A Light in the Dark is an honest account of my songwriting journey from the very beginning as a young man with nothing but an old guitar and a fistful of half-baked songs to performing live on TV & radio & securing national press in both the UK & Hong Kong,  receiving BBC Radio airplay & releasing my debut album, Let's Join Hands on the 30th April, 2021.

DEBUT EP: 
https://sambarbour.hearnow.com/hope-love-never-dies

DEBUT ALBUM: 
https://sambarbour.hearnow.com/lets-join-hands

In today’s episode, I am going to look at the same processes and story behind song two from the EP - Caledonia Dreaming which is a highly personal song and marks a clear turning point in my approach to songwriting.  Caledonia Dreaming was the first of my songs to gain radio play in the UK and also the first song to be downloaded by a paying customer. It also went on to win the best singer-songwriter song award at the 2020 Spring Clouzine International Awards and stayed in the Hotdisc Top 40 Country Charts for twelve weeks peaking at no. 23. As with Episode 2, I hope you can take away useful information about the process of writing a song, preparing your song for a professional recording, working with a producer in a studio and releasing your first song online. 

Of course, I made lots of mistakes along the way but I see these all as useful signposts to becoming a professional songwriter – something that I continue to strive towards and I sincerely hope they can aid you too. As they say, failure is the mother of success. Let’s start.

Thank you.

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