Welcome to The Duke Special Demo Club!

Subscribe for £5 per month and receive exclusive access to demos that would never usually see the light of day.

By becoming a member of this club, you will be supporting me to be a writer and performer and I really appreciate it. As a member, you will have access to a variety of demos that I have made over the years. When you join, you will receive a secret password in order to gain access to the Duke Special Demo Club page on my website HERE.

I will be adding more from the archives as we go along - and there will always be at least one brand new demo added every month.

For me, demos are a way of sketching a song out so that I can live with it for a while and try to consider it objectively, listening for bits that excite me, niggle at me or make me cringe. Some songs are tweaked and developed into a fully-fledged track on an album, while others are left behind, maybe to be included in a future project, or else abandoned because some part of it wasn’t quite working or felt weak. I think I also record a demo so that in my head, the song is finished (to a certain extent), and I am then able to move on and write the next one.

The recordings here vary in quality and sophistication - some were ropey one-take phone recordings, while others were worked up with musicians in a studio. They were never meant for public listening, but if you have come this far, I trust that you will hear them for what they are – ideas that became something more fully formed, or creative attempts that fell short. I hope you enjoy the walk through these little insights into my creative process.

By supporting me in this way, you are also encouraging me to keep writing. I am committing to adding at least one new demo a month, so in a real way, you become part of my writing process, since I will be writing knowing that you lot will be listening! Thank you. 

Duke Special x

PS – If you would like to help support me with a one-off donation rather than sign up for the monthly demo club, you can just Buy Me A Coffee by clicking on that button instead!

Please note - a one-off donation doesn't give you access to the demos - you do need to subscribe monthly to join the club.

If you would like more information on Buy Me A Coffee terms and conditions before subscribing to become a member, please read this page HERE.

More about Duke Special

By nature, Duke Special (aka Belfast's Peter Wilson) is a curious person. He is curious about music, theatre, books, poetry, art, love, life, redemption, death and 78RPM records. All of this is evidenced by the variety of musical adventures throughout his career. He has released 17 albums and EPs, toured all over the world and has been involved in a diverse array of other projects, including writing the music for Deborah Warner’s critically acclaimed 2009 production of Mother Courage and Her Children at London’s National Theatre and being commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to write a series of original songs based on the photographic work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand. 

He is currently working on what will be his seventh theatre piece, a musical adaptation of The Velveteen Rabbit for Replay Theatre Company, Belfast (2025).

 www.dukespecial.com