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Hi, my name is Steve J. McWilliam and I have been
playing acoustic guitar, off and on, since 1974, having wanted
to play almost any instrument for about 2 years prior to that
time. The most attractive instruments appeared to be drums or
guitar, and drums were out of the question as I knew no one else
who played any instruments (so I couldn't form a band) and I lived,
at the time, in a small end terrace house which would have meant
neighbour & noise problems.
The next choice was between
an acoustic guitar and an electric. The acoustic won due to
the very same potential neighbour problems. This led to me going
into Chester to Dawson's Music Shop and trying a number of guitars
on show. At this stage I didn't know what I was looking for
at all and after trying a few decided upon a Giannini nylon-strung
instrument with an unusual shape - I later found that this was
called a 'Craviola'. The final choice was down to the fact that
it didn't seem to hurt my fingers as much as the steel-strung
instruments and the bass response was wonderful. A few months
further down the line and I was repeating the journey to look
for a steel-strung instrument, which, after much deliberation
and nearly losing my left-hand fingers to a steel-strung, large
bodied Giannini with heavy gauge strings (like ship's hawsers),
turned out to be a Yamaha FG180 - again an instrument which
is still in the 'family'. My brother, Paul, owns it now and
gives it a good thrashing attempting to do various 'rock' tunes.
 Later,
after a couple of years of a few friends coming round to play
at my place every Tuesday evening, two of us went into Manchester
to look at a new acoustic instruments shop which had opened
- "Sounds Acoustic". When Kieran and I got there the shop was
shut, but, just as we were about to leave the owner of the drum
shop next door came out and mentioned the guitar shop owner
was on holiday but that he had the key and would be prepared
to lock us in for an hour or two. We jumped at the chance.
Almost four hours later we were let out in a total daze having
played our way through every guitar in the shop; Martins, Gibsons,
Epiphones, Fyldes and many more - but most importantly a 'Dinsdale'.
We were very impressed by this small bodied "00"-shaped guitar
and had compared its resonance and tone with all the others
in the shop - it came out tops without a shadow of a doubt.
Both of us went out the next week and ordered one each from
the maker.
It ended up with a '00' and a '000' being delivered to the
shop and, as a consequence, a number of hours spent trying each.
Thankfully, Kieran wanted the '000' and I the '00' so there
were no problems. My '00', stamped on the neck-block on the
inside of the guitar as Number 001, was stolen from Bill Dinsdale's
workshop a few years later when I had given it back to him to
replace the fingerboard with a new design we had worked out
between us. (If anyone knows where a Dinsdale 12-fret to body
'00' stamped 001 is then I would like to know !!). The new guitars
inspired Kieran and myself and a frenetic few years followed
with me forming the "Tape and Tab Club
- (T'n'T)", in about 1979, dragging together some excellent
guitarists from around the country, and stimulating a dramatic
amount of arranging, composing, playing and recording. Some
of the arrangements from the period can be downloaded at the Tab Downloads Page.
Kieran and I played together for many years, developing a fair
number of duets both of our own and taken from records of Lasse
Johanssen and Claes Palmquist on Stefan Grossman's "Kicking
Mule" record label. If you've not heard these I would recommend
them - I think they are now available on the Shanachie label
or from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop. During the years
we played together we met and played with many more excellent
guitarists including Jon Gregson, Mike Martin, Chris Cassidy,
Jon Hardman, Joe Cainen, Ian Jesse, Martin Bell, Alan Hooper
and a large number of others. Of course, we met a number of
the 'famous', or should that be 'infamous', players such as
Stefan Grossman, John James, Martin Simpson, Woody Mann, Laurence
Juber, Duck Baker and Ralph McTell, as well as going to concerts
and folk clubs where we saw and heard the playing of many more.
Indeed I have often been surprised by dropping in to pub folk
clubs just how many decent guitarists there are hidden away
in Britain.
The late 1970's and early 1980's saw me forming a club for
acoustic guitarists called the "Tape 'n' Tab Club" or T'n'T
for short. This club met at my house 4 or 5 times a year for
a whole weekend each time, with people arriving on the Friday
evening and leaving on the Sunday evening. The intervening period
was completely given over to guitar playing with very little
time for sleep or anything else, apart from drinking. We passed
copies of our arrangements around both as tablature (hand-written)
and as cassette tapes of the played tunes. Sunday morning was
usually set aside for recording on the reel-to-reel tape-recorder.
Although the club faded out around 1984/85 many of the people
still keep in touch, even now, and despite the fact that we
are getting older most of them still play. The Tape 'n' Tab club still exisists today though in a very different fashion, with some of the old members, and some new ones, meeting once a month online via Zoom. Here we discuss guitars and playing, undertake presentations on guitar based kit and software, play tunes for each other and generally build on friendships and memories. A new YouTube Channel has been created to showacse all of the old cassette tapes of members playing from the Tape 'n' Tab Club (T'n'T) as well as newer performances since cassette tapes declined in popularity. This Channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEuu1wZ1moZaAt-Qb3tzT0A
In the late 1980's I teamed up with Ian
Jesse, an amazing multi-instrumentalist, who also sang,
and we played together at the music weekends at Dehon House,
on the Wirral, and at Savio House in Bollington, Cheshire (See
Guitar Weekends). We also played many folk clubs in the
North West area as well as a school in Blackpool and a small
hidden-away pub in Chelmorton, Derbyshire (a wonderful place
- but playing until 3 or 4 in the morning, combined with copious
amounts of beer, certainly takes its toll). The music we covered
at the time was mainly a mixture of country blues and Ian's
own compositions - some of these can be downloaded in tablature
and played as midi-files at the Tab Page.
From 1996 to 2000, I taught, mainly at colleges in the area
(especially Halewood Comp), adult students at evening classes.
It was a great experience to see them start the year often unsure
of even which way up to hold the guitar, and to reach the end
of the year being able to play many of the country blues tunes
of Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller and
the Rev. Gary Davis, as well as some folk, jazz, ragtime and
popular music of the 30's, 40's, 50's and even the odd bit of
rock. In fact a few of the first year students (too long ago
now to remember when) formed their own guitar club, very like
the old T'n'T, which meets every Tuesday evening in an upstairs
room at the Grange Manor pub in Gateacre, Liverpool, to swap
tunes and tablature and to provide an excuse to get out of the
house, have a good playing and practice session and, of course,
a couple of pints of beer. If you ever fancy dropping in please
feel free to do so - it starts at 9:00pm !! The organiser, Phil
Lawton, can be contacted on: 0151 280 4512, or by e-mail at: philip.lawton@googlemail.com
At the end of June, in 2000, I stopped teaching guitar at the
Halewood Comp evening classes due to taking up a demanding new
day job (see over at rECOrd).
I initially thought that this was going to be an end to the
passing on of the guitar playing at the school but NO; one of
the students from the class I taught in my first year at the
school came forward and has now taken the class over - long
may it continue to pass on the muse of fingerstyle guitar. The
guy was Phil Lawton - the same chap who started the club at
the Grange Manor - he must be dedicated. Phil finished teaching
at Halewood Comp at the end of 2001 due to pressures of work.
Best of luck for the future Phil !! |
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