Tony Cummings took singer/songwriter THROWBACK KID through 17 years of music making

2014 Pete James - 'All Or Nothing'
There's a song on 'All Or Nothing' called "Talk To Jesus" and it's one of my favourites. It's more of a reflective song. I set myself a little writing challenge: how would I write a song that would teach anybody who's not been raised in church about prayer? So it's quite a simple song and it literally is learning to do that very thing, talk to Jesus. To my surprise it got picked up by the New Irish Choir & Orchestra and they've done a beautiful arrangement of it. They flew me to Belfast, to the Waterfront Hall to see them perform it live a couple of Christmases ago. It's powerful.

2017 Throwback Kid - 'Flowing With The Feeling'
My family and I moved to Eastbourne and I just decided to let my pen flow and see what kind of songs came out if I wasn't purely writing for church. This set of songs came about family life and life by the sea. I had a lot of fun writing them and I thought it would just be a gift to my family. Then my pal Trevor Michael of 7Core label stepped in and all of a sudden the plan was to make it as a record. The song "Bluebells And Blossom" was sparked by the view from our house. We overlook a little bit of parkland. When the bluebells are out the place is just filled with them and I was musing on that view while noodling with the guitar and the next thing I'm thinking about is raising my daughter, and all the stuff of life she'll be exposed to and how am I going to help her navigate that as she begins to think about school and even beyond that. It was a fusion of that: how am I as a parent going to encourage my daughter to be who she's made to be and yet grow up with wisdom to navigate some of the stuff in life that's maybe a bit tricky.

There are a lot of things you realize you have to experience and watch your children experience. And you're trying to equip them with the best tools to work that stuff out and at the same time allow their character to flourish, without trying to mould them into who you want them to be.

Then there's the song "Darren". I wrote it about a homeless man. The whole thing about the homeless is important to me. Eastbourne in winter is like nowhere I've been, it's desolate, there's no one there, and the rain comes sideways. I was in town one night; I'd just picked up a pizza and saw this guy walking along the street. There was no one around, it was late. I thought he had a drum cymbal bag over his shoulder then I realised it was one of those terrible pop up tents. I doubled back around the one way system, had a chat with him and found out he was sleeping rough that night, didn't have any food. I did the obvious thing, anyone would do, and gave him the pizza. His eyes nearly came out of his head - a whole hot pizza waiting for him! His name was Darren and there are many more people like him in my town. People joked when we moved to Eastbourne that I was going there to retire in this quaint seaside place. At one level it is. It's very beautiful, picturesque and you can go up on the Downs. But on the other side it's got extreme levels of poverty, homelessness just like anywhere else. Some of them are in the park right outside my front door. Try and compute that when you're a songwriter and more importantly as a worship leader. The two have to kind of meet; there has to be an outcome.

The next track on 'Flowing With The Feeling' is "Remember The Day". This one is about my wedding day. What more can I say? My wife Nicky is amazing. I used to work for her parents, on their farm, back in the heady days of a certain pop band called Oxygen. We'd known each other for a lot of years, right through our early teens. It wasn't till much later. She'd just finished studying in Sheffield and was working for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire who incidentally have a great affiliation with Eastbourne. Long story short, we fell in love and two years later, life in Eastbourne.

I've worked for a great church, still working with the worship team, leading there. God's been incredibly faithful. My wife runs a project management company and I help with that. She helps me with my music stuff; we both look after the children and make life work. God's been good to us.

The song "Colour Of Love" was written for our second daughter, Summer, and she was born in Eastbourne. If she'd been born in Sheffield we might have gone with Misty or something like that. Summer is two. When she was born she obviously couldn't communicate but her eyes spoke volumes to me. The lyric is "Your eyes look to me the colour of love."

The final song on 'Flowing With The Feeling' is "Skimming Stones". This is probably my favourite song. It's a summer, turn it up loud track. It came about on the beach with my five year old, just teaching her to bounce stones on the sea. I made up a lyric there and then and recorded it on my phone. I didn't end up writing the song in full till almost two years later. I wrote it specifically for this project. I knew I had the hook line. I had a lot of fun writing it. Again, it's fun stuff that I enjoy. I wanted to share with my daughter and teach her and she can decide whether she does any of it or not.