Be Your Own Record Label is taught by fellow musician Alun Parry.
Alun is an English folk singer and songwriter from Liverpool, famous as the birthplace of The Beatles.
He began his musical career as a street performer shortly after learning to play guitar, and went on to be awarded the title of Liverpool’s number one busker.
He has released five albums in the last 9 years: Corridors of Stone, Liverpool 800 EP, We Can Make The World Stop, When The Sunlight Shines, and Live At 81 Renshaw Street.
The broadcaster and music journalist Spencer Leigh described Alun as “one of the most incisive songwriters on Merseyside”.
Alun has also been the subject of three separate hour long BBC specials about his music.
Alun also knows the industry from the other side of the fence. He has promoted a range of events, such as Second Friday, Payday Playtime, Acoustic Slice, the Woody Guthrie Folk Club, and spent four years as Creative Director of the WCLM Festival.
He was also the organiser of the UK’s official Woody Guthrie Centennial celebration event, featuring Woody’s daughter Nora (pictured).
When his home town Liverpool became European Capital of Culture in 2008, Alun was named among the top 30 reasons why the city was culturally great.
Although completely self published, Alun’s latest studio album was named Album of the Week in the local press, and the respected national music magazine R2 reviewed it as “glorious – a tremendous breadth of lyrical ambition.” Thus disproving the old myth that only signed artists get national press coverage.
In his pre-music days, Alun has worked as a community organiser, a computer programmer, a film maker, and a University lecturer.
In between songwriting, gigs and recording, he continues to pursue his other big passions, training and coaching other musicians, freelancers and social enterprises.
Photo of Alun by Jim Colvin