(Blues) Steve Phillips (feat. Mark Knopfler, Brendan Croker, Sholto Lenaghan) - Just Pickin' - 1996, MP3, 320 kbps

FFor many years now, this CD has been but a pipe dream of mine. It became more of a reality last year when my good friend Terry Swaysland lent me a reel to reel Akai tape machine identical to the one I had used to record many of the tracks on this compilation. I thought this would be a golden opportunity to re-master my old tapes down onto a DAT tape format before they all rotted away. From this I have, picked what I consider to be the most interesting tunes from an entertainment point of view, sometimes this means that there is the odd bum note, or less than hi-fi quality reproduction. Most of the material here was recorded just because a tape machine was available at that time, to put down our current favourite tunes; as opposed to having a projected record release in mind. None of these tracks have ever been previously issued.
I need to take you back to 1965, when I had converted my 'Hawk' acoustic guitar into a twelve string, and was trying to sound like the great folk/blues singer Leadbelly. I was strolling down the Headrow in Leeds when I was stopped by a stocky guy with a big smile, and a grade two haircut. He had seen me perform a few tunes at the 'Memphis Folk Club' in Beeston, and offered me ten shillings, if I would play the interval spot at a Jug Band Music Club he and some of his mates had just kicked off in Hunslet, Leeds. Being a bit of a cheap bastard I promptly accepted, and that's how I met Pete Boyle (now sadly deceased) and the Oddfellows Jug Band, which sported a seventy year old banjo player Wilf Johnson, who frequently used to have young mod chicks sitting on his lap at the back of the club! By the time I recorded the earliest track on this compilation - February 8th 1967, along with Pete and his brother Daz (The King of the Mods) and Mick 'Juggy' Dewhurst, we had formed a four piece band from the nucleus of the jug band club - collectively known as 'Easy Mr. Steve's Bootleggers'. We were vainly hoping for some kind of success when we cut four tracks in the one and only recording studio in Leeds, this is back in the days when they cut you a disc on the spot to take home. Remnants of the 'Bootleggers' band still exist to this day in the form of the 'Hot Pot Belly Band.'
The following year I met Mark Knopfler who had recently come down from Newcastle to work in Leeds as a junior reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Apparently he had seen me playing solo at 'The Peel', a pub venue long since gone. He then organised for me to be interviewed by a colleague from the newspaper who happened to be called ... Stephen Phillips, truth is stranger than fiction indeed. Mark also came along to the interviews at my picking guitars together, going about playing at parties and blues clubs as 'The Duolian String Pickers'. This partnership has carried on through the years, usually in an informal way, but did eventually culminate in our collaboration with Brendan Croker as the Notting Hillbillies in 1990.
Not that long after Mark had left Leeds to seek his fortune down in the 'Smoke', Brendan turned up on my doorstep. He had just finished at the Art College at Sheffield Polytechnic - he's got a B.A. you know! I met him initially because at that time my main source of income was from repairing stringed instruments. I could not make a living playing the country blues in the 1970's, and it's not that easy nowadays. Brendan brought this old twelve string guitar round, that had a neck like a banana for me to fix, and as had happened with Mark we started picking guitars together. Due to the scene being so limited for our style of music we decided to set up our own venue at The Packhorse1 in Leeds, somewhere around 1978 I seem to remember - which proved to be a damned good move, as it brought so many excellent musicians out of the woodwork, who turned up to perform at the club.
Both Sholto Lenaghan and Kevin Conlon who play on some of the later tracks here, were regular faces at The Packhorse'. We would play country blues, rhythm and blues, hillbilly, rockabilly, hawaiian and western swing music, till it came out of our ears. The 1981 tracks mark the end of that era, quite frankly there was so little happening on the blues scene I lost interest and turned my attention towards being a full-time landscape painter. Brendan to his credit battled on and formed The Five O'clock Shadows', who gradually achieved national recognition. Mark's band Dire Straits' were by then a household name throughout the world, as for myself, I carried on painting till around the mid 1980's when the roots music movement began to take effect, but that's another story…