Rob
Guitar, Drums, Keyboards, Vocals
Ask Rob who is his biggest musical influence and you’ll get an unusual reply.
“Most people cite pop stars as their biggest influences, but for me it was meeting someone in the flesh who could actually play guitar, sing and write songs and who had already done it in public.
“I met Dave at university and I’ll never forget when he sat down with a crowd of us and sang an old Strawbs song called ‘The Hangman and the Papist’. Suddenly the whole picture changed. Musicians weren’t these superhuman people who lived in a different world.
“Dave invited me to bring my drum kit for the second year of university and we formed a band.” John (the bassist) and I were in awe of Dave and Andy (the keyboardist) at the time, and we practised hard. It wasn’t too long before we became as accomplished as they were. We’d practise just the two of us together for hours on end in my parents’ attic.
“The problem for me was that I wanted to write songs, it was burning away inside of me. I’ll never forget, my parents agreed to buy me an acoustic guitar for Christmas one year, so Dave and I trudged around Manchester searching for a reasonable quality guitar. We found a wonderful Yamaha acoustic which sounds hundreds of pounds more expensive than it is. I still use it, and most of my songs were written on it.
“Once I had the guitar, Dave taught me the basic chords and I practised and practised. Every time I got in at night, all I would want to do was pick up the guitar and learn enough chords to write a song. It took about a month. I think maybe because I was a drummer it made it easier to suss out the whole rhythm side of playing.
“Anyway, Dave and Andy wrote these incredibly depressing, dark songs and I came along and started writing pop songs! It was as if Paul McCartney had joined Pink Floyd! (Only the standard of musicianship was a thousand times poorer!)
“I started writing songs at a furious pace but when university finished, we scattered around the country, and indeed the world, so I was left with a load of songs and a part time band.
“I was very lucky to meet Mark Dove in the early 90s, another wonderful bassist as was John who moved to Germany. Mark and I ended up playing together. We played Drums and Bass together in one band and Guitar and Bass in the early days of a new band called English Summer.”
After several years, gigs and recordings, English Summer split up, by which time Rob was ready for a break from music.
“ES got very, very stressful towards the end. I understand now why so many musicians are so bitter and jaded; the internal wranglings of four people, two of whom weren’t interested in making the most of what we’d achieved, makes it really hard work.
“Dave, Mark and I formed a band called Charmed, and though we had a right laugh and wrote some good songs, my heart was never in it, I was still hung over from the English Summer split. You can hear it in the songs, the subject matter, struggling with knowing I should be making music and not wanting to.
“Being in a band is just like being in a marriage, only with four or five people all with strong feelings about what they are doing. When a band member leaves you feel like you’ve been betrayed or cheated. When I found out two of the English Summer band members had formed another band behind my back, it was a hundred times worse than any split up I’d ever had with a woman.This kind of thing leaves you very unhappy, and it takes time to get over it.
“Of course time is the great healer and now I’m enjoying making music, probably more than I ever have. With a million pound recording studio in a laptop, and as much time as you want, recording is stress-free and you can do it until it’s right without the bank balance saying you have to stop.
“Album two for Riggwelter is demoed and ready to knock into shape and then record – some of the subject matter above is there. Better late than never.”
Dave
Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
You wouldn’t think it to hear him talk, but Dave comes from Newcastle Upon Tyne.
His interest in music started very early – he’s been told that the only time he shut up during his Christening service was when the organ was playing.
He cites several milestones in his musical appreciation, each one a particular song. Ask him what he was doing when he heard them and he’ll be able to tell you: “Son Of My Father” by Chicory Tip – “Get It On” by T-Rex, “Surf City” by Jan and Dean, “Monday Monday” by The Mamas and The Papas, “Don’t Fear The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, and perhaps inevitably “Stairway to Heaven”.
That was pretty much him set up for the next few years. Apart from notable exceptions like David Sylvian’s “Gone to Earth” album and Dire Strait’s “Making Movies”, new music – the whole of Punk and New Romantics for example – passed him by. Then things started up again: R.E.M.’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” on an autorepeating tape deck, “David Denies” by ‘Til Tuesday…
And diversity. He actually does listen to stuff by Palestrina, Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny, The Strawbs, Ani De Franco, Bauhaus, Cardiacs, zoviet:france, Orbital, Underworld, and on and on…
He began playing music with the traditional piano lessons in junior school and started the guitar at about the same time. He was in his first band – Starlight – when he was 7, performing cover versions for school assemblies. He followed the standard path of giving up the piano at the age of 13, but kept on with the guitar, starting to write songs at the age of 14, the first one being a Christmas carol which he entered in the competition run by the television program Nationwide. “I never heard back from them…” he grins.
The piano made a reappearance when he was 16. Having been fairly unceremoniously dumped by a girlfriend, the guitar just wouldn’t give him the range of sounds he was after, and so he sat down at the family piano and taught himself what he needed to know from scratch.
At university in Salford, Dave met Rob Wood. Together with Andy Hudson and John Gleaves, they formed the band “File Under Q” and performed gigs at Salford University, Leeds University and even Manchester’s Band on the Wall. The band were fortunate enough to get a chance to record an album using the test studio at the firm where Rob worked, but it was never released. The end of recording, on a sunny May bank holiday, marked the end of the band.
After that, he stopped playing seriously for a long time. It was only when Rob’s new band, English Summer, were recording their album that he really became involved again. “I didn’t want to impose, but I was having a great time in the studio helping out.” As well as doing some of the tape-op duties, Dave ended up doing some string arrangements, playing some keyboards and singing some backing vocals that the Bee Gees would be proud of. At about the same time, almost by accident, he became Musical Director for the Freedom Gospel Choir in Liverpool “which really tested my arranging and organising skills.”
When English Summer split up, Dave and Rob somehow got talking about doing some music together again. “Rob was totally shattered, both physically and emotionally, from the English Summer thing and wanted a rest but we decided it might be fun to put a new band together and thus Charmed was born”. They did the rounds of the usual indie clubs in Manchester and played The Cavern in Liverpool, did a couple of appearances on local independent radio and got lots of positive comments but there was no interest in what they were doing beyond that. “A shame.” says Dave “Charmed were really good: good songs, good arrangements, fantastic three part harmonies, but it wasn’t what people were looking for.” There’s an album in the vaults somewhere: “Maybe one day it’ll come out of hiding” he says.
As Charmed wound down, Dave was asked to sit in playing keyboards with another band that used the same recording facilities. That band was going through some changes in personnel and style which resulted in the formation of “mensch” (small “m”). “I’d describe them as folky trip-hop, though others may disagree. There was some pretty challenging music to play in there, and a lot of it was arranged using a computer, which we then had to learn to play for gigs”. It was also Dave’s first band that used the internet to garner interest. “We got some plays in clubs in Brazil. It was a bit strange!”
The bassist in mensch was Stuart Eastham. “The guy’s a total genius” says Dave. “Brilliant bassist and arranger and a technical whizz in the studio too. He introduced me to quite a different approach to recording and production which I’ve learned a lot from.”
After another hiatus, Dave moved to the Highlands of Scotland, which brought a re-immersion in proper folk music and a LOT of gigging “which has certainly helped with the stagefright I used to get”.
When Rob wanted to put a band together to showcase the new songs he’d been writing, Dave was delighted to be asked. “Rob’s a great songwriter, and it’s been fantastic playing with him and Stu again. That I live so far away has meant we’ve had to find new ways of working on tracks, but the technology has really advanced in the last few years, so it really hasn’t been an issue.”
“I’m excited about the songs that Riggwelter has been recording and it’s been great working with two talented people from different parts of my musical history. I hope other people like our music as much as we do”
Stu
Bass
I had experimented with music from a very young age, initially on violin playing 2nd chair in school orchestras. As I grew older my eyes were opened to loads of different genres of music and one afternoon there was the moment I realised that music was for me. My friends and I were watching “Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii” on VHS when I heard Roger Waters playing a solid groove on Echoes. I didn’t know what he was doing but knew I had to do it too and I’ve been a bass player ever since.
The next pivotal moment was when one of my teachers was complaining about his bass player leaving and how they were looking for a replacement. I piped up that I played bass and it got serious really quickly. He gave me a bass, on the condition that I learned to read music; I was gigging with them within 6 weeks (I’d been playing 6 months before then). It was amazing how quickly I went from watching a gig on the telly to earning a living at it (doing gigs, theatre work and the odd bit of recording), and I was still at school.
As I was coming to the end of my time at school I had the obligatory careers meeting. I told the teacher that I was going to be a professional musician and what he said has stayed with me ever since.
“Don’t be ridiculous, people from Oldham don’t do that.”
Every time I got on stage, played a session or wrote a song I thought of those words and 37 years later I’m still making my living doing music. I’ve worked all over either as a musician (bass, double bass, mandolin) or as an engineer/producer. I’ve spent time on the Nashville scene, shared the bill with some big names and even had to sign the odd autograph, which never stops being weird.
My big influences are: Roger Waters, Tony Levin, Duck Dunn and Patrick O’Hearn. I love Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Jellyfish, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Country Joe and the Fish and the vary amazing Frank Zappa.
I first met Dave after building a studio with one of the former English Summer members, after being drafted in to cover the low end of the music. We hit it off immediately and engineered and played basses on his Ephemera EP, as well as various other projects. Dave introduced me to Rob, once again hitting it off, and I did some engineering on the Charmed recordings.
I was very pleased to be invited to join them for this project and the recording process was really fun; it’s great being given so much freedom to express myself and I look forward to getting into the new album sessions.
The best compliment anybody has ever made was as I arrived at a gig for a pickup band I’d been drafted in for as cover (never met them, no rehearsals). The two guitarists had their back to me and one asked the other “who’s on bass?” The second replied that it was me to which he said “amazing, it will be solid as fuck”.
Keeping it solid since 1986