of song today’. Does a certain feeling or mood or source of inspiration point to a certain style or do you consciously try to take things in a specific direction no matter the theme?

gribbles: Oh gosh. I was chatting to someone about this just the other week, and it was quite a long conversation. But I’ll try to distill things down.

I rarely sit down with a view to writing something specific. I have done a couple of commissions for theme tunes for a local playwright, which have been written to a brief – but for my own stuff I tend to just sit and wibble and wait for something to grab me. I have so many 8 & 16 bar scribbles, it’s not funny!

But that’s very me – I’m quite an ‘in the now’ person. So I like to see where things wander off to, try random stuff out and then I’ll latch into the mood of the piece when it shows itself and grow it out from there. It just so happened that I went though a phase of that being quite pastoral, bucolic. I love the reference to Constable – if I’m approaching a musical analogy to his paintings, then I’m doing something right! The Echoing Green ticks that box, I think – on reflection that one probably was one where I was gong for a vibe.

So I’m regularly reviewing my musical scribbles, and sometimes they start to group together and then I’m developing things more as a collection.

But yes, I do often think of doing a tune inspired by a certain song or style. I have a playlist on Apple Music called ‘Inspirations’. I’ve no real interest in, for example, doing something that sounds like Boards of Canada – but I do think “What would a gribbles tune sound like passed though a BoC filter. Or Elbow. Or Blancmange. etc.”.

But time is short – like many folk doing this sort of thing, I fit it in where I can – which means I tend to focus on quick(ish) results. but I do wonder what I’d create if I had more, longer sessions to do this in. One day.

NHAM: Tell us about your musical history. Have you always made music as gribbles? Had you previously played in bands? What/who have been big influences on you as a musician?

gribbles: I can remember music from when I was small. There are tunes from the late 60s/early 70s when I was very young that simply reach into my head and flip some sort of emotional/nostalgic switch. But I remember even then realising that some tunes did things when you heard them and others didn’t. So I think I had an appreciation of music’s potential influence/effect from a young age.

But I didn’t start buying records until I was 11 or 12. The first record I bought was Take a Chance on Me by Abba. By the way, the b-side to that has a bass line that slaps. I keep meaning to do a cheeky sample of it.

My early obsessions were Gary Numan (no surprise there) and The Stranglers. I remember seeing Are Friends Electric? on TOTP, and being captivated. The love of The Stranglers came though a friend who introduced me to them. So I had this weird parallel thing happening – synth and 80’s synth-pop/New Romantic on the one hand and Punk/post punk on the other. I was, and remain, a huge Crass fan.

But I was never really bothered about stereotyping. If I liked it, I liked it.

Since then my musical tastes have meandered far and wide. But it’ll take up too much space to do that list here – but honourable mentions across almost 50 years of listening to music go out to Cocteau Twins, Roy Harper, Global Communication, the The, Underworld, REM, John Grant, The Chameleons (I’m already regretting starting this list – too many won’t get a mention…)

In terms of my own stuff, I was in my first band in the mid/late 80s. A few friends who knew each other though a Methodist Church Fellowship. I sang. And posed.

My first ‘serious’ band was called The Guild of Thieves – 1990ish. I played keyboards, occasional guitar and BV. Even though I say so myself, we were good. The main chap was a cracking songwriter and we certainly had a sound. Folk said we were like REM/The Waterboys/that kind of ilk. But we remained landlocked in a market town in Lincolnshire and fizzled out after a few years.

Life took over and whilst still keeping my hand in, making music was put on the back burner. I picked up music again in the late nineties with a big beat/found samples solo album that drew comparisons to Bentley Rhythm Ace (it’s on Bandcamp until I get famous enough for lawyers to take in interest), and into the 2000s doing Underworld inspired semi-improv live electronica as part of the duo Aztechnology. Aztechnology morphed into quiddity who produced tunes in a mix of styles from ambient, through to big thumpers – think Fluke meets The Black Dog and you’re in the ball park.

Then in the mid-2010s I started doing more of my own stuff – and here we are now.

NHAM: You’ve already touched on something you spoke about in your last gig that really struck a chord with us: adopting the ‘just say yes’ attitude. For all those artists out there who make great music but have never played live, tell us again how channeling Richard Branson can be a force for good!

gribbles: I kind of regret the Richard Branson comment – not sure he’s a good role model. But he did have a ‘just say yes’ philosophy in his early days that did him no harm…

For me, though there is a lot of good stuff that has come out of the egalitarian approach to creating and distributing music that modern technology has fostered, I think it’s quite easy to settle into comfortable habits. Or may be safe habits. BITD, you used to have to be a bit cheeky – a bit lairy even and put yourself about to get your stuff heard. It’s different now with so much stuff being done online. I found myself drifting along quite happily, writing, releasing, have a natter with like minded folk – but felt I needed to give something a bit of a boost. I hadn’t played live so, decided that would be it.

Challenging yourself is usually a good thing – it changes things. You learn and you inevitably grow. I started playing live again at 58 – the first time I’d ever played solo. I’m definitely better for it. I think the key thing for me was I’d committed to other folk to do things – so it was hard to back out. 😉

NHAM: You have an extensive back catalogue with plenty more to come. You’re currently working with a record label on an album of Lincolnshire dialect tunes. What’s that all about?

gribbles: Another thing I wanted to do was release through a label. Self-releasing is great, and a wonderful thing to be able to do. But having someone else release your stuff is a nice affirmation that you are Doing Something Right – and can get your stuff into of some new ears.

I know a few folk who run labels, a few friends who have been released on labels – but I really wasn’t sure how to approach it.

Anyway, I was mooching about on the internet thinking this over again, and I stumbled across a label operating out of Lincoln, for local artists – Yellowbelly Records. A boutique label that looked to be doing well in the county. The acts on it weren’t quite like me – more traditional – but I though what better label than them to perhaps put out some of the Lincs dialect tunes. I chanced an email, expecting a polite ‘no thanks’ (because of my style/synths), but got quite the opposite reaction! We’ve met up, and there’s definitely stuff we can do – we’re starting with an album of dialect tunes and then we’ll take it from there. I’m really looking forward to seeing how that develops.

NHAM: More recently you’ve been putting out videos on @peertube in place of Youtube and using sites such as @mirlo, Bandwagon and @jamcoop to publish your music. Why have these platforms become important for you?

gribbles: I’ve always been on the lookout for alternative ways of getting music out there. I’ve dipped my toe into quite a few projects that didn’t really go anywhere.

The music industry has seldom favoured the artist, and blame my old DIY punk/post punk leanings for liking folk who strike out on their own.

Bandcamp is great and has been a real force in opening up the market for indie artists and fans – but it does feel like there’s a Sword of Damocles hanging over them. I had a bumpy experience with Songtradr (who own Bandcamp), so we’ll see.

But in the meantime, it’s great to see projects that are community owned or decentralised really gaining momentum. I love the model and the ethos behind them – and anything that ends up being fairer for artists and fans has got to be good. I’m happy to be a small fish in a smaller pond, than lost in an ocean of noise.

And because these are smaller projects, often still run by folk who love the music and the scene, you start to get proper innovation. Not only in the way they are run, but also in features – bandwagon.fm federating releases out to The Indiebeat FM radio, for example – that’s exciting and has huge potential. But the big players simply wouldn’t do that sort of thing – they’d see it as dilution, as a weakness – when it’s a strength.

I also love the fact that you can chat to the devs and support them/help test and suggest features.

It so much more human, don’t you think?

NHAM: Absolutely! You say you’re open for commissions and collaborations? What sort of thing can you offer and how can people get in touch about them?

gribbles: Up for ‘owt really! If anyone would like a bit of gribbly fairydust sprinkling on their project, just get in touch ans we’ll have a natter. Email/DM on Mastodon/whatever (links below).

NHAM: Great to talk with you gribbles! We are very much looking forward to the upcoming gig!