A CARPENTER turned tiler has now become a songwriter with COVID-19 inspiring him to pen lyrics for a work about our time.
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Mick Sharp wrote Twenty Twenty This Is The War amid the first lockdown to combat the coronavirus.
"I tried to create and put things in that meant a few things," Mr Sharp said.
"The chorus came to me at 3am in the morning when I was wide awake and I sent it as a text to my wife, so I would remember it, and then the rest came when I woke up."
The chorus features the lines "when will we all be on the same page?" and "it's like living in a cage".
Having formed the lyrics, Mr Sharp then approached his friend, fellow Yarrawonga resident and musician Les Brazil to put a sound to them.
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"He sent me a set of the words and I had a mess around with them with my guitar and put a rough track around them and sent it back and he liked it," Mr Brazil said.
He was in Chalice, a 1970s band that had a record produced by singer Jon English, then worked for the Billy Hyde group from 1994 to 2018 before retiring to Yarrawonga.
It's not about being on the hit charts, it's just an Australian way to help people.
- Mick Sharp on his song
Shortly after the move Mr Brazil met Mr Sharp who was doing a tiling job at the former's house.
The pair became pals and now musical collaborators.
Mr Brazil used his home studio to record the song which features his own axe work spliced with programmed recordings of other instruments and a guitar cameo from Mr Sharp.
"I wanted it to sound dark and dingy at the beginning but the idea is at goes along you hear the hope in it and I made the chorus lighter so you can see along with it," Mr Brazil said.
Twenty Twenty This Is The War has been uploaded to YouTube with a video of haunting images such as a full hospital ward, empty streets and spiky virus balls.
"I was going to do one video around the lake (at Yarrawonga) and I thought 'that's not really showing what's going on' and I thought I would use some images and there's one every four or five seconds," Mr Brazil said.
Mr Sharp said the song was designed to offer hope.
"I just felt that people could relate to the song and it could cheer them up, that there's light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
"It's not about being on the hit charts, it's just an Australian way to help people."
