Music is best medicine for doctor

A GP in Henley has turned his passion for music and writing into a reality with the release of his new music album and book.

Dr Will Hearsey, 40, is one of the partners at the Hart Surgery in York Road and has been with the practice for 10 years.

He had taken a break last year from writing the Standard’s “Apple a Day” column to give him time to write and record.

Dr Hearsey, who lives in Wokingham, has “always liked music” and played in two bands during his 20s, Gun Hill Riffs and university band Tempest Kings.

He said: “It’s never been anything more than a hobby really but I’ve always felt that there was an itch that needed to be scratched.

“I thought I could make something quite decent if I really gave it a go and so then I thought, ‘Well, why not?’

“This is something that I can say when I’m old, that I’ve managed to do that and can be proud of.”

Dr Hearsey said that while his band Gun Hill Riffs came to an end about
10 years ago, he always liked to experiment and write.

He said: “Alongside the day job, I thought I would just take my time and try to write some songs and make it into a project.

“The ultimate goal was to get an album finished, just for myself. But then I thought it would be quite cool, because they’re all very different songs, to do each one with a completely new set of musicians, in a new place, so that’s what I ended up doing.”

Dr Hearsey said he has lots of musical influences and likes “loads of different types of music”, including rock and pop music.

His album, Ink in the Margins, also features an orchestral track, which “took a long time” as it was a challenge to put together.

“I didn’t make it easy for myself,” he said. “There are so many different genres in there. It’s a bit of an unconventional album in that respect, I think.”

Dr Hearsey first started recording the album around three years ago and each of the 11 songs are based on a year of his 20s.

He worked with full-time musicians and fellow music hobbyists to create it.

Dr Hearsey said: “It was great meeting all these different people.”

He worked with about
40 different musicians, including singer, songwriter and instrument player Seth Lakeman, who was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize in 2005 for his album Kitty Jay.

Dr Hearsey said: “I booked a song in the studio called Middle Farm, that was down in Devon.

“I said ‘oh, I can really hear a violin in this song’, and he [the producer Peter Miles] was like ‘oh yes, Seth Lakeman just lives half an hour away, I could give him a call’. That was exciting.”

Alongside Lakeman, Dr Hearsey also worked with a group of other musicians on the song Live Forever, including one who had won a Grammy.

“I was completely terrified when I got down there and then Seth Lakeman just rocked up for maybe a couple of hours and just seamlessly slotted in. It was amazing.”

The name of the album partly touches on the idea that people often need to fit their creative pursuits around their day job and life.

Dr Hearsey said: “It’s the idea of the value of all these sorts of things that you try and fulfil in everyday life.

“One of the things running through it is how I’m completely out of my depth all the way through, so I’ve always felt like a bit of an imposter.”

Dr Hearsey said it was inspiring to create the album and work with several different musicians.

“I feel very comfortable in the medical world. But, outside that, it has given me a lot of confidence, I think, in a different way.

“It has been a real journey personally for me as well and it’s taught me a lot and I think I’ve grown as a person.”

The self-published book, also called Ink in the Margins, with the subtitle “An amateur’s out-of-depth guide to making an album”, tells the story of his musical journey.

It also provides explanations on each of the tracks on the album. He added: “With the book, you get that extra context to the songs and the music.”

Dr Hearsey is also releasing some behind-the-scenes snippets on his website and he described feedback so far as “really, really nice”.

He will now be giving music a “rest for the time being” but will be focusing on writing, with plans to write a fiction book next.

He will be hosting an album wrap party on Saturday, November 29 in London.