JOHN HOOD

Living on my own for the first time in fourteen years, I started writing a lot of music, in fact hundreds of tunes in the five years that I was there. I think this was when I started to find my own voice in music. I never expected it to take 20 years, but there you have it.

When I placed an ad in a music shop, I happened to meet up with a bass player who played upright as well as electric.

His name was Stephen Marquis, and we found we had a great empathy for the music. We started working as a duo, just electric guitar and mostly, the double bass. This was my first musical experience of playing pretty much all of my own material.

We scored quite a few gigs in restaurants, bars and cafes. At one stage we did a trio gig and used a drummer (I can never remember his name) who was from one of Steve's many other bands, I think a funk outfit.

At this time I was playing my 1963 Gibson ES-335 (the red guitar) with a compression pedal.

The trio gig was at a Tapas Bar in Smith Street, Collingwood. For recording we used an overhead microphone which picked up a lot of crowd noise, which you will no doubt hear. The playing is loose, basically because the drummer only had one rehearsal. That aside, I think this was a great gig. The rapport between the players is stunning. I loved it.

1. Koukou Roukou (5:03)
2. Up With Sun (African Morning) (5:53)
3. Blues Time (4:29)
4. Blues For Bartok (3:54)
5. Norwegian Wood (4:51)
6. Impressionist Rag (3:45)
7. In The Sky (6:22)

For an MP3 download of the complete session click here

Not long after, Steve went to live in Sydney. I haven't seen him since. If anybody knows of him, could you please ask to get in touch.

Now back to Perth.
 

© Copyright 2005 www.jhredguitar.com