The John Williams Syndicate

How do you top off a four year run where you’ve produced four Top Four albums, including – oh yes! – a Number One? A career where you’ve signed and/or produced The Housemartins, The Proclaimers, Robert Plant, Simple Minds, Debbie Harry, Blancmange and Beth Nielsen Chapman? A four-decade career where you were once, briefly but gloriously, Brian Brando, lesser-known brother of, y’know, that guy, in the cult band The Brians, whose lament ‘My Brother’s Famous’ found traction with Brians everywhere. Well, if you’re John Williams, you might release an album yourself. Having built a small well equipped studio, John was able to produce albums and write songs with Petula Clark, ‘Lost In You’ and ‘From Now On’, and Claudia Brücken’s ‘Where Else’. So, when lockdown happened, it seemed a natural progression to keep writing and producing, and John was grateful to both Liz Wheeldon from the Chairworks studio in Castleford, - where he had produced three Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott albums - and to his now publisher at Sunfish, Jamie White, who both asked why he didn’t just make the record himself as the artist. And that’s how this album started!