This page was last updated on 22 January 2003

I can always remember music of some sort being played in our house as I was growing up. My dad was always listening to classical music and he used to be in the amateur operatic society. I can always remember my mum singing at home along with the radio and often she would sing kind of folk songs from her native country, The Nederland’s.

So it was no surprise whilst I was around about six years old, I picked up a little plastic mouth organ that belonged to one of my cousins, while we holidaying at my granddads farm over in Holland.  I can still remember that mouth organ, with a  yellow body and bright red mouth piece. From day one I picked it up and started blowing out nursery rhymes. By the time our four weeks holidays were finished I could play that thing with no trouble. My cousins thought I was a hero!

For my seventh birthday my mum and dad bought me a real harmonica, it was a Honer Alpine I think they called it, with two sides, one in G and the other in C. I was in my element, I was blessed with a good ear, I could pick up a tune in no time, even the pop songs of that era. That harmonica went with me everywhere, over the fields where we played as kids, up trees, out with me fishing, my brothers hated me fishing with them as I was always playing my harmonica and scarring the fish!

By the time I was thirteen I had harmonicas all over the place, every birthday I asked for a new harmonica. I would do my paper round and in those days the portable transistor radios were just out. All the other kids use to take their radios on their rounds but I would take my trusty harmonicas. Some of my customers gave me big tips at Christmas if I played them Christmas Carols on my harmonica. My dad said that I was born to entertain. Also at thirteen my dad gave me a new harmonica and he also had bought one himself, same one double sided but a little longer so I reckon it had more notes on it. Anyhow I never knew he could play as he had never said a thing in all the years I’d been playing. Wow though could he play, we would do duets together on tunes like “Grandfather’s Clock”, “You are My Sunshine” etc. I figured out how to work out harmonies, although I didn’t know that’s what it was called as I didn’t read music and still don’t today, I’ve had no need to.

One thing was strange though, when I then started playing the blues harps (single note ones), I noticed that they had numbers stamped on the metal casing. My numbers were underneath! How come they would put numbers underneath I kept saying to myself, I didn’t even know what they were there for. In my secondary school we had a maths teacher that could play the chromonica, that’s the one with the slide on it, the button sticks out the side. The great Larry Adler played those type. Well this teacher played classics on his and he new I was interested so at dinner times he would show me some stuff. The first lesson I had with him he’d written a kind of tab out on the blackboard for me using these numbers. Of course when I came in and started playing, he realised I was playing the thing back to front or upside down, a left mouthed harmonicaist! Well he gave up there and then with the tab idea, but he would play things and I would copy him, he taught me how to breathe properly and how to tremolo the notes etc. I enjoyed it and after all he was doing it in his own time, how many kids would do that nowadays work with a teacher in the teacher’s own time, let alone would they be allowed to now, still that’s another subject and I’m getting off the beaten track. Anyhow I continued to play the harmonica through my teens, my eldest brother Francis had an old beat up guitar, he was going to form a band like the Beatles stuff. He even bought an old banjo from a junk shop, took the neck off and threw that away and used the drum for a drum. It might have been an old Gibson! I knocked out on his guitar “There Is A Tavern In The Town” by Bert Weedon, “Learn Guitar In A Day”. I found it hard as there was too much to do. My trusty harmonicas were ready to go, no messing with tuning pegs etc.

Well when I was around sixteen my other brother Peter, had got together with some of his mates and had formed a little folk band, doing stuff like The Spinners, Peter, Paul & Mary and so on. By this time I was into rock, The Beatles, Stones, Status Quo, the wilder the better for me. My dad wasn’t too impressed but he never put any of us down, we could do and listen to what we wanted. I said to my brother Pete that I would play some harmonica with them, I picked up “Leaving Of Liverpool” The Spinners done and some others that my brother and his mates were doing, easy stuff, I thought. I started going to the folk club they were playing out and played in with them. Well then at the folk club were these guys playing a banjo here and there, Irish stuff of the “Dubliners”. I kind of like the sound of this and although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was getting hooked on the banjo, although it was the tenor banjo. 

One night at the folk club the guest artists were “The Orange Blossom Sound”. This was around 1968 or 69. they came on, no mics just straight acoustic, and oh boy I was knocked for six. The line up was Roger Churchyard, fiddle, Charlie Gaisford, banjo, Ian McCann guitar and lead vocals and Mike Artis (long tall blonde beanpole) double bass. Well I was transfixed, no one could have believed how quiet I was and how much attention I was paying to these brilliant guys. The banjo was the instrument for me. When they had their break I asked Charlie on how could I learn to play the banjo like he was. Charlie’s reply was to go out and buy a five string banjo. That’s what I did. There was a guy selling one at the folk club and I saved up £15 to buy my first banjo. I bought it and try to learn to play. After about a year I found out that I’d got a long neck folk banjo and that I would have to capo it at the 3^rd fret to get it in the standard G tuning. I did this for a while, then bought a brand new one (cheap Jap one) with a resonator and all.

My mum and dad were so happy that I’d abandon my heavy music and my mad craze for motorbikes, dad said the banjo saved my life, if I kept on with bikes I wouldn’t see 20, I was mad!. Yes they were so happy they decided to move to North Wales from Essex! I lived with my eldest brother Francis for a while, his first wife wasn’t too keen on the banjo. By this time I had a real good Jap copy of a Mastertone but I found it hard to practice as my sister-in-law did hated it. I had a little van and I would drive out into the country and park up in a field and pick. It was ok in the summer but the winter months it was impossible.

So in the early 70’s I joined up with a rodeo team and spent weekends away around the UK rein acting Wild West Shows. We had a club and we worked for a company that hired to do these shows.  It was good fun but the banjo got put away in its case under the bed! At these rodeos, I started to meet some USA guys and a few would play guitar and fiddles. The old flame started to rekindle in me and one weekend I took my banjo with me. I met up with these guys again and hey we had a bluegrass band! Great until the next weekend, and would they be there!

Whilst living with my brother, France, I came home after a rodeo and he said that a person had try to contact me from up the road from where I was living. This was John O’Connell, a fine bluegrass/oldtime fiddler who now resides down in Sussex. I had written to a USA magazine ‘Pickin’ saying what was around in the UK bluegrass wise. John had read my letter and had got the phone number and was trying to contact me. I went over John’s several times and he encouraged me to play (as did Charlie Gaisford and Rick Adams of The Southern Ramblers). John introduced me to more pickers and he had his own band Hi Grass going at the time. The band was John fiddle and vocals, Bob Armstrong banjo and vocals, Bob plays dobro with the Acme Band nowadays, Terry Hymers mandolin now with New Essex Bluegrass Band, Paul Hammerton, guitar and vocals. Paul moved out to the States years ago and I met him a few years ago at Ironbridge Festival while he was over visiting his parents. Hi Grass had numerous bass players their most regular was Andy (whose surname I never knew) on an electric Hofner bass, Andy made it sound like a double bass, great musician.

So John invited me to pickin’ sessions and I was already going to The London Bluegrass Club, at Tottenham Court Road and The Engineer at Regents Park, near Cecil Sharp House. John also introduced me to Cambridge Folk Festival where there were heaps of bluegrass pickers playing.

I had this idea by then, that all these people who I would meet at London and all those I’d meet at Cambridge, would go back to their lives wherever they lived until the following session. Also it seemed that although there was loads of bluegrass throughout the UK, you seemed to have to belong to a secret society to find out what was going on. I’d mentioned to various people that I would like to put a newsletter together and circulate up and down the country, giving details of bands, sessions any festivals etc. I got great encouragement,  “It’ll never work”, “You want to book USA bands, don’t waste your money on a newsletter” and so on. But when I mentioned it to John he was interested and said if I wanted any help I could call on him. So the birth of The British Bluegrass & Old Time Music Newsletter was born around 1974 I think. I was living this time with Paul Hammerton in Chelmsford.

Soon the newsletter became a small magazine with Dave Hatfield helping out with the print. John Holder of Newmarket (guitarist with Pete Sayers & The Radio Cowboys) designed the new front cover and it became The British Bluegrass & Old Time Music Journal (BB&OTMJ). Incidentally, Nick Baraclough (BBC Radio presenter) was the first subscriber to The British Bluegrass & Old Time Music Newsletter. I managed to get subscribers at various venues, Edale Bluegrass Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival and even when I was busking, I always made sure I had mags with me. I couldn’t believe it, I started to find loads of people with the same interest in music as me! It was hard work all of it was typed up on a small typewriter, no word processors in those days. I remember I couldn’t go into hospital for my first heart operation until I had an issue out that I was working on.

Well as time went on, it grew bigger and better, John had left these shores to work abroad so I was putting it together by myself and Dave getting it laid up and printed. If I ran out of funds I would go busking to help pay the bills and of course I was always meeting new people. I met Jan Jerrold and he got interested in the magazine. Jan worked with computers and he said he could produce the magazine using computer format. Jan was so full of enthusiasm and with another person John Hopkins, we decided to shorten the name to The British Bluegrass News incorporating Old Time Music.

I really got involved with the music and I starting teaching a few people banjo. I taught myself by grinding down records, blessed with these good ears, I found this was easier for me than trying to work tabs. There were no banjo pickers around here and then a few I saw at festivals etc. would show you a few licks. I must say the American pickers were great when on tour over here, I would leap out of my seat after a show and would ask them questions, they would show me stuff. Bill Keith is one of my hero’s, I remember going to workshops of his and slowly things would begin to make sense. I loved frailing but never really learnt it but, I came up with a sound close to it, only I would still have my finger picks on. I was going to stop it as I thought it was cheating, Bill encouraged me to use and perfect it as it was my own thing. Years later I found out that Snuffy Jenkins did a similar thing.  I always thought he was frailing when I heard him do this. I began teaching more and more and I figured out that there must be a better way of teaching and that’s when I came upon the idea of my teaching books with audio tapes.

As the years rolled by I played at loads of sessions, in 1982 went across to the States with Steve Read and spent a month out there picking at festivals, stayed a wonderful week with Bob Paisley (Bob Paisley & The Southern Grass). I bought a nice Martin guitar from Bob (on his tour of UK in ’83), and started to lean to play bluegrass rhythm.

Around this time I formed a band with Terry Hymers, mandolin and Roger Birch, guitar, vocals and myself banjo and vocals. We were called Unlimited Bluegrass and we had various bass players through the years. Roger left and Terry and I still continued to play, mostly for our own enjoyment at sessions and festivals. A few years later Roger came back and we reformed as The Chelmer Valley Stringband. This band lasted the longest, around ten years in all. Again though Roger left and Paul Brewer came in and again the name was changed to The Chelmer Valley Bluegrass Band. I’d been playing pedal steel, guitar and banjo for a number of years in a country band and the work with them was getting heavier and heavier as well as holding down a full time day job. So after around two years with the last line up Terry, Paul and I, I quitted to play more with the country band. One thing was that with the bluegrass band we would rehearse nearly every week but never did any gigs, with the country band we were out two/three nights a week plus weekends! It was great fun with the country band and I met a wealth of new friends and some pickers. As always people were interested in the banjo and we would play ‘Dueling Banjos’, I loved that tune and I still do. Some people reckon it’s boring, something only becomes boring if you make it that way.

When asked where and how did Wet Paint start, I reckon it must of had to have started when Richard Lee would come out with me at weekends with the country band. Another band whose name changed through the years, Pinewood County, Arbukle & Beans and Kentucky Thunder (that name taken from Rickie Skaggs album). In the bands breaks, Richard and I would do a spot. As the years went by Richard became a virtuoso on banjo and guitar. He even went on to learn Appalachian dancing and we would feature him doing that. We multi-tracked some tapes and Richard would be playing banjo, bass and some fills on mandolin, he was in his young teens by then. I thought if I could find some other musicians who were dedicated to playing then we could have a great band.

After the country band packed up (we were going for fifteen years) I started doing more solo work. Richard was at the age where the opposite sex meant more than music! I then had a phone call from Mick Ross saying he was wanted to form a bluegrass band and would I be interested in playing banjo and doing some vocals. I met up at Mick’s house with Dave Notman who was going to play mandolin and some guitar and vocals. We soon found out that we could do with some more musicians so Guy Simpson came in on resonator guitar and vocals. We worked on that format for a while but we found we needed a guitarist full time, so along came Bob Smitherson, and Buffalo was created.

The first Sore Fingers Week I was helping Pete Wernick out (a great honour), and Richard was with me. At that week the course was run at a boarding school and they had the painters in. I remember as I was going into the main hall there was a blackboard saying “Wet Paint”. I said to Richard, “I didn’t know they were on tonight”. That night we played on stage and we called ourselves Wet Paint. Richard continued to do duo work and we used the name.

I was teaching Luke who was nine at the time, some guitar and mandolin and his mum banjo. Being a youngster he wanted to soak up as much as he could, so I would feed as much as I could. His dad, Clive, loved Rockabilly and got hold of double bass. I only knew the basic bluegrass bass (a good bass player is worth their weight in gold). Clive found a teacher and he would take Luke along with him, In no time Luke was having lessons and another fine musician was born. As Richard and I got more gigs and look began to get more confident on the double bass we decided to add him to the paint pot, and a drip appeared. We went out under the name of Wet Paint & The Drips. We played more and more gigs and we were looking out for another lead instrument. One night a young mandolin player turned up out a pickin’ session (Essex Bluegrass Sessions, Cross Keys PH, Hatfield Peverall, Nr Chelmsford) I run on Tuesday nights (now the last Tuesday of the month. His name was Richard Miller, he impressed me so much with his playing (he’d only been playing for about a year. I asked would he like to join a band and really dropped him in the deep in, and another drip appeared. We practiced up a lot of tunes, we lacked harmonies as none of the other wanted sing. We went on to record our own CD which we still sell at our shows. One thing I must say with Wet Paint working with the youngsters they have some great ideas, I can see why Del McCoury likes working with his sons and the others. Richard and Luke listen to the everyday pop music and Luke is playing some electric bass with a heavy metal band, but again look what Del has turned into bluegrass style. This is what we wanted to achieve, we listen and like the traditional music but it’s nice to have new material and keep it in the style of bluegrass, more so than newgrass, nothing wrong with that either!

Things were going great for Wet Paint & The Drips, plenty of reconnection and new tunes and Richard Lee was beginning to sing. Another member came into the band, Peter George, a super guitarist and vocalist. Pete gave the band a new dimension and encouraged Richard with his singing. Luke’s bass was now tops, a fantastic player as he plays solid rhythm and spot on timing. Another technique Luke has mastered is slap bass, Luke when asked about slap bass says “people reckon this was only in rockabilly, but listen to early Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, rockabilly is a fusion of bluegrass and rock and roll”. Pete is a full time musician but he comes in with us when he’s not on the road with his band and he jams with us at times.

Richard Miller had to leave the band to make a career in Germany and he was getting married! It was a bit of a bombshell as we had future bookings lined up and we had to find a replacement. Wet Paint  is a unique band, we are always looking for that certain twist, so to find a replacement wouldn’t be easy. But it turned out easier than I thought. Charlie Ogunremi was waiting in the wings. I’d known Charlie in the 70’s and he’d come back on the scene and was playing with Route 66 and East Anglian Bluegrass Boys. I asked Charlie would he like to come in the band, I sent him a list of the songs/tunes and our CD and when Charlie came over for the first rehearsal he had it pretty much together.  Not only is Charlie a good mandolin player, he is a good vocalist, lead and harmony.

We soon had the band back up and running and Charlie introduced some new songs and tunes and of course those other harmonies. We have got new microphones and have spent some hard cash on upgrading our sound system. We have spent a bit of money on stage dress too, we felt that this is an important part of a band. When I worked in the country band the first thing I was told was look clean and tidy and you’ll play clean and tidy, it works. We played Chrissy Forbes, The 1^st Surrey Mini Festival with the new line up and we seemed to have gone down well. We continue to sell our CD but we are now working on a new one, plans are set to release this in the near future. What with the holidays over too we are planning more practice’s and we have still a few barn dances and concerts to do. We are also planning to play for the major festivals next year, 2002 (promoters start phoning us early) and there is a talk of us doing a tour of the States. I just hope Wet Paint will stay with the line up we’ve got, I think it’s the best and I love all the worries, the music, but best of all, all the band members and the excitement. Things are looking good for Wet Paint.

I am working on a kind of Country/Bluegrass fusion with Pete George. It’s Pete’s idea and I’m going to be playing my electric Derring Crossfire banjo and lap steel. Pete is a great guy for arranging the backing instruments, as well as playing with, he’s a great musician, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m still teaching and working on new lessons, doing workshops and learning more square dance calls. I hope to be picking for at least another twenty years.