12 Years of Music

After the Midbeats, there was a series of iterations of the band,

The Tymeflies, The Target to name just a few until I joined The Motion, a popular local band. We had a following of over 300 “fans” who followed us to every performance.

With the Motion, I finally achieved my goal of becoming a professional musician. We toured extensively in the south of England and even had a 14 day gig at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany.

As one by one, the original members of the band left to follow educational pursuits, the Motion finally disbanded. 

I moved to Germany and after a brief period with the Pete Lancaster band, I finally joined the Big Jump Band, a seven piece band with horns in addition to the standard 4 piece line up and an exceptional female vocalist. We toured extensively through Europe playing the clubs in the American bases in Germany as well as nightclubs in Switzerland, Austria, Holland and many other countries. We were essentially a soul band starting out but as the members of the band changed evolving to an 8 piece lineup with an additional member of the brass section, so the musical direction evolved to a hard rock/funk/ jazz style

Unfortunately all good things come to an end and after we disbanded, I moved to a Dutch band named Flashback for about a year before ending my full-time professional career with a stint with The Twigg.

At some point it was time to settle down, I just happened to be in Germany and although I really just planned to take a time-out before getting back out on the road again, my stay in Germany turned out to be my permanent home.

After a few gigs with local bands in the area around Kaiserslautern, I finally left the “live music” scene and slowly built up a home studio with an extensive collection of guitars, keyboards, synthesisers and even programmable drums with which I could multi-track recordings playing and singing all then parts myself.

Looking back, I was quite amazed to realise that I learned so much more doing this than actually playing with all the different bands. In my studio I learned a much wider view of making music, not only having to concern myself with my own part, but in fact all of the parts, the different instruments, vocals and indeed the entire arrangement of the songs. 

At some point, I found myself more and more committed to acoustic music, I acquired some wonderful instruments and concentrated on guitar and vocal arrangements until after a serious accident, my musical activities came to an abrupt end!