A little noodle, using my 2009 PRS DGT into my Friedman Mini Dirty Shirley Amplifier. Backing track supplied by Elevated Jam Tracks.

Jamming over a Buckethead style backing track, using my PRS RH2010 Special.

Here is a new instrumental track. This song has come out of my most recent demos.

Sometimes, I write a song with a vocal melody in mind. Other times, I lay down a melody guitar part from scratch and I realise, that would be the vocal line! That is certainly what happened with “Shadows Dancing”

I also took some inspiration from the recent album by Trip the Witch, a project featuring session legend Tom Bukovac and Dean DeLeo of the Stone Temple Pilots. That mainly instrumental record, is rooted completely in great song writing, where the guitar lines, replace the vocal melody.

Here are a couple of new tracks that I have been working on for some time! I’m trying to get more music finished and not just leave it stuck on my hard drive.

“Broken Promises” is a song I’ve tried to complete for a long time. “Faith/Love” is a song that came out of a video demo of a pedal that I did many years ago.

Here is a video of my band The Nightwires, performing the song “Look For Me” during our recent visit to the Flowerpot in Derby

Here are my two pedalboards, currently in use.

Both utilise Pedaltrain Pedalboards. The larger Pedaltrain Junior is used mainly in my home studio and when I do looping videos. I have used it recently for a couple of gigs by The Nightwires. However, even though its not as large as some, its blinking heavy to carry around! This board is powered by a Gigrig modular power supply system.

The smaller board is the one I use the most. I take it to lessons when I need some extra sounds and it’s the board I used on the Ryan Hamilton tour, last year. It’s so much lighter and really does everything I need. This one is powered by the One Spot CS6 which is designed to fit under lower profile boards, like the Metro series seen here.

A few years ago, I gave up on the pedalboard “rat race” I got tired of changing things regularly and decided it was time just to play with what I’d got. It has been a great decision and I have stumbled across a selection of pedals, that really work for me. The only thing I did change recently was to add the Boss Dm2 Waza to the Metro board, Its my favourite delay pedal.

I also stopped going on the boutique train. I know a couple of these pedals are slightly expensive, but I wanted to use stuff that wasn’t too esoteric and could easily be replaced.

Both these boards go straight into the front end of either my Morgan AC20 Deluxe or Friedman Dirty Shirley Mini. I’ve never been a fan of effects loops.

There are a few changes coming for 2023. The main one being that this website (and YouTube) will be the only place where you will be able to watch and listen to my latest “content” i.e. my art that I have dedicated myself to for a few decades!!

I’ve got to the point where I need to streamline the process of posting my videos and music, in an attempt to put more of it out. There are just too many Social media outlets to think about these days and I’m not convinced it makes any difference, whether I post on all of them or just one. There is so much competition out there and I’m getting a bit fed up of being sucked into the internet comparison game that affects so many musicians and guitarists. The amount of views my videos get on Instagram, Facebook etc are so small, I’d rather not have to worry about it!

So make sure you bookmark my website and YouTube channel and that way, you will keep up to date with all my musings.

Yes!! Episode 9 of Under the Influence is here, just in time for Christmas!!

“Memorable Gigs” sees Rob Lane and I talk about the shows we’ve been to over the years. Be they great, terrible, chaotic or crazy. There was a lot to get through, so this is a long one.

Here are a few photos taken at various shows on the Ryan Hamilton tour.

Over the last two and a half weeks, I’ve been lucky enough to be out on tour, playing guitar for Texan Singer/Songwriter Ryan Hamilton. The tour was made up of 15 dates, seeing us play all over the country, from Nottingham, London and Blackpool, all the way up to the Orkney Islands!!

The tour was a co-headline affair, along with Warner E. Hodges, legendary guitarist with Jason and the Scorchers and Dan Baird. Warner had a tale to tell lets say! We alternated each night, as to who went on first and, I have to say, I quite enjoyed going on first and laying down a marker for the night.

The idea was that Ryan and Warner would share a band (apart from me – I just played with Ryan) and simplify matters in terms of setting up etc. I thought it worked great and the band were an absolute pleasure to play with. I could feel us getting tighter and tighter as a band, as the tour went on. I have to say though that we sounded pretty great at the first gig in Nottingham!. I loved playing there at the Rescue Rooms, a venue I’ve seen many of my favourite bands at, but never played myself before now.

Highlight of the tour for me was playing at The Cluny in Newcastle. A nice venue with a decent sized stage and a great, packed crowd. I felt I had really hit my stride by that gig. Ryan has a song called “Oh My God” during which we lengthened the middle section, allowing myself and Ben, Ryan’s other guitarist, to cut loose and play an extended solo each. I love doing this sort of thing as improvisation is what I play guitar for. I think my solo at this Newcastle gig, was the best one I played during the tour. Whilst you have a few set piece places to go on the guitar whilst doing this, I loved trying to vary my solo a little bit each night.