His appearance may not be what you'd expect of the son of a former UBP Finance Minister and Premier, but tattooed Jonathan (Sauly) Saul is a man of many parts. An honours graduate of the University of Western Ontario with a degree in English and theatre, he has earned a living in ways as diverse as his interests. Teacher, welder, construction worker, commercial diver, tree planter, yacht and herring boat crewman are just some of the occupations he has turned his hand to.

Before marrying, Mr. Saul's style was to work for half the year and then wander the world for the other half doing all the things that young, footloose men traditionally do. The one constant was his guitar. From his university days he has been a self-taught acoustic guitar player who also sings and composes. As someone whose life is a mixture of free spirit and organisation, he has not only kept a daily journal but also carried in his head or on paper all the material that he has ever written, along with the promise that "some day" he would make a recording.

Finally, Mr. Saul decided that the time was right, and he took positive steps towards making his dream reality. Entering the studio of a friend in Cape Breton Island, Canada, where he makes his home for most of the year, he set about laying down the tracks which now comprise his first CD.

In all, there are ten titles with names like `Salty Dog', `The Sailor's Lament', `Driftwood', `Lovers', and `Wanderer'. Each reflects a major event or chapter in his life.

`Salty Dog', for example, is a poem he wrote at 4 a.m. some 600 miles from Bermuda while crewing on a yacht. `Sailor's Lament' recalls the sinking of his dory, not once but twice, while he was off the Island, and his feelings of guilt that he had let the little craft down.

With some modesty, Mr. Saul declines to call himself an artist or even a recording artist. Rather he says, "I just happen to play guitar and write a lot of music". Yet he does admit to being pleased with his premier CD, and is confident that more will follow.

"I was my own producer and director, and I seem to be my own publicist as well," he says.

He defines the album as "folk", and the music as timeless. An initial approach to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation resulted in an order for additional CDs to be distributed to its regional affiliates across Canada. A born go-getter, Mr. Saul plans to follow up that distribution with personal visits to the relevant stations to further promote the album next summer.

Mr. Saul's short-lived introduction to musicmaking began in childhood when he was "introduced" to the piano.

"But unfortunately the lessons competed with the Saturday cartoons, and when my parents asked me if I wanted to continue with the lessons I said no," he says.

It was not until his second year at university that he decided to learn to play the guitar.

"It was my 21st birthday present to myself, and I subsequently spent a lot of time with that guitar and took it everywhere - to beaches, back and forth on sail boats, across Canada two dozen times," he says.

In addition to teaching himself the instrument, Mr. Saul also hung out with others who were better players than himself until finally he was in what he loosely calls "a garage band" made up of fellow students.

"But I'm the only guy that ever got out of the garage!" he laughs.

Ever an explorer of new avenues, Mr. Saul also learned to play the harmonica at a time when he was "just a singer".

"In those days you would play, drink Captain Morgan's rum, and sing whatever came into your head," he remembers.

To this day it irritates him that he ditched the classical training which those early piano lessons would have given him because, as any musician knows, classical music provides an invaluable grounding for all types of music.

"I was such a fool, which is why I play everything by ear," he says.

Meanwhile, hardly a day goes by that the father of two does not pick up his instrument and play - in fact, he estimates that the ten songs on his CD are but "one third" of the material he has written. Small wonder, then, that he expects more CDs to follow.

`Wild Foreign Shore' is published by Rhumb line Music, and is available at The Music Box and Sound Stage for $19.