I started playing music when I was eleven. My mum and dad sent me to piano lessons because my nan had an old out of tune piano in her house which I used to play when ever we visited.
My piano teacher was Mrs Brown a stern old lady who was very strict, but I never used to like what she made me play so after a few terms she chucked me out for not practising, telling my dad that he was wasting his money as I only liked making up my own tunes!. I then took up electric guitar when I was thirteen. My dad and I went to look at some electric guitars that were for sale in the local paper. We went all round the country lanes looking for these people that were selling these guitars. Dads idea was, that if I liked one of the guitars we were looking at I was to say that I didn’t like the colour much, this would allow dad to try and knock them down on price!
Disappointingly I ended up with a pretty awful cheap guitar that you could shoot arrows with!.
My first amplifier was home made by my uncle who was an electrician. He built it out of thin plywood, a car stereo speaker which only had an on & off switch and a volume control knob. When I turned it up full to its full 5 watts it distorted to what I thought was a great punk rock sound which has kinda stuck with me to this day.
My first proper gigging band was appropriately called “In Our Blood” a three piece outfit with an impressively massive sound. The line up was made up from myself on guitar and lead vocals a very talented chap by the name of Tim Beeby on bass guitar and backing vocals. Lastly the ole boy of the band being eleven years our senior was none other than Phill the drummer of our latest venture “Shanakee”.
So here we are, Phill and I in 2022 nearly 40 years later back together sharing the stage once again, only this time playing the genre of folk rock rather than punk rock, who’d have thought it!.
There is a strange paralleled in this outfit in as a far as Pat and Reg’s paths to ‘Shanakee share a very similar story.
After In Our Blood I went on to put together and play in two other Medway based bands ‘Ted can’t hear ya’ and ‘Prides Purge.
