The last time I saw Jeff was in 1985: I was running a small recording studio, Solar Sound, in Lampeter, mid-Wales, and we'd recorded Jeff's album, BACK IN THE GAME, with a bunch of fine musos: John Rodge, Phil Corney, Paul Pridmore, Penny Joubert and Bel Merriman ... I was the producer, and played keyboards and added vocal harmonies. It was a great little record, but only ever emerged in cassette form. Fast forward to December 2021: Jeff contacted me out of the blue, and we caught up on our missing decades,, exchanged ideas and projects by email, and worked on plans to reissue the album on CD. Jeff was planning a booklet with the whole story, the sound files had been miraculously restored (from my original cassette copy!), and we were all excited at the prospect of the album getting a proper release at last. The news of Jeff's departure was devastating ... he was clearly full of potential projects, not only musical. So sad. But Jeff, I'm hoping we'll meet up one day in our corner of the sky, and we'll get the job finished. Meanwhile, I play BACK IN THE GAME regularly. It's a great record. You're a proper songwriter, my friend.
Andrew Hawkey
07/02/2023