Kingfisher by Bard of Ely was in the YouBloom Music Awards

Kingfisher is one of my most popular songs and it exists in several versions. The one I recorded on Tenerife is currently entered in Heat 6 of the YouBloom song contest and I am optimistic about it becoming my second winning entry there.

My other song entitled Mañana that was a previous entry has just been voted into second place in Heat 5 so automatically is now entered into the Q2 Quarter-finals that start on 29 June.

I would like to thank everyone who liked, commented, shared and, most importantly, voted for Mañana, and hope you will all do so again for Kingfisher!

Kingfisher started life as an acoustic blues/pop song, which I backed myself with guitar on, and also played a solo with a kazoo. If I didn't have a kazoo handy I created some lines of scat-singing instead as a substitute for the primitive jazz instrument. Either version worked well judging by audience reactions.

My good friend the singer-songwriter Pixi Morgan plays a cover of Kingfisher both as a solo performer and busker and with his band. I remember, many years ago, hearing Pixi's voice belting out the words to my song in Cardiff city shopping centre.

Steve Johnson

On another occasion I was walking down Caroline Street in the same city when I heard my song blaring out from a chip shop there. It was being played on Steve Johnson's Red Dragon FM radio show which the shop happened to have on at the time.

JazzRoc

The new version of Kingfisher was recorded on Tenerife with the help of Alan the Harp on harmonica, and JazzRoc, who produced it. We used to call ourselves Totem 3 after a restaurant we met at where there actually were three totem poles outside. This is why it is the "Totem 3 mix."

Jazzroc, by the way, whose real name is Tony Duncan, is infamous on the Internet for debunking the chemtrail conspiracy theory and getting banned from various sites for doing so. Anyway, on my song you can hear some music he helped put together and record.

Bob Geldof, who is most famous for his past role as frontman for the Boomtown Rats Punk/New Wave band and for the Band Aid charity single Do They Know It's Christmas? , heads the panel of celebrity judges for the YouBloom song contest. "Sir Bob", as he is also commonly and affectionately known, will be judging the finals of the competition.

Conor McNicholas, who was editor of the legendary NME music paper from 2002 to 2009, is another of the judges for the contest.

The winner of the 2011 YouBloom song contest received €10,000 in cash and the winners of the three finals had €2,000 to spend as they wish.

Other prizes for the overall winner included headlining the YouBloom LIVE 2011 Song Contest Winners Concert & Awards Night. They also stood to win being inducted into the YouBloom Hall of Fame, getting a chance to work with and be advised by top professionals from the music business, and getting featured with some great publicity on the YouBloom website.

So all the prizes were well worth winning

Update: That was then and this is now!Kingfisher never won but I am looking forward to the next YouBloom Song Contests for 2013.