Don Powell's Occasional Flames Just My Cup Of Tea Vinyl LP 2024

1. Just My Cup Of Tea
2. Mid Life Crisis
3. Ordinary Stars
4. Rythm Of The Road
5. How Did We End Up Here
6. Voodoo Shoes
7. Beauty And The Beat
8. Dreams Die Hard
9. If (Is The Middle Word In Life)
10. To Be Continued...

The title came from the fact that Don Powell drinks so much tea… and it’s so un-rock and roll! Notes written by Paul Cookson on behalf of the Occasional Flames:

“As well as the songs that Les and I had been working on, Don contributed lyrics too. He said he’d got some unfinished lyrics that maybe we could use and should he send them over? Of course. I expected verses and choruses … the file had loads – and I mean loads! – of scraps of paper with snippets and phrases. Not lyrics as such. However, one day, I sat down at my dining room table and spread them all out. Bit by bit, I found things that worked together and then, added a few linking lines of my own, or phrases I’d heard him say and several new songs were born.

Personally, what I love about the project is that it’s not a band as such, more of an artistic co-operative with music, words, visuals. Also, there’s something about the fact that Les, Martin and I were all born in 1961 and brought up in the north west – within thirty miles of each other, although we didn’t know each other then – watching Slade on Top Of The Pops and here we are, all these years later, working together with our mate Don, the drummer we watched on telly all those years ago.