About

A Little history.

I have played a keyboard of some sort on and off since my childhood but I never felt I was good enough to play in front of people. Basically a total lack of confidence on my part. Then, back around 2010 at the ripe old age of 56 or so, I joined a newly formed local blues meetup group where the emphasis was, and still is, on just having fun. Eventually they started to play a few charity gigs and arts type festivals and I got to be confident enough that I played at some of them.

I got myself a mic and started practicing singing to my own playing at home and eventually started performing solo once a month at a local hospice. Just me and the keyboard playings some songs and singing a little.  Don’t get excited, the biggest audience I ever had was about four people and I often played to an empty room for at least some of the time, but it was a learning experience for me.

During that time I started playing a couple of smaller open mics but lugging the keyboard around was always a pain because of it’s weight, especially as it lives upstairs at home so I had to disconnect everything and carry it down stairs then back up at the end of the night.

So, for the blues meetup gigs and open mics, as well as for just abit of fun, I got myself a Roland Lucina keytar. That is a LOT easier to carry and setup and it also lets me stand up instead of being sat down, out of sight at the back of the stage.

Now as much as I enjoy playing with the meetup group and doing open mics I wanted something a bit longer lasting without it turning into an actual commitment and it seemed to me that busking is the ideal way to achieve that. So at the ripe old age of sixty I am going busking!

There are however many problems associated with busking, especially the way I do it as I need an amplifier for my keytar but I hope my little occasional blog will be of some interest to someone and if not, I am having fun anyway.

Oh, I should mention as well that I still have a full time job at a software company so this is just a bit of fun for me. I doubt it’ll become an income producing endeavor any time soon.

Yours truly at the blues meetup group:

When I was a kid ( a looong time ago) my mother played accordion. I still have her accordion although it no longer plays and it would be far too expensive to restore. I could just about play it which is to say I understood how the bass side worked but that was about it. A few years I finally got around to getting one that played, at least well enough for me to learn on and after about a year or so of not really touching it I finally got my act together and started practicing on a regular basis. It helped that it sits on my piano stool so I can just pick it up, instead of being in it’s case! I like to think that my playing is improving and I am certainly enjoying playing it, so much so that it’s become my primary instrument and in fact, I acquired another one with that more traditional French musette sound.

Since then I’ve gone all electric with a Roland Fr-4x and Roland Bk7m backing module and I LOVE IT.  Finally at last I am a one man band and I am actually now getting pretty darn good on the accordion, even if I do say so myself (I think that my mum would have been proud).