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DON PASSION

Musician & Songwriter

Find Your Passion.  Be Yourself. 

When one door closes, another one opens.

(That last one's not just a quote - it's also what happens when you buy cheap kitchen units)

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DISCOVER YOUR PASSION

Like many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I learned to play a few chords on the guitar and started jamming with my school friends in smoke filled attic conversions.  We experimented with a fairly broad selection of genres, however I never expected that my first semi-professional gig would be in the basement bar of the Douglas Hotel on the Isle of Arran with a church folk band.

(…yes - you heard that correctly).

​While I was at Uni, somebody managed to crush my guitar during a failed gymnastic routine and so I was temporarily instrument-less.  I managed to find an old piano in the students’ union and discovered that the basic guitar chord progressions worked just as well on the keys - particularly if you have big hands.

 

I also found that music and numbers had a very obvious connection for me.  My mum was a maths teacher and so being good at sums was fairly non-negotiable. I ended up studying maths & statistics at university which taught me two things; (1) The chances of me making any money from being a musician were extremely slim and (2) the chances of me winning the lottery were even slimmer.

So I ended up in a non-musical career but took every chance I could to get the party started and kept my piano repertoire regularly refreshed during thirty-odd years in the tech sector.  During that time, I got the chance to perform at corporate events in Boston, Paris, San Francisco & Vegas - and many conference hotel bars fell victim to some unscheduled late-night singalongs. Ah well - art for art's sake...

And then COVID arrived.  Lockdown presented an unexpected opportunity to get back in front of the piano and I started to play around with rewriting the lyrics to some timeless classics in an attempt to bring a little more humour to the world.

 

My YouTube send-ups seemed to strike a chord with the self-isolating public which resulted in some unexpected (but very welcome) requests to write songs for birthdays, weddings, retirements and other special occasions.  I still do a bit of that, but I’ve also gone back to playing & recording some more “conventional” piano numbers which you can hear on Spotify or Apple Music.

 

I'll have a go at most stuff, however my biggest influences will continue to be Elton, Billy Joel and ABBA as they have always had an uncanny ability to find the less common harmonic progressions.  Mind you, so did Eric Morecambe...

...Oh - and the stage name?  That goes back to the early 90s when Lyz & I were at a friend's wedding and were amused to see that the singer's name was "Ken Love".  Too much of a convenient coincidence? ...Hmmm - let's just say that the following week Don Passion burst on to the scene, and the rest (as they say) is mystery...

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CONTACT

Ever thought about having a song written for that special occasion like a wedding, birthday, anniversary or retirement? Why not get in touch for a chat...

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