In 2002 I came to Mallorca, more or less directly from my life in Thailand.
The first thing I did, apart from finding somewhere to kip, was to record some songs that I had written whilst in Thailand.
Armed with my new CD of material, I went looking for gigs. I soon got one supporting a band called "The Church". I'd never heard of them, but it was a start.
I mentioned my gig to some lads in a little bar in Palma 'Old Town', and one of them, Phil, wanted to do the gig with me. Cool.
Before long, we were sitting around his flat learning my songs for the gig. One of his friends, Richie, also wanted to play the gig with me. So, he started learning the songs, too.
And that was the beginning of The Pocketmen.
We played acoustic stuff to start with, without any drums, and then eventually Phil began to play the bass. We got a few gigs in Palma as an acoustic band, but we became popular very quickly and started to pack bars out. This was a bit tricky for a lot of the places we played because they didn't have live music licences, and those that had the acoustic only sort licence weren't expecting their bars to be full to the rafters. It caused quite a bit of trouble with the local police (though, not for us).
Up next are a few acoustic tracks, typical of the sort of thing we were playing in the bars of Palma.

The gigs were getting bigger, and we were struggling to be heard. It was about time we got some amps and a drumkit.
Martin, from The Crossing days, was over in London and wasn't doing much, so he jumped into his camper van, with drumkit, and came over to Mallorca to join The Pocketmen.
That was better.
The three photos below are the only ones I have of The Pocketmen with Martin and the first two are not the most flattering of pictures.

The above three tracks were from a mini-album we called 'Dave', long before all things Dave became popular.
Two other tracks should have been on there - 'Circles' and 'Get Over Yourself'. No idea why they weren't, but there is a bit of dodgy guitar playing by me on Get Over Youself, so I might have been reluctant to include it.
I should have just done the guitar take again, and again, until I got it right, that's what I used to do...Weird I didn't do it on Get Over Yourself.

The top four tracks on this page have Ant playing on drums.
Somewhere around the beginning of 2003, maybe even at the end of 2002, Martin had had enough of struggling on Mallorca. There were no decent jobs, for sure, and the band was more fun than a serious chance at making the big time. So, he packed his camper van once again and sailed off to Blighty. Once there, he went back to Camden Lock Market and stayed there for the next few years. I think he made his way back to York recently, after what must have been more than a total of 20 years at Camden. I always said we should never have left York.
Any road, Ant joined The Pocketmen and stayed until the band split up in 2008. These last Pocketmen tracks are all with Ant on drums.