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FROM Bahrain to Brixton a former St Chris student is making a big noise on the British music scene.
Jimi Alexander, 28, first came to the island in 1994 with his parents Kevin and Sian Russ when Kevin took up a job with Benoco(?).
The family lived at Awali and Jimi spent years eight and nine at St Christopher's School before returning to the UK to take his GCSEs.
The millennium found him back on the island studying for A' Levels when his father, who was also a well known cartoonist, died from cancer and the whole family went back to their native Wales.
Now the experience of growing up 'in transit', from Yemen to Australia and New Zealand to Bahrain, coupled with the loss of his father at such a young age and the sudden almost exile it prompted has led Jimi to come up with a brand of country music and lyrics that has gained him and his band the Satellites some important recognition.
Jimi said: "Growing up 'on the road' has influenced everything I write. It's about my family, what we've been through, where we've lived and also my father. I was very close to him so it's about losing him too.
"There's lots about looking for something and 'Burn a Little Brighter' is a song about Bahrain."
After leaving the island in 2000 Jimi travelled back to Australia and, though he had always been musical and scribbled lyrics, that was where he first started to actually put songs together.
He was doing public performances and getting recognition but decided he needed to move back to the UK to really give it a go as a professional musician so in 2004 he landed back in Wales and eventually got a band together.
Numerous changes of line-up led to the current Satellites who have been playing together for around 18 months now gigging locally and building up a following in Wales.
Then came the big break with an invitation to open a show for Alabama 3, a band best known for the theme tune to TV show The Sopranos 'Woke Up This Morning'.
Jimi said: "I don't even know how they heard of us but we were really pleased, we went down to Brixton to do their show and they came up to Cardiff a few months later and we started to get to know people and decided to cut a serious demo.
"We had been gigging around Wales and getting known then we got offered a couple of festivals last summer including one with Cerys Matthews, since then it's all been pretty non-stop."
The band's label Country Mile records was putting out a tribute to Welshman Jon Langford of The Mekons, one of the original 70s punk bands that went on to move into folk rock, and asked Jimi and the Satellites to contribute.
Their version of 'The Invisible Man', along with the group's own demo 'New York City Never Came', gained radio airplay both in the UK and on Chicago WXRT, where Langford now lives and on the strength of it Country Mile decided to put out 'Burn a Little Brighter' - the Bahrain song - which is due for release in May.
The song can be heard playing in the background of a piece on the Cardiff music scene recorded for the Guardian at https://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/interactive/2009/apr/01/wales-cardiff-live-music-culture
And the future for the band looks bright with a mini-tour lined up for the summer and possibly some more festival appearances.
But Jimi has not forgotten his Bahraini roots, or lack of them, he said: "I had a lot of issues about the way we left the island, one minute we were at school then the teachers came and told me it was time to go home and all of a sudden we were flying back to Wales.
"I was a bit wayward for a while and the songwriting and the band has given me a chance to vent and get it all out, now it would be really good to come back to Bahrain and maybe play a gig there, it would be good to play 'Burn a Little Brighter' in the land it was written about."
