I’m a professional chef. I was also a professional musician from my mid teens through to my early 20s. I started playing live gigs when I was 15 in Ayr, where I’m from.
I always looked up to my dad, he was a great guitar player, and got me an electric guitar straight off, for my 13th birthday, mainly so that I wouldn’t ruin any of his expensive guitars.
I took to it straight away. I would get up two hours earlier every morning so that I could practice before I had to leave for school.
I got kicked out of music at school because I was fidgety and couldn't really concentrate in class.
One of my favourite moments ever was going back to my secondary school a few years later, just after I’d released my first record, to give my old music teacher a copy. She said absolutely nothing about the album, but that it was nice to see me.
When I was 21, I released a solo album under the name Luther the Bear, which was recorded in a shed in Kirkoswald over the course of a day. We only decided to do it because we were snowed in. I played everything on the album and my friend John Duffy recorded it. I’ve always worked with other musicians and played in several bands like Duffy’s Gypsy Band, which was like a gypsy jazz ensemble. I also played bass for Melissa Kelly, who’s an incredible Glasgow soul singer and with Black and White Boy. I just loved to play with different people and experience their approach to music.
It was a good life and it was really good fun. I stopped being a working musician because I was also working part-time as a chef at that point, and I was spreading myself too thin. I was working upwards of 80 hours a week between both professions and basically became very ill. It’s not good for your physical and mental health to work that way and being a chef in particular is stressful, but I hate to be bored, apparently.
Both my careers are creative. At the moment I work in gastro pub food but what I really love to do is make bread, that’s my favourite form of cooking. And I love working with fresh local ingredients. It’s nice to be able to go down to Ayrshire and forage for things like wild garlic. When you smell fresh wild produce like that, you just know that it’s going to taste amazing. I can’t see myself stopping cooking. I’m not jaded with it. I love cooking at home and get up early most mornings to make my girlfriend’s breakfast, even though I don’t generally start work until much later. It’s about striking a healthy balance in life, which taking a step back has allowed me to do, but I couldn’t see myself giving up food or music, they’re both part of me.
I’m so grateful to my mum and dad for giving me both these wonderful things in my life, my mum's a chef and my dad's a guitar player so I think that’s definitely why I do what I do. I owe them a lot for passing these gifts on to me.
I’m actually just getting back into performing again. I never stopped writing or play songs and it’s nice to come back to it now and not feel anxious about it.
I don’t think I could ever stop being a musician to be honest. Even when I tried to stop, I just kept coming back to it, because when I’m playing, there’s nothing else. For me, there’s nowhere but being there - it takes you away.
