Burmo (single) by Adam Walton

This is my new single and the title track from my forthcoming album ‘Burmo’ (release date: Fri 14th November 2025).

It was at Glan Llyn that things really started for me. Glan Llyn was a Welsh language bootcamp on the shores of Llyn Tegid in Bala. Kids from our school went there in our first year to practise rudimentary Welsh (I went to an English language school, the Alun School in Mold).

Mostly we were there for the adventure… we went canoeing, hill walking, played rounders, and got to stay up for midnight feasts, gorging on the pop, sweets and crisps we bought from the tuck shop with our precious pennies.

We talked about the girls we we were starting to get interested in, who were having their own midnight feasts in the adjoining block, where they were most definitely not talking about us, and life was flickering into technicolor for the first time in our lives.

Graham Devine was in our year. I didn't know him well. He lived in Connah's Quay, which is the other side of the moon if you're from Nannerch.

He played guitar for us in a cold communal room in the main building. I remember it must have been cold because we all wore scarves, fingerless gloves and had our cagoules on indoors... or maybe that was what passed for cool in 1982?

Graham didn't just play the guitar like you'd expect an eleven year old to play the guitar. He didn't strum 'Kumbaya' or play the bass line from 'Summer Lovin''. He conjured up a whole orchestra with his fingers. The richness and sophistication of the music he made indubitably changed my life. The feelings those tones evoked - of exhilaration, love, yearning, awe - have characterised my reaction to every truly great piece of music I have ever heard since.

But it was the fact that I could see him - right there in front of me, all by himself, with nothing more than his own fingers and his ocassionally nodding head - that affected me the most.

However he was making this music I wanted to know the secret, too. If he could do it, so could I. That's where it started… the lightning strike, the Damascene revelation, the starstruck eyes meeting across a room… I’ve been profoundly in love with the guitar from that moment onwards.

Graham left our school for a scholarship at Chetham’s School of Music soon after that. He's now one of the world' most respected Classical Guitarists. If you think you’re a great guitarist, or your mate is, or that Noel Gallagher has chops, watch some clips of Graham on YouTube - or, better still - check out his recordings for Naxos… he’ll blow your mind. He might even change your life, too.

On returning home I bugged my mum and dad for a guitar every minute of every waking hour of every day and they relented just to shut me up.

I went to Tony Willis-Culpitt's house every Saturday morning and learnt to strum chords with other kids from the village, playing along to Blowin' in the Wind and - and this blows my mind now, because it strikes me as a somewhat interesting choice - 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'.

My three quarter size Spanish guitar went everywhere with me. Including Spain. Where it melted on the backseat of my dad's car in the ludicrous heat.

I was devastated. Dad promised me a new guitar if I learnt to play Cavatina on it for him, which was quite some distance above the fumbling 'Am' chord I could just about play... but I got there and I got there quickly because kids can do amazing things when they have a heat for something, even tubby blond ones.

The other kids in school, the Fennahs and Delaneys, and Wilsons, Bullocks and Parsonages, were learning DC and Hendrix. Metallica, Megadeth and Gary Moore.

And I was playing Greensleeves and other Elizabethan lute tunes arranged for classical guitar.

It was my first experience - of many - learning that the music I liked the most, that I most wanted to play, wasn't - and never would be - remotely cool.

It was 'Burmo'. As ‘Burmo’ as anything could possibly be. As 'Burmo' as flared trousers and black socks in 1982. As ‘Burmo’ as preferring Dire Straits to The Jam. Or NHS specs on a spotty face.

So here I am, full circle, staring back at that awe struck boy in Bala in 1982. 'Burmo' - the song, particularly - is a celebration of the music I learnt to play because of that experience, as well as some of the techniques and harmonic movements I learnt under the tutelage of Sera Meirion (who also taught Graham and Ritzy from The Joy Formidable).

Lyrically, it's something else entirely. But that's for me to know and you to not ever have to worry about, really.

This is to say thank you to Graham; to pay tribute to Sera (who is - very sadly - no longer with us); and to also give me a reason to extol the maestro Jonathan Richards (a brilliant classical guitarist from Colwyn Bay, who reignited my love for the instrument, and expanded my knowledge dramatically). If I am one percent the guitarist that these people are, I am content.

‘Burmo’ is the title recording from my new album which will be available to pre-order on my bandcamp page from Friday 24th October.

Tracklist

1.	Burmo	6:20

2.	Burmo (instrumental version)	6:20

Credits

released October 25, 2025

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