A WEE COUNTY songwriter is preparing to release his debut solo single this week – after almost a decade of touring and performing.

Martin Mullady, 30, had been a part of numerous projects in his youth, having moved to Liverpool to kickstart his band, Built on Tradition.

They toured around the UK, playing The Cavern and The Barrowlands, before the band eventually wound up.

Martin then came back to Scotland, but the music bug never really left him. He continued to write on and off, eventually returning to performing acoustic nights in and around Clacks.

He pursued a career as a firefighter, now stationed at Larbert and retained at Alloa, but the desire to create new music never burned out.

The Fishcross man then rediscovered his back catalogue of songs – following a prompting from family – and began to rework the songs, breathing new life into them.

He told the Advertiser: "I had a wee conversation with my dad, maybe around the start of lockdown or thereabouts. We were talking about my music and he was forever pushing me to get it out.

"He was asking if I was ever going to let anyone hear it… I'd been saying 'aye' for the last ten years, so I finally just went for it.

"I called upon the old Stone-age hard drive and dug out all the old files. There were about 65 tunes in various forms of being finished and I whittled that down to about 20 and re-recording them all over the lockdown period.

"This track is the first of these tunes to come out," he continued. "It's quite fitting that it's called Moving On as it feels a little like a new chapter, and moving on from the acoustic thing I've been doing in pubs. I suppose I am, more or less, going back to go forward – a bit of unfinished business.

"And I don't like having all these songs going to waste. If I don't get them out there then they're just going to die on a hard-drive and best lost one day when that thing stops working.

"I need to let them out – to play them live and let them do what they are supposed to do."

Martin will lay down a marker this Friday, January 28, with the release of Moving On – a song that is an archetype of the vibe listeners can expect going forward.

The song just flowed out of him when he sat down to write it back in the day.

"You hear songwriters talking about it from time to time," he added. "Some songs you have sit with ideas for a long time, left them fester away and then bring them back before you ever get to finishing it. Other times, songs just fall right out.

"For the new song it was like that – it all just came out in about an hour. It was dead easy to write.

"I've always been into bands like Foo Fighters and Stereophonics. I had the Foos in my head when I sat down to write this one, actually.

"The intro came to me and it all just snowballed. Everything just came to me – even the lyrics, which usually take me forever.

"But I think it's a really fitting song to release first. I think it captures the sound I am really going for: plenty of loud guitars and drums that just punch you in the face, and my dulcet tones over the top of it.

"It's definitely the vibe I was going for, so definitely the track to lead with. It's a bit of an introduction to what is to come. This is what you should expect."

Martin will next perform in Stirling in a support slot for the Greig Taylor Album Launch show at the Tolbooth on Saturday, February 26.

For tickets, visit https://stirlingevents.org/tolbooth-event/greig-taylor-blues/

Moving On will be released this Friday, January 28, and is available to pre-save now via https://linktr.ee/martinmullady