THE MUSICAL HOME PAGE

Welcome to the  story. Are you comfortably sitting?

Good.

So here we go.

The whole thing started back in the early seventies in York, when I began singing and playing round the Folk Clubs. Ultimately I wound up where I am now, on the Wirral in Merseyside, running a club at the Kingsway Tennis Club in Wallasey, and one Christmas in a year which now escapes me but was quite some time back, we decided to have a Barn Dance to celebrate Christmas.

So we put a band together, and that, after a few months, turned into the Fiddle Band, so called because the fiddle was the lead instrument, and logic was always my strong point.

The Band ran through several line-ups before settling down, but always maintained the strong fiddle lead (played by Mary-Ann Wise) while I played a variety of things (mostly fiddle, mandolin and piano at the time) with mandolin, guitar and bass the general run behind it.

The final line-up was Mary-Ann, myself, Phil Hare on guitar, Kim Hare playing whistles and percussion, Bob Ballard on banjo and Martin Tetlow on the bass. Following a reorganisation, unfortunately mostly within the band, of wives and girlfriends the band broke up in some disorder and was replaced by the Titanic Disaster Band - so-called because it was guaranteed to go down well.

Again, this had many and varied line-ups (we reckon we may have to hire Manchester for the reunion gig) until, after about twenty years in total, I decided I was fed up with trying to organise musicians into some vaguely coherent form of activity and sank it about three years ago.

Our original Caller had deserted us about 1975 to go and drive a bus, and I had taken over that particular role so, when the Titanic finally dropped beneath the waves, I called the dances for (and played melodeon with) local band Two Left Feet for a while before inventing the midi-driven one-man operation of the Phantom Band, forming the three-piece Lifeboat Band (in memory of the Titanic of glorious memory) to play for smaller venues, while for the dances that require a full band line-up I now usually work a variety of mostly Cheshire-based bands, depending on a) whichever is closest to the gig or b) whoever phones me first! .

And of course, play fiddle and other assorted instruments of terror as often as possible with Kiss the Blarney, a great Irish band playing stomping songs and wild tunes.

I still write songs and play guitar round the Clubs, with a few CDs recently published (two of songs, and one of dance music). I play fiddle  with the odd Irish or Cajun bands, and spend as much time as I can playing with a forty foot narrowboat.

Have a wander round the rest of the site - there's a page of pictures of the various band line-ups which will be augmented if any of them see this and send me better photos. There's a few MP3s of songs and tunes lurking here and there. If you fancy a band to play at your, well, your anything, really, drop me a mail.