COMING SOON….
Available 19 February, 2027, my first album of the songs I wrote as a Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, student in 1963, with original demos, contemporary recordings and guest performances by my lovely friends (of a lifetime) Vashti Bunyan and Angela Strange. You’ll be able to download it and/ or buy the cd which comes complete with a 12-page booklet telling the story of how I started a skiffle group at school, how I met my friend Vashti and how we started songwriting – individually and together, why I wanted to record this album and how my voice has changed over more than 60 years!
MY FIRST BAND PLAYED SKIFFLE
For my 16th birthday I was given a second-hand guitar which I called BENJI. I learned to play from Alan Lomax and Peggy Seeger’s American Folk Guitar: A Book of Instruction. had brilliantly clear instructional drawings and I learned a good range of chords but I never got the hang of finger picking. I started a skiffle group at school with three friends and we played an eclectic mix from Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Freight Train’ and ‘Worried Man Blues’ to harmonising covers of popular hits including Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’ and ‘That’ll Be The Day’, the Everly Brothers’ ‘Dream’ and Cliff Richard’s ‘Travelling Light.’
