Welcome to episode 33 of Sweetman Podcast brought to you by Phantom Billstickers.

This is a conversation with Jon McLeary, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the band Spines.
Regular readers of this site – and/or Jon’s Facebook pages will know him for his weekly contributions here as the writer of The Ghost of Electricity: War Stories by Jon McLeary.

I first met Jon a few years back and then from there we got to know each other through Facebook and then in real life more so also. We hatched the plan to debut his guest posts – which he has contributed for over two years now (if you click that link above you can read over 120 separate stories about his life).

Jon is a visual artist (painting and sculpting), novelist, musician, actor, blogger and a
tradesman. He’s worked as a house painter and in the props and set design departments for theatre and film. He’s become a good friend – and so we trace all of this back, back to when he formed Negative Theatre, back to when I first picked up a Spines record in a second hand store because I knew the other musicians involved in the band but not Jon. Little did I know that I’d not only one day become friends with the guy who wrote those great, strange songs (and painted the cover image that had pulled me in) I’d even get to play (rent-a-drummer-when-you’re-desperate) a couple of fill-in gigs with what has become one of my all-time favourite bands.

This is also a conversation about influences and inspiration – about the need and desire to create art.

We enjoyed the sponsor’s product very much during this conversation – many thanks Yeastie Boys! – and we did our best to cover new ground or to not spoil too many future Ghost of Electricity posts. My hope, as a fan of his writing, is this podcast might even inspire further posts and work from Jon.

You’ve found this via the link on Facebook or Twitter and/or from the Off The Tracks website – it’s hosted at Soundcloud and to receive the episodes before you even get to these show notes you can subscribe on iTunes. You can also rate and review the podcast there. Sweetman Podcast is brought you by Phantom Billstickers.

Day-time visitors to the den get to have coffee thanks to L’affare or, later in the day, they can have a beer from the wonderful Yeastie Boys. My thanks as always to these great sponsors.

I hope you like episode 33 of Sweetman Podcast, my conversation with writer, musician and artist Jon McLeary.