Song For My Animal About

Hello fellow animal lover. I’m Andy Starkey and I’ve been making up daft songs about my own pets, soft toys, members of family since I was about 10 years old. At 16 I took up guitar and bass and then for the last 10 years I’ve been working as a professional live musician in my indie rock wedding band ‘Punch The Air’ and by 90’s tribute band ‘Britpop Reunion’. I’ve always had a knack for writing super catchy melodies. Have you ever said to yourself “I’d like a song for my animal”? If so you’ve come to the right musician.

Very recently while I was walking my dog Pepper in Pipe Hall Farm a dog called ‘Ralph’ had gone missing over there. My partner and I helped search for him but he couldn’t be found anywhere. Later on while I was walking back I actually met Ralphs owner who was very distraught and said I would help her out by taking her details and would put up a post on a lost and found group I run on Facebook to help her out. We kept in touch and later that evening I was glad to hear that Ralph had been found and so I wrote a song there and then about what had happened to Ralph that day. Unbeknown to me this would be the main inspiration for a new musical endeavour.

 

 

 

I decided it was time I got back to my roots writing songs about animals and such like and came up with “Song For My Pet” as who wouldn’t want a theme tune written about the quirks and favourite things their cherished furry friends get up to?

I’m very old skool when it comes to lyrics and melody as I want to create ear-worms the whole family can sing together for all time. I love simple catchy melodies and un-complex describing lyrics. I love 60s/70s/80/90s kids tv theme tunes as they were always so catchy and you could tell what the show was going to be about just from the intro music itself. TV shows like Dogtanian, Denver The Last Dinosaur, Willy Fog, Fraggle Rock etc have THE BEST theme tunes as far as I’m concerned. I also enjoy going further back to the Golden years of kids TV with Brian Cant being a huge inspiration to me. Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley songs have shaped my life and now also shape the songs I write for people’s pets. I’m currently working on two songs about dogs, so you should see them online soon.

I’ve written many songs about people’s dogs, cats etc and very recently a peacock escaped from a farm and was roaming the streets of Lichfield. I’d been following “Peacock Watch” for a few days online and loved to see how people were so fascinated by him as it really is such a bizarre thing to see a peacock on someone’s drive/roof or even on their car, especially in the UK.

Then when I saw local artists Kate Flynn‘s superb drawing of “Pete The Peacock” (Featured as the first image in my video below) I knew I had it in me to write a song for Lichfield’s favourite feathered friend. (One artist inspiring another is what art is all about isn’t it). The song practically wrote itself over a few hours and a run around Lichfield in my head. I decided it would be even more fun to record the music using my ukulele, and the dum-de-dum/whistle solo just adds that extra daftness. The song and video have done really great online and I hope it inspires other budding artists to try to create something about Lichfields newest mascot too.

 

I guess what I’d love more than anything else would be to be commissioned to write an actual theme tune for a kids cartoon one day. Who knows what the future holds eh?