After moving to London in 1980, I had been quietly minding my own business for a couple of years when out of the blue I received a phone call from none other than Paul Kerr. Keen readers of these memoirs will recall that Paul and I had played in bands together in Armagh some 13 years earlier. He and partner Hilary McCutcheon (also from Armagh of course) had by now given up their earlier glam-rock lifestyle and were both living and teaching in North London, quite near where I lived. Their musical tastes had taken a more mellow turn towards jazz-blues. They wanted to do some recordings and asked me and a drummer called Chris to join them.
These recordings were done in a fairly basic, but perfectly adequate, studio in Twickenham. There was no editing or anything clever like that - we simply played the entire song over and over and over again until we got a good take. The perennial by Van the man subsequently proved to be particularly popular with our live audiences. We also recorded Gershwin & Gershwin's from the 1937 Fred Astaire/Joan Fontaine film "A Damsel in Distress," and , written by Dolores Silvers and popularised by Frank Sinatra. Listening to these now, I realise that Paul and I had both come a long, long way from the heavy rock riffs we used to trade back in the 1960s!
The recording sessions went so well that we decide to do some live gigs, calling ourselves The Kerr-McCutcheon Band. We played at various North London venues, at which an unbelievable number of the London branch of the Armagh diaspora regularly turned up out of the woodwork. I had never been very good at keeping in touch with people from my past, so this was quite a revelation for me.
Here is a short version of recorded live at the Kentish Town Tavern in May 1983. Although the sound quality isn't great, the background noise and audience participation give a very good idea of the atmosphere at our gigs. (This song was written by Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael for the 1938 film "Thanks For The Memory", and has been covered by many people. Our version also includes an excerpt from the Mammas and Papas' Dream A Little Dream Of Me.)
Some months later we had another studio session in a posh studio down the West-End, and I recently discovered a photograph of me actually playing there. Here we did a small amount of overdubbing of piano and extra vocals, and the odd drop-in to fix a bum note or two, but not much. The first of these recordings is the captivating , a Paul & Hilary original. This shows a distinct reggae influence. We also did a knockout version of the George Gershwin classic from West Side Story, , with saxophonist Jo Smith featuring in the middle-eight. This recording also develops into a reggae style, loosely based on cover version of the song by an artiste whose name I'm afraid don't know. It is quite a big file to download (2.9MB) but it is well worth the wait.
The third track from this studio is soul artist Ted Taylor's . Although it is a great song, this recording somehow lacks the immediacy and dynamic impact of the previous two. It just goes to show what a difference the final mixing can make. I wasn't present for this, so I don't know exactly why they are so different. I have managed to improve the sound somewhat during the digitization process.
I've put all of these songs, plus all the recordings from Chapters 1 and 2 (Armagh and Belfast), onto a CD, punningly entitled: "The Blues from the County Armagh." If you're really keen you can have a copy.
The Kerr-McCutcheon Band played its final performance at the Gatehouse pub at the top of Highgate Hill before stopping for Hilary to have baby Ella. This particular gig was one of my all time favourites. I can still feel the crescendo building up to an incredible climax in the chorus of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, abruptly stopping to leave only Hilary's voice and acoustic guitar continuing with the next verse. Sadly, there isn't a recording of this musical high.
Baby Ella kept Paul and Hilary away from the music scene for a few years, and when they returned in the latter half of the 1980s, they appeared to have mellowed yet again, now opting for material from the blues/country/folk spectrum. Things started in a fairly low key manner, in local pubs such as the Prince of Wales in Tottenham. The informal line-up consisted of Paul and Hilary on acoustic guitars, me on bass and at various times some other friends of Paul's, e.g., Eamonn on guitar and Damien on Flute.
We didn't make any recordings with this line-up, but I do have a couple of photographs, taken at the Rosemary Branch in Islington, I think.
This was around about the time when Chris and I got married, in December 1989. Paul and Hilary came to our party, and I'm sure that anyone who was there will recall that we all had an excellent impromptu music session.
Paul wanted to do more and more pub gigs, but I wanted to limit my involvement to weekends, not being able to burn the candle at both ends quite as much as I used to (age creeping on!). Thus, my involvement with the band gradually faded away. However, we kept in touch, and indeed on returning from a long trip to the U.S., Paul ended up teaching at Chris's school, St. Angela's, for a while.
In 1993, Chris and I moved to a house just outside Oxford, and for a while my musical performances were mostly limited to sing-songs and family get-togethers, etc., plus a bit of dabbling with MIDI music on the computer.
However, things started looking up when the 21st century arrived. Not long after we bought our house in Ravenglass we discovered that the local pub, the Holly House, sometimes had music sessions whenever any local musicians met up there. I dusted off my old songbooks, added lots of new (old) tunes to my repertoire, and became a regular performer there. The then landlady, Anita, even provided a good guitar to be available in the bar, just for anyone who got the urge to strike up. Very sadly, Anita died suddenly in February 2003, shortly after retiring from the pub, which was great shock to everyone who knew and loved her.
Since those halcyon days, my old pal Percy Aggett has visited a couple of times and we have had some good musical evenings. Needless to say, Percy was a big hit with the pub regulars. However, changing times and clientele seem to mean less demand for music in the Holly House these days. In 2013 the Holly House closed and is due to reopen under the Pennington Hotels group, where live music seems unlikely to feature.
In 2012, following a change of management at the Ratty Arms, live music started there for a while, including "open mic" sessions. I played at some of these, but they lacked the intimacy and friendliness of the Anita's days at the Holly House. Music has now stopped here too, so we'll have to wait and see what comes along next.
I hope you have enjoyed this ramble through my musical past. I may now have retired from work, but I hope I'm not finished yet with music. Perhaps a digital recording studio in the loft next, who knows? Just watch this space...