Back in the late 80s/early 90s, when Rock was King, Pete Godfrey and Tony Marshall were both involved in various Manchester Rock Bands.
It was inevitable that one way or another, their paths would at some point cross. Tony Marshall’s name was mentioned when Pete was attempting to put together a Rock band around 1991, they met up in a rehearsal room somewhere in Eccles, they threw a few ideas around but nothing permanent came of this first meeting.
About six years later Pete was playing Lead Guitar in a local band and needed to bow out, Tony was the obvious choice, they met up with the intention of working through 20 songs, the truth being Tony listened to about three and said he would be fine with the rest (and he was!).
Fast forward through various bands including Contagious, Vaughn and more, Tony Marshall was now married with a young child and apart from being heavily involved with the annual Firefest shows, had pretty much retired from the “Rock Scene”. Pete Godfrey had been writing pop tracks for a couple of years after fifteen years away from the industry, enjoying a little success but it wasn’t satisfying from an artistic point of view. He decided to spend a few months writing what he felt instead of what he thought and came up with six or seven demos that were definitely Rock based. Pete approached Tony who listened to the tracks but to be honest, wasn’t massively impressed with the style. The two decided to meet up to see if they could write together. The ideas flowed but it took time to get up to speed with the advances in recording technologies.
It became apparent pretty early on that the material was strong and what was originally intended to be a songwriting partnership quickly gathered momentum and a direction which was crying out for a band situation. To improve the tracks, Tony asked Pete Newdeck who at the time was still the drummer with Eden’s Curse as well as fronting his own band Tainted Nation, to help with the drumming. As an unexpected bonus, Pete Newdeck was also mixing songs in his own studio for his and other artists material, so, obviously, the honourable thing to do was to ask him to mix a few of Tony and Pete’s songs, as it would have been rude not to! Pete loved the songs and pretty quickly was drafted in as the third member of the as yet unnamed outfit.
In August 2013, during a conversation with Kieran Dargan, the suggestion was made that Tony and the two Pete’s, write a track for use as the International Anthem for Firefest X. ‘Church of Rock n’ Roll’ was that track and it was about this time that the boys decided to name the band IN FAITH. Over the next several months, songs were written, rewritten tweaked and improved until they were deemed ready to be presented as demos to a select group of trusted friends now known as “the Jury”.
The comments were pretty much phenomenal across the board, with some very positive critique offered which was taken on board (and only discarded when nobody was looking!!). Once the decision was made to give “the project” a name, the push was on to complete an album. Favours were called in from several friends: Chris Green of Rubicon Cross plays a solo on ‘Addicted’, Furyon’s Pat Heath adds his considerable talents to ‘Radio’ and ‘Learn to Fly’, and Brooke St James of Tyketto contributed a guitar solo to the track ‘Where I Wanna Be’.
In Faith’s debut album ‘There’s a Storm Coming’ was mixed and produced by Pete Newdeck and co-produced by Tony Marshall.