General News

A sad old month with the passing of two great musicians, Ian Cutler and David Cousins.

I saw Ian perform only recently with A Feast of Fiddles and he was superb as ever.

I have fond memories of Dave Cousins when he rang me up to ask if I would join his band the legendary STRAWBS. He knew I had to decline because of my own career but said he had to ask anyway. It was an honour to be asked!

May both these towering talents rest with the angels.

Quiet this month folks.

As I go through my diary for July, it reads....

1st Zoom lesson. The first for a long time and very enjoyable and brings back memories of 2022 when I did quite a few via my pal Paul Roberts and if folk are still interested the details are still on the homepage of the site!

2nd A visit from my beautiful daughter Sadie along with lovely granddaughter Abi to our new home in the country.

3rd A recording session with Mark Guyatt a good friend, musical collaborator, sound engineer and tour manager.

4th Garden stuff.

5th and 6th A quiet weekend.

7th Routine quarterly visit to the hospital.

8th Car MOT....Got through fine!

9/10/11/12/13th Quiet.

14th Dentist.

15th Compiling recorded material to send to John Etheridge to overdub his guitar for a 2 Parts Guitar CD for the October tour.

16th Quiet.

17th I did a cracking interview for an American Station called Yesshift. Do check them out and hopefully catch the interview.

https://www.youtube.com/live/wq0JQldjLVc?si=jN5ygHVUpH8B2s2V

18th Visited Troy Donockley to buy back my Fylde fan fret 12 string foolishly sold many years ago.

I spent an amazing evening with the great Troy Donockley one of the great Irish pipers of his generation and all-round genius.

This photograph marks the occasion of me having my amazing fan fret Fylde 12 string back into my hands after foolishly selling it to the great man over 12 years ago and he is kindly letting me have it back.

It’s one of the most beautiful 12 string guitars ever made and being a fan fretted instrument make it very rare. God bless you and thank you Troy for agreeing to part with this blessed and precious instrument made by one of the finest guitar makers in the world.

19/20th With Carrie Martin recording a track for her new album. I visited Carrie for a couple of days for a catch up and to go over the track we have been working on.

Ideas for the track went well and we ended up visiting the lovely town of Beverley and dropping in on Colin Metcalf’s Sunday session ‘Sounds Like Monks’.

We turned up for a session in the round but when the heavens opened and the rain made us all scatter it became a session in the rain.

Grinning, Colin told us it was our turn, I had packed my travel guitar away, but Colin handed me his own lovely Gibson J45 guitar. Carrie was of course playing Gabriel, her Faith Neptune Eclipse.

We jammed out a quick version of the Corrs classic 'Runaway', a track we often mess with for a bit of fun. It was such fun and the gathering was sheer joy.

21/22nd Quiet.

23rd Zoom interview for my Cobham gig on the 27th.

24th Recording with Nigel Bates for his new project.

25th Another radio interview.

26th Yet another radio interview!

27th Cobham gig. Will report in next month’s news.

That's it really.