Tony Cummings spoke to the Romford-born singer/songwriter and pop music lecturer DANNY COPE

Danny Cope

British singer/songwriter Danny Cope may not be a full time singer/songwriter in a conventional sense but in truth music fills just about all his time. He explains, "It's bizarre because I'm a lecturer, but I teach songwriting performance to pop music students, so I'm never away from music. But I don't often get the opportunity to play my own. I'm quite often helping students develop their own stuff, and helping them get opportunities to play theirs. I'm hoping this year to do a lot more of my own stuff actually, but the lecturing is nine to five, and then the songwriting performing is five until bedtime."

I'm talking to Danny at the Greenbelt Festival where a few hours earlier he gave a superb solo performance of his beautifully crafted songs, many from his latest album 'Colour Me In', to a packed audience at the Performance Café. Danny is no Greenbelt newcomer. He says, "I've been five times. Once I didn't play, once I came on work experience for Alliance Records, going back about 10 years. Then I played bass for Helen Hicks a few years ago, and then the last two years I played as me."

The singer/songwriter had planned to bring a band of accompanying musicians with him but that was not to be, his pick-up band subsequently got opportunities for paid gigs on the Greenbelt weekend. But as it turned out Danny's warm, emotive voice and quality acoustic guitar playing were more than able to grip the Performance Café crowd.

On his website Danny fills in his biography with the same kind of laconic wit he uses in his songwriting. "Born at the tender age of 0, Danny beat his twin brother out into the world to join his older brother and Mum 'n' Dad in the sunny dreamland that is Romford, Essex. With a Dad who plays the euphonium and a Mum who teaches music, it wasn't long until Danny was mastering the recorder. (One of those little black ones with the comfy little pouches)."

Danny and his family were members of a thriving charismatic fellowship in Romford where music seemed to permeate every bit of the church's activity. Remembers Danny, "Our church had lots of musicians, people like Dave Bilbrough, Dave Bryant, if you remember him, Ian Traynar wrote a few quite big songs, Bob Gillman who wrote 'Bind Us Together', they were all in my church. So I was surrounded by worship ministry from a very early age. And it seemed perfectly normal to me that people would get up and write songs and sing them. I've since discovered it's not quite as common as I thought it was. So I was always into music, but I never really wanted to be a musician, I always wanted to be a graphic designer like my dad. So my A levels were geared towards that. In fact my education was very bizarre. I did Christian theology, art and business studies, which signifies I didn't have a clue what I wanted to be at that point. I wanted to be a graphic designer, but my dad said it's quite hard to get a good job in graphic design. So I opted for a crazy idea and thought I'd go and do a degree in pop music, having not done GCSE or A level music at all. Up to that point I'd been playing a lot in church, playing bass guitar primarily."

During Danny's second year at university worship leader Dave Bilbrough asked Danny to play bass for him at various concerts and tours. Admits Danny, "I learned a lot from Dave about music, and also about being a worship leader and what it is to serve a church musically. I played with him for a long time - about six years I think it was, all over the country, which was great. We were touring but it was mostly at weekends, so I could be a student. Whilst I was at college I was learning how to be a pop music performer, and to have obviously some musical similarities to worship ministry, but very different, polar opposites when it comes to motivation. So that was a really interesting time, and it helped me I think clarify exactly what it was I wanted to do with my music, and what I wanted to be, and what I wanted to achieve. So that was good experience."

Despite his experience in worship ministry, Danny didn't feel a call to be a worship leader himself. He says, "To be honest, I was never really a worship leader. I was a musician, and I still am. I play in church on a weekly basis. I think it's really important to do that, to contribute your gift to your church community, and I love doing that. But in terms of songwriting, I have written some church worship songs. I had a couple that were published by Spring Harvest a few years back and I made a worship album. But I've now realised that I don't think that's really what I want to do. I try to write pop songs, pop love songs, but that have Christian values at the core. That's what I try to do. I remember my dad saying to me years ago, something along the lines of 'why can't we have more Christian pop songs as opposed to what the world gives us?' And why do Christian songs have to be very categorised as they're either a worship song or an evangelistic song? There's not much in the way of love songs written to God. I was talking to Geraldine Latty, who I've since played bass for quite a few times, and she asked me to describe my music. The best way I could describe it was worship songs for the car, which has kind of stuck with me. If it helps someone worship on their own, around the house when they're hoovering, or in the car, that's great. I don't think all worship songs have to be congregational."

Danny's first recording was released while he was still at university, 2003's 'Slowing Down'. "I was going through a phase of trying to get a handle on what it was I wanted to do with my life, as all students do. I'm now working at university and I see it regularly, every year. A bunch of students graduate and they have these 'what on earth do I do now?' feelings. I was going through that. 'Slowing Down' was a song about stopping, reflecting what it is God wants me to do now, and not rushing on with what seems to be the obvious choice at the time."

In 2003 Danny landed a job at Leeds College Of Music, an establishment he is still at being Course Leader at the Popular Music Studies Degree where he specialises in songwriting, production and performance.

After 'Slowing Down' Danny's next recording was 2003's 'The Way I See It'. The songsmith comments, "In terms of a recording project, I learned a lot. I was trying to achieve quite an expensive studio sound in my bedroom. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's tried to achieve that. And then I realised that I couldn't really. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, but I learned a lot about recording, and writing during that. To be honest, I'm not especially proud of that album, but I think there are a few good songs on it. 'Sandcastles' is on it and I still do that."

It was in 2006 that Danny released his worship project, 'A Month Of Sundays'. He comments, "I decided that I wanted to have a go at writing some songs for church. But as I said earlier I found that I wasn't really very good at it. I know my motivation was right; I was trying to write songs that people in church would be able to sing. But I kept finding myself leaning towards more involved pop songs."

Despite Danny's fairly low opinion of his worship songs, a friend of his, worship leader Leigh Barnard, played demos of some of Danny's worship songs to Phil Loose at Spring Harvest/ICC and as a result of that two of his songs, "Here Are My Hands" and "Thank You" ("probably the two least complicated on the album"), ended up in the Spring Harvest songbook and on the 2006 Spring Harvest live album. Says Danny, "I think they're still being sung in a few churches, but not a great deal."

Moving away from congregational worship, Danny began working on songs which were to become 2008's 'Colour Me In'. He speaks about that album: "That was where I took on the main lessons I guess I'd learned from the last two albums and stopped trying to achieve an expensive LA sound in my bedroom and went acoustic. I wrote the songs on an acoustic guitar, with quite involved acoustic guitar parts. I thought, I don't really want to hide all these with expensive production and I can't afford to do that anyway. This is just creating with an acoustic guitar. And then percussion-wise, I just went round my house hitting things, and sampling them to generate sounds; a kind of celebration of home recording really from a production perspective. And with the 'Colour Me In' songs I started to really get a handle on writing songs that were worship songs, but weren't congregational worship songs."

Danny is now sifting his material for a new album. "I've written 40-odd songs over the last couple of years for it. But one lesson I keep having to go through a lot with my students is that if you want an album of 10 songs, you need to write more than 10 songs, because it's likely that a few of them aren't going to be very good. And you need to get to the point where you can be honest with yourself about that. So I didn't want to rush it."

Songs which will definitely make the cut for the Danny Cope newie are the haunting slowie "All That Matters"; a song Danny wrote at the piano, "Fit You In"; and a song Danny wowed the Greenbelt crowd with, "Something Inside Your Name". Danny is still considering how to bring his new set to the public. "I don't know how I'll release it because obviously I'm an independent artist; I don't have any funding or a label behind me, or anything like that. It's an expensive business, so I'm thinking it may just be an internet release, which is obviously fantastic if you've got internet these days. You don't necessarily have to have the money to press them and distribute them."

One thing seems certain though. When the new album comes out there will be some top quality songs there.