The Story
In a nutshell…
The Olden days.
They tended to marry you off early in England in the 1960’s.
I was born, in the Midlands of England, at a very early age… blah blah blah!
Eko 6 string acoustic, where it all began!
A bit on from the Olden days…
I started playing guitar when I received an Eko 6 string acoustic guitar for Christmas, I am a bit fuzzy on the time, but I guess 1972. I took lessons from Michael Raven, a renowned classical guitar player in my hometown of Stafford, UK. I was with him quite a while, first as part of a group of learners and then moved on to one-on-one lessons with him. He was constantly irritated with me harping on about relatively local lads Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Peter Haycock (Climax Blues Band), who lived a few doors down from me and also shared some 6 string secrets with me. Peter and I went to the same King Edward VI Grammar school, although not at the same time.
After a year, Michael Raven fired me as a student, coming to some conclusion that I was unteachable, maybe he was on to something there.
Anyway, that left me free to scrounge LP records from friends and learn every bit of guitar I could. I especially favored Zeppelin, Sabbath, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Camel, Be Bop Deluxe, Yes, to name a few.
I got together with a few friends from school and we had a band. We played at the local Methodist Church summer fete, 1973, as we were representing the youth club. I remember our rendition of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid went down very well. I am pretty sure we are going to hell because of that!
I left school in 1976 and went to Stafford College to do first year engineering. In 1977 my family moved to Birmingham, conveniently close to British Leyland where I started as an apprentice. Made some musical friends and while in a rehearsal studio one day was approached by Rob and Linda Bruce who invited me to join the reformed 60’s band Bitch, now renamed Rich Bitch. It was good busy fun, I learnt a lot, played a lot of gigs, met a lot of folk. Rich Bitch Studios became a thing. Good times.
Cogley becomes an adult!
While my evenings were spent playing or rehearsing with Rich Bitch, or helping out at the studios. I somehow managed to get through my engineering apprenticeship and landed a body and trim Engineering position at the Austin Rover Group in Canley, Coventry. Rich Bitch, as a band, kind of fizzled out around 1981 so it was all good timing really, with RB being in Birmingham and I was now in Coventry. I worked at Austin Rover a couple years. Then when Jaguar split from the British Leyland group in 1983, I took an opportunity to work with Jaguar Cars Body and Trim team in Browns Lane, Coventry.
About 1985 with my beloved Triumph Bonneville T140A US spec.
Guess what happened in January 1986?
Across the pond lay a whole world of adventure (1986 through 2003)
I know many will relate to this, but music took the back seat for a few years. I was busy working for General Motors, Saturn, Chrysler, Samsung Motors, and Volvo Trucks. I got married in 1989 now have two wonderful daughters. Lots of family stuff, lots of travel, really formative years. I still played when I could, a brief semi-serious foray into an ‘80’s pop band, Rusty James and Raz, my first commercial single and video, an occasional jam, regular meets with other musical friends…there was always a guitar at hand. Plus, I got my first keyboard, a Korg M1, started experimenting making music at home, this was the start of that journey!
2004/2006 Life changing events, as they sometimes do!
Just briefly, 2004 was an annus horribilis…. So many personal things came crashing down, marriage on the rocks, I got a 3-months-to-live, death-sentence, cancer diagnosis, it was all just horrible, worst year ever. 6 months of the most intense chemo. Had nothing to lose, except hair, fingernails, about 50lbs in weight, plus turned green, but I have to give it to them who treated me, here I am 21 years later, I kicked that bastard right in the teeth! That’s about all I need to say on that.
Everything changed during these years. I was offered a job at Boeing Commercial Aircraft in the beautiful Seattle area, and I have to say that Boeing were really a great company to work for. The work was really interesting and I got to play with airplanes. In 2006, I met my current wife, who also worked at Boeing.
Finally, I realized my need to GO DO MUSIC! And thats exactly how it was.
2007 through 2017
Well, a lot happened musically in this time for me. I have a list of bands and artists that I played with on and off, but the above pictures represent some of the more notable Seattle-area music I was involved with. Compared to other places I had lived in the US, Seattle had, hands-down, the most vibrant music scene of all. It was a fun, refreshing pace, and in this time, I had my fingers in multiple pies at the same time. The Krell, the Sugarsmacks, St. Edwards, and The Black River Blues Band were all very much fun and I have fond memories of them all.
But I have to say, after several years of this, working a day job at Boeing, then being so busy musically (if I wasn’t playing a show, I was probably rehearsing with someone) I did kind of burn out a bit. I was building up the home studio and my buddy, drummer Craig Stetina (from the Krell) came to me with some ideas he would like to record. So we figured it out between us. When we were finished, I had some ideas, and Craig had more….. anyway, long story short, this formed the Nova Cafe CD that we released in March 2017.
That was great fun, we made mistakes sure, but had fun making them. We got Rick Fisher of Resonant Mastering in Seattle (also of Steve Miller fame) to master it, and that just kicked us off (like he fixed all our mistakes, which was amazing).
We did pull a band together to reproduce what we released on the CD. That was fun, but alas, short-lived.
2018 up to the present!
I’ll discuss this more in depth in the ‘The Work’ section, but basically, I have been solo since 2018. In this time, I compiled Terra Nullius, which was released in June 2020, Deep Blue Sky, released Aug 2022 and The Silent Sea released March 2025.
Currently working new stuff, it’s in the embryonic stage so nothing is formed yet. So it begins. I complain bitterly, but I love it really!