Yesterday I had a meeting at the Light House in Wolverhampton with a musician called Dan Whitehouse. I've known Dan for 7 or 8 years now and helped him out in the past when he fronted the band Sonara, who split in 2004. Since then Dan has continued to write and record music and is now in the process of recording a self-funded solo album. What I've heard so far sounds brilliant, and I'm glad he's not given up as it would be a crime for a voice like his to go unheard. His voice has always been his weapon-of-choice, and rightly so - it's superb.

We met up to discuss Dan's website and to develop some form of 'online strategy' for his upcoming album release. I'm really excited to be involved in this project, not only because I love Dan's music, but also because I get a real buzz out of working with independent musicians, and whilst they don't tend to pay as well as major labels do, I often find the work more personally fulfilling.

I think there's a lot of advantages to building a team (or support-network) of people around the artist to aid them with their release, and it seems a much more natural process than signing to a label who have staff that are told who they have to work with, whether or not they give a damn about the artist and their music.

So far Dan has assembled a group of musicians to help him record the album, (one of whom being my cousin Steve who plays in Deciphers), a producer (who I happened to attend college with), myself, and by the looks of it Steph, who will be taking some photos for him. We're still looking for someone who might be interested in getting on board to help design the album artwork, for which Dan has several concepts in mind. Of course this would be for little or no pay as Dan is funding the project himself, but if anyone reading is interested, leave a comment or contact me and I'll put you in touch with Dan.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the project progresses. You can check out a few tracks from Dan's upcoming album here.