www.sixfifteen.me.uk
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Meet The Band
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Despite having a guitar around since the age of seven, I never started playing a musical instrument until I was twenty three. Oh, I played a mean rock tennis racket in front of the mirror in my early teens, but not a note struck until I shared a house with an ex-profesional bass player who started dragging me to folk clubs saying, "we can do that"! We started of with the blues, as that seemed the easiest and coolest in the folk clubs at that time, 1977. My friend Keith and I met a banjoist at our local club and we started rehearsing. One evening I was late for practice and the guys had learnt something new! A kind off country style song which needed something other than blues style backing, so, I took down off the wall an old mandolin and learnt some chords from a book. It didn't really hit me at first, to play it as a main instrument, until one Saturday in a second hand record store in Brighton I stumbled on some modern Bluegrass records. And that was that! Plus its compact and easy to carry!... ...Well i've been carrying it around for nearly thirty years now working my way through bluegrass music, sixties and seventies pop, jazz and some folk music to try and find my niche. I think I dig bluegrass and jazz the most... seems to be what my fingers prefere playing. I've played some wonderful places... residencies in Norwegian bars, festivals from Sweden to Devon and played with some wonderful musicians. When I think of the people that I would not have met, if I hadn't taken up the mandolin...? Musical influences are many; Mandolinists, Sam Bush, David Grisman, Mike Marshall and young gun Chris Thile, my current favourite. Guitarists, Tony Rice, John McLaughlin, Bryon Sutton, Clapton, Django Reinhardt and Larry Carlton and bassists, Victor Wootten, Stanley Clarke, Edgar Meyer and Warren Ball. Jerry Douglas on Dobro and Mark O'Connor on violin. Bela Fleck and Tony Trischka on banjo. What a band that would be...! My mandolin is a 1979 Aria, bought after playing just two notes on it! It was 'the one', then, and still is, despite the re modelling after it met a near fatal accident with the wheel of our drummers car in 2000! I have used, for some years now, a Fishman bridge pickup going into a Fishman pre-amp D.I. box. Then into an MXR micro amp, to raise the level for solos. From there into a gated Boss reverb pedal then into the pa. Depending on the gig and size of the band, I quite often aux send into a small, (or large), powered pa cab for a monitor. I have over the last few years been studying Reiki healing, Yoga and Buddism, its changed my life but I still love the music... love and peace! |