The past 4 months or so have been incredibly busy - here are a few of the highlights plus news of what's coming up! (you may need to grab a coffee!).

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DAVE AND SALLY DUO DATES

Early in the summer we did a short run of duo dates, which were great fun and very well received. The highlight was undoubtedly playing in a beautiful old church in the small village or Barham, near Canterbury, with our sound engineer for the night being the legendary Simon Nichol from Fairport Convention! We're just booking more duo (and Celestial Fire band dates) for next year. If you'd be interesting in hosting one head over to the Contact section.

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SUMMER OF 66

It was a great honour to be asked to be part of the house band for the 50th anniversary concert of the Windsor Jazz and Blues festival, widely regarded as the first ever 'proper' rock festival. Some of the artists who were at the original concert on the same site at Windsor Racecourse were there! It was great playing keys for PP Arnold, Chris Farlowe, Cliff Bennett and rising star Mollie Marriott (daughter of the late Steve Marriott), as well as doing a Cream tribute section with my old friend Norman Beaker (with whom I played with the late, lamented Jack Bruce back in the late '80's and early '90's). Keith Emerson was PP's keys player back in the '60's and it was especially moving to do a piano/voice version of Moody's Mood for Love, which Keith had especially loved PP's version of. Good to see Donovan and The Manfreds playing too!

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GREAT FUN ON THE CELESTIAL FIRE TOUR  

Most of August was spent preparing for the Celestial Fire Band UK dates, and then we had the band rehearsals at my studio in early September, prior to the tour dates. The tour was great fun and, despite smaller than hoped for audiences, it was very well received and we've had some fantastic feedback. We all felt more prepared this time round and introduced some new tracks into the set, including 'Innocence Found' from the Celestial Fire album, and the long suite 'Wind, Water and Fire'. It was the first time that the latter (a piece from the Iona album 'The Circling Hour') had ever been performed live.

This time we were able to take our own sound engineer on tour with us, the fabulous Paul Smith (Strawbs, Fairport, Robert Plant etc, etc!), and also introduced a few new instruments to the set: Sally brought along the tenor recorder that had been used by her dad when he was in Gentle Giant, Dave (Brons) and Frank both had new, great sounding TC Helicon processors for their acoustic guitar/vocals/violin, and Simon featured more Chapman Stick playing. 

I felt that the band was really beginning to gell so well this time and I couldn't wish to be with a nicer bunch of people! We're hoping that once the Celestial Fire Live dvd is available, and promoters can see just how good this band is, that we will be able to get a lot more gigs and general interest. (We will be starting pre-orders for the dvd soon so stay tuned!).

SESSIONS

I recently played electric guitar and bouzouki on a great new album called 'Celtish' by my friends Nigel and Julie Cameron. They are fantastic musicians and the album is very much in the traditional Irish folk vein, though one track I played on is a sort of Gary Moore tribute and I did my best to try and capture the spirit of his incredible, incenduary playing. You can pre-order it from http://www.soundsofwonder.org/shop

 

I've also been playing guitars (and a bit of bouzouki) on the new album by the great prog band Lifesigns, which features ace keyboardist John Young. So far I've played on two tracks, including the 10 minute plus title track Cardington, and have more still to do on the album. The band are currently running a crowdfunding campaign for the release which is going really well! Here's the link to it:

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/lifesignsalbum?utm_campaign=project14150&utm_medium=player&utm_source=facebook

 

STRAWBS - LIVE IN GETTYSBURG

Things have been a bit quiet on the Strawbs front as Dave, Dave and Chas have been doing loads of Acoustic dates, but there are a couple of Electric band dates in December (see gig guide) and then next March to May there will be some UK dates (including the HRH Festival in Wales) and another US tour. Chas has also been mixing our performance at RosFest last May for a forthcoming live DVD to be called Strawbs Live in Gettysburg, which will be the first Strawbs album I'll have played on! More info coming soon at:
http://www.strawbsweb.co.uk/

 

NEW VINTAGE GUITAR / IK MULTIMEDIA / CARVIN

Thanks to my association with JHS/Vintage Guitars, from who I got the fabulous Blug Amp 1 compact 100 watt valve amp last year, I will be taking delivery of their wonderful sounding and looking Paul Brett 12 string travel guitar in a few weeks time, which will be a superb addition, especially for recording. See
http://www.jhs.co.uk/products/guitars-folk-instruments/acoustic-guitars/vintage/vintage-viator-paul-brett-12-string-electro-acoustic-travel-guitar-natural
And check out Paul's video demo.

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Also, thanks to my good friend Jason at IK Multimedia, I been using some of IK's incredible new plug ins extensively both live and in the studio, notably Sampletank 3 (great and ever expanding general sound palette), Miroslav 2 (beautiful orchestral collection), Amplitube 4 (superb sounding guitar fx/amps which I used live for the first time on the Celestial Fire dates) and their TRacks studio fx, which are in constant use when I'm mixing. For more info see:

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/

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Another instrument I've been using a lot on recent recordings (including to get the Gary Moore type Les Paul sound on the Celtish album and on parts on the Lifesigns album) is my Carvin CT624 electric guitar, which sounds and plays superbly. Anyone in mainland Europe should check out the Carvin range - great instruments that are significantly cheaper than some of the other comparable high end manufacturers. Good deals available at my friend Pat's great shop: http://musicalbox.ch/