I am a practicing chartered accountant who helps people build successful businesses and make sound financial decisions, and I like to write and play music to take a vacation away from myself. I've always enjoyed music that has a good lyric. The music of course has to carry the lyric, and the words have to move the melody forward, so there are technical requirements to a lyric, but it also has to say and mean something to me. So I've always been attracted to the singer songwriter, those individuals who craft the entire song. They are my musical heroes.

I'm also proud to say that my kids have picked up on my love for music. Both have become quite accomplished, and are now far more technically proficient than I, and I love it when we can play things together. And it is so cool to have them sing stuff I've written, out of the blue, while they're somewhere else in the house. Awesomely satisfying!

I first heard Chris deBurgh's classic Spanish Train album in 1977 and I was immediately hooked on his words and his music. His lyrics were stories, something not all that common, at least in the music I was listening to, and his music and voice were just the right vehicle for getting his lyric across. The following year I saw him for the first time in Toronto's Massey Hall, an intimate theatre with great acoustics, and a wonderful setting for Chris and his band to have some fun and share his music with us.

What Chris showed me was how to write a good story in the short time you have. Choose an eternal theme, love, good versus evil, loss, war...and show how that affects people.

Barcelona Bells is a love story told the way Chris de Burgh likes to write it. ...with plenty of "local colour". The story unfolds to reveal two lovers, at their favourite table overlooking the city, who pledge their lives to each other. Under moonlight, and to the sounds and sights of the city, and the pealing of cathedral bells, the two realize they are meant for each other, and they promise to become as inseparable a pair as Barcelona's Meditacio and Coqueta, the bull and giraffe, two sculptures that grace that city.

The recording is my first attempt at going beyond a simple tape deck. I recorded into a Tascam DP-1FX. Barcelona Bells was a direct line in with guitar, and a subsequent voice over. Nothing complex, no effects, simply guitar, voice and a song to sing.

Lyrics:

At our favourite table in the Casa Barcelona, drinking spanish wine
Listening to the cobla, watching the sardana, wandering through a beautiful night
The amaranta in your hair is so lovely it shows me you could challenge any flower's delights
And I realize, that now and forever, I am yours and you are really mine
At our favourite table in the Casa Barcelona, drinking spanish wine
From the Tibidado Barcelona's a sight down the Collserola slopes to the waterside
Follow down Las Ramblas past the monastery where friars knelt behind their walls
And the barefoot Augustins heard the call of the Lord in the Santa Monica bells

Chorus
Now I hear you calling in the evening breezes blowing into the west off the coast
Your voice is whispering softly and it's saying that I love you most
So we raise our glasses to the Barcelona bells that called those monks to prayer
And say we'll be together, forever and ever, and say we found each other there

At our favourite table in the Casa Barcelona, drinking spanish wine
Like Meditació and Coqueta, the bull and giraffe, a pair together through life
Promises we make to the rhythms of life, along our boulevard we dance through the night
And I realize now and forever I am yours and you are really mine

(Chorus)

At our favourite table in the Casa Barcelona, drinking spanish wine
Listening to the cobla, watching the sardana, wandering through a beautiful night

Outro
Love's all around carousing
So deep into the night
Barcelona bells are pealing
Calling to the moonlight
Joining spirit's more than willing
To turn our voices to the sky
And sing out songs of loving
As the moon is passing by