Baby Bumble Bee Song

Gloucester music project intrigues Stephen Morris

Back in April 2004, three young men met in The Bumble Bee, Quedgeley, to sup beer and talk music.

The conversation threw up all kinds of other subjects too: rugby, Star Trek and Dutch art. Naturally. It's what pubs were built for.

Now, some seven years later, two of those men are still writing and playing songs.

The other one still spends much of his time hunched over a keyboard analysing song lyrics and comparing bass lines to Arctic Monkeys riffs.

You can probably guess who one of them is.

As for the other two, they are guitar duo Dan Harris and John de Gruthyer. They've gone through a couple of band names now.

First they were The Colourful Fan. Then they were Crimson Flight. Now they are simply Harris and de Gruthyer.

Together, Harris and de Gruthyer have started a new music project, Souled Sounds.

They want to use it to promote their own music and help others too.

Over the course of a telephone interview John de Gruthyer explains where the project came from.

"It's got to the stage where we really want to pull our fingers out with the music we've been doing ever since we were teenagers," he said.

"We want to use Souled Sounds to get our songs out into the world; maybe establish ourselves as song writers and get other people to sing our songs."

It's a scheme that's definitely paid off for some.

For example, Ben and Jason were hardly the most famous musical duo in music's history - a huge shame in itself - but everyone knows the Martine McCutcheon song "Perfect Moment", which that duo penned.

"Hopefully the songs we've written lately reflect us and the way we're moving on," added De Gruthyer.

"They're about getting older - and hopefully wiser. A lot of the songs are about struggling to comprehend the world around us.

"The songs are often about darker things, but we always try to bring them back to an optimistic view.

"We've got an underlying love of optimism: that there should be hope in the world."

This sort of view has always been there in Harris and de Gruthyer's song writing.

The duo, under whichever name they were using, were always sensitive souls, exploring the meaning of things.

Now, older and - yes - wiser, these themes are more pronounced.

500 best-loved song lyrics

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs, 20 Songs and Over 250 Activities for Young Children

And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon, Over 650 Activities to Teach Toddlers Using Familiar Rhymes and Songs

It's Time for Music, Songbook

Tunes for 'toons, music and the Hollywood cartoon