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“When I started making records,” David Ford grins, “I said I wanted to them to be emotionally fraught processes, like I’d survived a war. Now I can safely say, I want to make a really easy one!” And he grins again. Or was that a grimace? Nobody said it was going to be easy. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. David’s successor to his 2005 debut I Sincerely Apologise For All The Trouble I’ve Caused is so good, it’s worth all the pain. It’s another deftly contained nine-song package that runs under 40 minutes (37 to be exact in this case) but sounds epic in content; all human emotion is in here – fear and loathing, love and loneliness, anxiety and release, and a record that radiates resilience and positivity even if it ends with what he calls, “probably the saddest song I’ve ever written.” “Shit happens but if it doesn’t kill you, get up and keep moving forward,” is how David sees it, and this struggle informs both his ongoing troubadour-style existence and knocking Songs For The Road into shape. Having sculpted I Sincerely Apologise… in the cellar of his flat in Sussex (he grew up in Eastbourne and has never felt any reason to be based anywhere else) over a period of 18 months; on its release, the album was critically lauded across the board, for its utterly persuasive tunes, its searing honesty, its occasional politico-social protest ‘State Of The Union’ and its generously self-lacerating wit – ‘Cheer Up (You Miserable Fuck)’ wasn’t just contender for song title of the year, but an emotion we can all identify with, but don’t always like to admit. Armed with defiant melodies and words, David sallied forth with some tour-de-force stage performance, armed with guitars and a loop-generating machine that built up layers beneath him, as if a whole charged up-for-it band was playing, unseen, in the wings. Through the latter half of 2005 and then 2006, he toured Britain, Australia and Canada and America. His experience of playing the latter was especially poignant and character building. After Columbia’s American arm licensed his album, he began by playing SXSW a total of four times in March 2006, during which the legendary Elliot Roberts (Neil Young’s long-standing manager) saw him twice and demanded another copy of David’s album “for Neil”. After his New York debut, Bruce Springsteen’s manager was in the audience and subsequently invited David over to Bruce’s rehearsal room the next day. An East coast tour with KT Tunstall was followed by an invite by Robert de Niro to play his NYC ‘film festival’ launch party alongside Elvis Costello and New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint. A four-week southern-state and west -coast tour with Gomez followed before David made his USA television debut on NBC’s nationwide Carson Daly Show. More sell out shows and an appearance at Nashville’s prestigious Bonnaroo Festival followed, as did dates in Australia, North America again (at Canada’s first V Festival, the Toronto Star described David as, “sounding like a hurricane in a nursery…we witnessed the greatest performance of the whole weekend.” Tours with Aimee Mann and Ray Lamontagne followed before playing his third Carson Daly show, where he debuted a tune called ‘Song For the Road’ to incredible and immediate acclaim from the viewers. That song is now the title track to David's second album....