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My Background
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Back in 1964 at the age of 17 I was fascinated
by the Beatles (although I had already taken a keen interest in
Elvis and most music which appeared on TV or Radio Luxembourg).
In 1967 I got my first gut string guitar which my brother Dave
brought home when he was in the Merchant Navy. I
bought the Mel
Bay “play in a day” book and practised chords for over two hours per
night five nights a week. I felt the pain in my fingers as I had
also borrowed a steel string guitar from a folk singer friend.
That’s a small penalty to pay for the long time rewards.
Within a few months I formed a folk group in the Edinburgh Y.M.C.A.
and soon we were singing the songs of The Corries, the Dubliners and
the McCalmans in public
at all sorts of
events. We initially just knew six songs and when asked to keep
going we just started from the beginning again.
I still had a keen interest in Beatles/pop music and bought
songbooks to learn most of the chords needed to sing these songs.
By 1970 things had moved on and due more than anything else to great
enthusiasm, we were singing all around Edinburgh from folk clubs to
pubs, hotels, variety shows, students union, Royal Highland Show etc
etc. In November our group “Town Choice” entered the Scottish Folk
Group Championship with 140 groups competing and we came 2nd
to the JSD band. The outcome of that was two tracks on an album
(Folk Philosophy) and the decision to pack in our jobs and try it
full time. We were broke within 6 months but not before we’d been
spotted playing in a hotel in Oban where the crew in the Michael
Caine/Kirk Douglas film “Catch me a Spy” were staying (I was an
extra for 6 days at £3.50 per day !!). The end result was that they
flew us to Paris in May and December 1971 to play live on TV with
Joan Baez, Petula Clark and Manitas de Plata. John Lennon and Yoko
Ono were also on the bill but they were on video which is a pity as
we might have met them. However, their names are on the TV programme
for the day which I have a copy of and this was the highlight of my
musical career to date.
Following Town Choice came CARTERBAR, an Edinburgh based four piece
harmony folk group including guitars, Double Bass, mandolin, Banjo,
Concertina, Penny Whistle and later Clarinet of all things when
Gerard Dott joined . Gerard had just spent a year in America playing
with the Incredible String Band. A trained clarinet player with a
jazz background, Gerard had previously played with our Double Bass
player and bought a Gibson banjo in a pawn shop in America and
basically figured it all out in a couple of months !! He also picked
up my mandolin and with the scale worked out in two minutes,
proceeded to play harmony mandolin when we did Lara’s Theme in our
commercial gigs as I had a few mandolins (and still do). We
practiced long and hard with Carterbar often spending four or five
hours on the vocals of one song. Double Bassist Graham Blamire (who
started the band) had endless energy and would sit up into the early
hours writing out our harmonies (none of us could do it). The end
result was two and a half years of gigs all over Scotland
(part-time). Weekends to The Isle of Skye will be long remembered.
We did Radio Scotland for a week on Alistair McDonald’s show but the
band broke up before we got as far as records etc. A very satisfying
period in my learning curve, in particular to the joys of harmony
singing.
I then married and moved to Northumberland
and started a
folk club in Warkworth and also formed a Contemporary Folk/Country
duo with Jimmy Lillico from Alnwick. We played all around the
Alnwick area and
sang John Denver material and 60s Country and Pop. I then had a
three year stint in working men’s clubs as a vocal guitarist also
using an electric mandolin. I had the sheet music done for my songs
and used the resident keyboard and drummer and these three years
opened my eyes to many aspects of entertaining in public. I later
did another two years 1989-1991 in the working men’s clubs and
nothing had changed since 1978. i.e. I used more or less the same
songs/sheet music as I quickly discovered that a Saturday night in a
working men’s club at that time meant two half hour spots singing
SONGS THEY KNOW in the first spot and SONGS THEY CAN DANCE TO on the
second spot. I’ve been support to many acts who just didn’t get
this. They’d do obscure songs and die a death. That’s why, although
I used to sing middle of the road material for working men’s clubs
and still have no objection to singing middle of the road material
(see FAMOUS FACES on this website) I won’t take a Folk or Bluegrass
Band into a venue like that as the clientele generally don’t know
the songs. They get fascinated with the banjo doing Dueling Banjos
or Foggy Mountain Breakdown but it then starts to go downwards
unless the band has fantastic charisma and plays well-known songs in
a bluegrass style (which I have heard very occasionally ). Being in
the wrong venue can be soul destroying so I don’t do it.
As a keen mandolinist and aware that there were few recordings
readily available in the Uk in 1989 I took a chance and spent £2000
recording a mandolin album of easy listening tunes such as Lara’s
Theme, the Godfather etc etc . I sold around 1000 cassettes locally
(700 at the National Garden Festival in Gateshead in 1990) until
Prism Leisure took it on board and released it on CD. Mandolin
Moments was 'Record of the Week' on Great North Radio. I did another
two albums which have recently been compiled into one double album.
In 1988 I played in a The Mountain Dew Boys bluegrass band with
local mandolin/guitar player Jim Newman and from then on took a
really healthy interest in traditional bluegrass as well as American
Folk which I now play with my wife Carol. Carol learned the basics
of Double bass three years ago at age 57 and this is what we do
today. We play a couple of songs each week at Cramlington Folk Club
(at The Hind) and we have a session most Sunday evenings also at the
Hind with friends who play Harmonica, Dobro and guitars. Carol also
sings a good blues and although I can’t play lead blues guitar I
manage to play the basic chords and a little harmonica. We are
sometimes accompanied by friends John Baston (harmonica), John
Redpath (guitar) and Peter Cook (dobro). We haven’t done full gigs
as a band but this may happen some time when we’ll go out as The Hat
Creek Outfit due to Carol and myself being big fans of the Western
TV Series “Lonesome Dove” which is all about the Hat Creek Cattle
Company on a 2500 mile cattle trail from South Texas to Montana.
We’ve recently written a song about it.
So if you start with the right attitude you can go on to do anything
if you really want it. It’s up to you !!
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