Hello Steemians! I'm excited to join your community.

My name is Al Southgate, I've been writing, recording and performing songs for most of my life, I love to entertain and move people, I try to respect the audience as much as I respect my own creative integrity; hence my interest in pop music - in the classic sense of the term. I love to sing, play guitar, tinker with synths, record, mix and perform.

My latest track

For a number of years I have worked alone but increasingly, I'm collaborating with others. Norwich UK has an excellent music scene and I'm lucky to have some extraordinarily talented friends. I play synth and sing backing vocals in the band Birds of Hell; I record and perform my solo material and I've also just started a band called Battle Schultz with a long time friend and collaborator Iain Lowery (I'm hoping he'll join Steemit soon).

I finished my first album "The Sadtowns" in 2003, since then I have produced another album "Pimp Your State Of Mind", which is as yet unreleased. I'm currently working on a number of recordings that I'm hoping to organise into an album, or series of EPs in the near future.

In 2009 I embarked on a project to write a song a week for a year, blogging about the process as I went. I'm currently curating and re-releasing those 52 songs on my new website.

I'm also part of a group called One Month Album, where - you guessed it - the idea is to write and record an entire album in just one month; I've done two so far and I'm planning to do another next month (February 2018).

Here's my One Month Album from March 2015

I am an avid listener to podcasts and I've made a couple of attempts to start one of my own, I'm still trying to figure out the right formula.

I also have an interest in graphic design, I love designing album covers, posters for events etc. I'm considering trying to develop those skills and tout my services, it's great to get paid for doing things you enjoy!

Speaking of which, I'm also a teacher; I offer private lessons to individuals and groups for guitar, songwriting, music tech, ukulele and singing. I'm in the early stages of developing online courses and ebooks relating to the teaching approaches I have developed over the last 15 years. Until recently I was home educating my two youngest daughters, I'm passionate about education in general and have been studying the Trivium Method of Critical Thinking on and off for the past 10 years or so, I gave a talk about it that's up on Youtube.

I live in Norwich, in the east of England with my partner of 12 years and my two youngest daughters, I also have an older daughter from a previous relationship that I see regularly. I try to keep fit and healthy, I'm obsessed with callisthenics and I'm just getting into kettlebells - I've never set foot in a gym!

Now the gritty stuff...

My desire for musical success has lead me on a journey of self discovery. I've spent much of my life faltering, second guessing my creative instincts and witnessing opportunities fade in the face of self sabotage. I've explored a number of philosophical and cultural avenues in an attempt to figure out what is "wrong" with me and why I have not been able to attract the value I desire for myself. Of late and with the help of my great friend, mentor (and introducer to the world of Steemit) @native-one, I feel like I have a solid enough answer: I've been living a life feeling guilty about my masculinity. There are a host of reasons for this that I won't go into here - though I'm very interested in connecting with others over these issues, particularly on this platform. Suffice to say, my mental and emotional health, my relationship with my partner, my intimate relationships with women in general, my children and, even the ways I relate to my self have been problematic to say the least. But, once I began learning to embrace and feel proud of what it is that makes me a man, all aspects of my life have started to improve dramatically. Let me be clear: I am human individual foremost; second, I am man with all that that entails. If you show me respect and offer your time and attention, I will be your friend. I seek to connect at the level of human individual, taking into account the many identities that stem from that principle both natural and contrived, chosen and compelled. I falter often in these roles but now I am enjoying a feeling of possibility as we enter the new year. I want to use Steemit as my means of making solid connection with others across the world, while I attempt to deepen trust and mutuality within my own immediate community. Both of these things terrify me!

Aside from sharing my love of music, I'm very keen to help others. I have accrued an enormous amount of knowledge and insight over the years and it's only now that I feel I can put it to good use. I have been involved in trying to create community, initially as a means of dealing with my own despair and sense of lack (not a recipe for success!) but now it's clear that I am, at least approaching a sense of self assuredness and integrity, I feel the time has come to help "birth" community once again. I really want Steemit to be a digital version of this and I plan to invest as much time and thought as I can spare into helping this community become a vibrant, robust and "true" social media platform, one that both respects and seeks to harmonise with Natural Law; maybe that is not possible. It's damn well worth a try though!

See you around. :-)

Here are the other places you can find me online:

http://alsouthgate.com/

http://songhacks.co.uk/