Rob Wheeler is set to perform a live set with a meet & greet tomorrow evening (Saturday 13th November) at HMV in Stoke-On-Trent. Click here for more information and check out his other tour dates here. The brilliant new album 'MidWinter Songs' is out now on all platforms.

Rob Wheeler; MidWinter Songs & The tragedy of how it was made…

Recording a Christmas album was something Rob Wheeler had always wanted to do. The festive season had long been filled with treasured and cherished memories for him, and being a musician and vocalist from a very young age, naturally the two loves would merge from the moment Nat King Cole could be heard crooning about roasting chestnuts over the supermarket speakers.

After the bewildering obstacles that 2020 had imposed on the music industry, 2021 saw somewhat of a flourish of releases, the fruits of forced creativity perhaps; but in Wheeler’s case it was slightly different in that Ten Embers was written and ready to go prior to the pandemic. The downtime was instead used to re record and finesse (what would become) the critically acclaimed album.

Around July, as the British summer offered it’s time honoured tradition of patchy rain and clouded sun, the idea of a Christmas song was first suggested. A single had already been written in New York (Nov’ 2019); along with a couple of winter-themed folk songs it was decided that this would make a sincere 4 track EP and a suitable follow up to the more grandiose studio project of Ten Embers.

There is something quite funny about recording Christmas songs in summer - it has itself become a tradition. Slade, who perhaps wrote the quintessential Christmas record, festooned the studio with tinsel to add a Yuletide tone to the otherwise sweltering August recording sessions that delivered their perennial hit.

Sadly the MidWinter sessions were not to be so happy..

“I was in the second week of the five week recording schedule when I first got the call that Marcus had been rushed into hospital. I just felt a bit helpless really - but in truth I never thought for a second things would escalate so much and so tragically”.

“Marcus was my best friend and we had been through so much together. Not just in music but in our personal lives as well. He was like my brother - in every sense”.

“As each week passed by, he was getting a little better and then a lot worse and it was somewhat of an out of body experience. We couldn’t see him, and even then I still believed he would come home”.

“By the end of August he had severely declined. The Thursday before the bank holiday weekend I got a call from his sister to tell me he wouldn’t make it through the night”.

“I spent the evening sat out in the garden. I can’t explain why, it just felt like a vigil of sorts. I can not articulate the heart break of that evening. I was and still am totally and utterly devastated”. (Rob Wheeler)

Naturally the terrible events have left a mark on Rob, not just personally, but on the album too.

“As the weekend progressed I buried myself into my work to try and keep my mind active and away from the hurt. That’s when the song Embers came to be. Written and recorded in a single day. It closes the album and it is most certainly about myself and Marcus”.

“It’s about how hard it is to deal with losing someone and how the people who are left behind have to try and make sense of the empty space that has been left”.

“I feel that for the rest of my life this whole album will be a reminder of Marcus. In both a good way and in a sad way. It has become forever entwined with his life and death. But he was also my biggest fan, and it does feel to me that he is now forever in my song”. (Rob Wheeler)

It is perhaps a fitting tribute to a man who himself lived his life for music. Written by a friend who didn’t have any idea how to begin to say goodbye.

MidWinter Songs is released worldwide on November 12th, the day before what would have been Marcus’s birthday. The CD version is dedicated to his memory.