Back for good (2004-2006)
It’s funny to read the ‘Last Words’ section again because at the time I wrote our original biography the band seemed to be forever consigned to history. Everyone had settled into their lives, careers and soap operas. Then…in 1994 Clairecords and Tonevendor in the States decided to put out a retrospective collection of most of our Sarah material (a 17-track compilaton called ‘After Years’).
I’m not saying that the interest generated from the release of this record made us get back together, despite that fact that we were humbled and honoured by the kind words we received. It did, however, act as a catalyst. We never actually ‘split’ Secret Shine – we had always muttered things to each other about making more records but no-one in the band really wanted to enter the whole band dynamic again. Playing in a band is quite hard work, even for the laziest band in the world, who are officially Secret Shine.
In 2004 we did write some new material and started rehearsing in Tim’s factory unit. In my opinion the rehearsals were a disaster – for reasons I won’t go into, but I left Tim, Dean and Jamie to carry on together without me. On February 14th 2005 Jamie and Dean were on their way to rehearse at Tim’s factory as normal only to be confronted with the most horrific news that Tim had been seriously hurt in an accident. To our utter devastation, Tim never recovered and died 2 days later. Followers of our band will know how hard this has hit us.
In memory of Tim we decided to record some music and put it out as an album to raise money for his favourite charity MSF. That record ‘Morris’ and the subsequent acoustic gig we played at the Louisiana in Bristol raised lots of money and also cemented Secret Shine’s return. We know Tim would be pleased that we finally got it together again and would like what we’re doing. We’re not the most spiritual of people but we all have this feeling that he’s still with us and his influence on our music continues…