Joe Matera is an old friend from Australia and one of our Korgis co-writers.
We had Heritage Chart hits here in the UK with ‘Always a Sunny Day’ (#4) and ‘Letter to Geelong’ (#1), so when Joe first met up with me in person in 2025, we set out on another joint venture.
Joe had come up with an unusual guitar figure, that became the chorus to this song - but you can hear it exactly as the demo during the intro. Joe and I began with that and hammered out the lyrics for the chorus, and also a verse. We also messed…
NEWS!
A BRAND NEW ALBUM IN THE MAKING!
I am doing things a little differently with this album. I want you folks to hear it as I am writing it. YES!… that will mean free downloads, which will each be attached to a Newsletter. You can hear the album grow as we add each new layer.
I will be explaining, the lyrics, the music and the production, all with links so you can pick and choose your own blend. Below this section will be an individual section for each song. These will grow as the album grows.
Of course there will be a chance to buy the CD - or maybe even the vinyl - when we get to the other side, but you don't have to. Each person enjoys music in their own way and that is cool!
SO PLEASE, SIGN UP HERE /sign-up
and I promise to never send you junk
THEY ARE HERE! COFFEE IN NEW YORK & LET'S PLAY THE GOD GAME
LET'S PLAY THE GOD GAME is the latest all original album from Al Steele & Friends. As always Al is pushing the boundaries and asking the question: What if we are all living in a giant game and the Gods are merely having a laugh at our expense?! Like some unholy mixture of The Matrix and Sister Act, this rock laden album is peppered with luminaries. The main players are Danielle Nicholls as GOD, Elaine Gilmore as EVE, Lyndon Morgans as ADAM, Paul Smith as THE NEPHILIM, Lorna Darknell as DEMETER, and of course Al himself as the upstart god GORDON. As in The Life of Brian, we expect it to be banned and us all catapulted to instant infamy!
COFFEE IN NEW YORK is the brand new album from the Korgis to be released primarily for the American market. With a luscious string laden version of the title track and a brand new version of Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime - again with a lovely string orchestra, we are excited to see if we can make some headway Stateside. The rest of the album draws from the back catalogue of The Korgis, Joe Matera and Al Steele. There will be some copies filtering onto the Store here as the cost of shipping from our record company in America is a little eye-watering!
New album and Live gig from Al Steele!
Going Off Grid with Lyrics
The RED album is in the final mixing stage!
UN-United Nations is a double album released in 2 parts.
The BLUE album has already had some rave reviews and we reckon once it is put together with the RED album it will blow peoples socks off!
Put your garters on now!
Joe Matera heading for the UK late October
Joe will be doing a few dates with The Korgis in early November.
Check it out on https://thekorgis.com/gigs
APPETITE & GLUTTONY - Al Steele & Friends
As I was working on this song lyrically - and in this case that is what came first - I was feeling the deep south of New Orleans with it's voodoo and Cajun music. It then seemed obvious to include Doctor John in the lyrics… easier to rhyme than Allen Toussaint!!
I had a rough idea of how the tune might go but knew I needed a piano to get the Doctor John/Randy Newman vibe. As luck would have it, on my holiday to see my old best friend Pico, I discovered she had been a music student and had a piano in the…
THAT'S HOW WE ENDED UP HERE - Al Steele & Friends
If we are indeed at the 'end of the world' a pertinent question might be, 'How have we ended up here?'
As the album isn't just discussing the fate of the world, but how it relates to an ordinary man in the street, I figured this song could look at the journey from 3 different angles.
Verse 1 looks at a bloke that had everything and thought it would never end. But all good things DO come to an end and this guy missed his wedding because he wanted 'one more beer'.
Verse 2 is about a woman he let a guy in and…
Read moreAT THE END OF THE WORLD - Al Steele & Friends
Although this track was always destined for the very end of the album, it is also where I began writing. We had been touring with The Korgis at the End of the World, a title that leant itself to the gradual winding down of the full band, but I then began to think about what that could mean for an album. Had we kept the creative process going it may well have been the next Korgis album, but that was not to be.
Adding ‘you and I’ to the title made me think of it differently. The chaos that exists globally is…
LOADED TONGUE - The Korgis
When I was about 18 I lived in Sheffield but I travelled to Leeds Tiffanies at least 3 days a week to play bass in the resident band. On each journey we would pass Woolley Edge Services on the motorway and I always thought it was a great off-the-wall name for a Motorway Services.
Cut to decades later and as I was driving through Yorkshire again, when the lyric '25 miles from Woolley Edge, left the fuel gauge in the red'. This sounded like a very rock and roll line and I immediately rhymed it with ‘Got a…
THIS IS THE LIFE - The Korgis
One morning somewhere in 2018, I was just about to get in the shower when a groove appeared in my head. By the time I had exited the shower I had all the lyrics for both verses. Later that day I went into the studio and wrote the chorus.
As we began writing Kartoon World I suggested this song as a good fit. James had always liked it and it seemed to fit with Magic Money Tree. Later on we ended up with too much material but for some reason this song stayed.
The lyric 'hold on' kept coming back and it seemed to…
LETTER TO GEELONG - The Korgis & Joe Matera
In the days of the £10 Poms many families emigrated to Australia. It had opportunities, work and sun.
My family, while not strictly £10 Poms (especially as they were Scottish and the term Pom refers to English) they certainly went in search of a better life after the war. So when Australian born Joe Matera sent me a guitar tune to work on, I thought it would be nice to explore our heritage, as his family hailed from Italy, with a similar story.
At this point this was not really to be a Korgis song but…
Read moreMUD HUTS - The Korgis
There are many remnants of high civilisations in the short history of man. The Inca Cities, the Pyramids of Giza, the mighty ancient cities of Rome and Athens. Standing in the ruins of our ancestors we made somewhat surprising decisions such as 70's tower blocks and a bewildering array of car parks. They called it progress…
As Joni once said... You pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
While on holiday in Greece I had two ideas. One was inspired by our plane as it suddenly broke free of the cloud layer -…
Read moreMAGIC MONEY TREE - The Korgis
In 2021 I ended up writing a lot of the lyrics for The Korgis. In this series I will analyse some of the lyrics on Kartoon World and who knows what else?! I have often said that the world does not need any more love songs, though I still do occasionally write one if there is something eating at me! Instead I would prefer to find something more relevant or at least more interesting.
We were just coming out of Corona Virus lockdown and we were itching to create. On a late night Messenger chat with Chris…
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