WELCOME
That's me on the left with my mandola which, as you can see, is like a large mandolin, but deeper in pitch sounding more like a guitar.
​
This site is mainly about music and stories that come from making music: gigs, encounters, experiences, successes and flops. From busking on the streets of Soho as a schoolboy, to appearing on big stages before big, even huge audiences.
​
But all the while celebrating all who make music…whether for a living or those of us who are amateurs, in the full French meaning of the word, who play for either peanuts or fun…or both.
I have always loved music, singing and songs and as Woody Guthrie put it:
Woody Guthrie
“I hate a song that makes you think you’re not any good! I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too thin or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard travelling.
​
I am out to fight those kind of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing the songs that will prove to you that this is your world and if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter how hard it’s run you down and rolled over you, no matter what colour, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs I sing are made up by all sorts of folk just like you.”
My music
In my youth, my primary musical asset was that I could, with only my voice and my guitar, persuade a whole pub to sing together. Be it popular songs, one or two folk songs, and a wide and mixed repertoire that would include popular songs of the day - in my case that ranged from early Rock ‘n’ Roll to Skiffle and then The Beatles and The Kinks and Dylan. But always Leadbelly and Guthrie…Huddie and Woody. (Shame I didn't play any Muddy Waters songs!).