In the Beginning
My initial thoughts were driftwood to be a kind of folk abba after having made contact with rita and mags i immediately befriended a lad from the student irish bar.. a lad called diarmaid who was a keyboard player, he was'nt keen as he said he had very basic abilities on the keyboard but i thought he sounded fine to me, anyway with practice comes improvement right?. The four of us started rehearsing with me contributing songs straight away, we did a live session at Sunderland Metro Radio of four songs which came out sounding great and done a little photo session at rita's house, printed up some demo tapes and then diarmaid left the band and i genuinely cant recall why?. I dont think he felt competent enough as a musician as the three of us were really quite to a professional level, i know later even rita would sometimes say she felt a little inadequate in the pressence of mags and myself, but i would tell her not to worry as she had the front of stage star quality and the voice. Anyway with diarmaid gone and at this point the band being only a few months old!.. Driftwood would continue on for the next 2 years. Unfortunately i only had a few photos of the band so i had to crop out diarmaid on some photos when matching up photos to music videos etc with the band being a three piece for 95% of its existence. I would have liked young diarmaid to have stuck around but after he went there was never any thought about getting any other musicians in the band it just felt right as the three of us, and now listening back! its amazing to hear how we created all of that sound, such wonderful musicianship and vocal harmonies going on.
This would make a great story if this was a long biography about how driftwood got discovered signed to Decca Records and hit the big time but that was not to be, and frustratingly for me as a songwriter as i had in my band two great talents, i was gutted about driftwood not getting anywhere and sort of give up on music for five years afterwards. But i didnt know that when we started writing more songs and rehearsing at Ritas house in 1993 i was full of optimism. We did gigs around Sunderland and Newcastle.. sold demo tapes and everybody said how good we were, Rita was walking through sunderland one day and heard our music coming from someone's window she thought that was amazing. None of us ever fell out with each other and we had respect for each other as people and musicians. Mags organised a live video recording in a church in Sunderland where we went through our set.. Mags has a copy of this which will hopefully go online in the near future, she also organised the last audio recording rehearsal we did called "The Last Take", its frustrating with all of the easily accesable digital recorders available now! because if we had that technology in 1994 then we would have pristine audio performances but i suppose i should be grateful that we have got what there is.
Towards the end of driftwood mags reeled back on performing live to consentrate on her studies as she lived outside of sunderland at a further distance to me and rita who lived opposite each other in a wonderful leafy Victorian terraced avenue.. (Bell Vue Gardens) easily the best properties in Sunderland. In early 1995 me and rita performed as a duo and with mags as driftwood often but not as often as before, studies ended and i went to Spain with my Dutch girlfriend, Rita went to Africa teaching English (so I was told) and Mags (the normal person of the three of us) became a teacher back in Yorkshire.
With the advent of new Artifical Intelligence Software around all things including music its going to be an amazing future for the music of driftwood, the sound quality online will become perfection as will any video footage and photograph images.. all HD, all done by AI in real time by super quantum computers. I see a future where sound and even one single photograph could be changed into a full concert performance maybe even in 3d (probably). This future technology will be available to everyone but i think music is always something special, the future is a long time, that is a long time for the music of driftwood to become known and appreciated. I feel lucky to have met Rita and Mags they enriched my life and helped me create some of my best music, as with the music they are forever in my memory.
Towards the end of driftwood mags reeled back on performing live to consentrate on her studies as she lived outside of sunderland at a further distance to me and rita who lived opposite each other in a wonderful leafy Victorian terraced avenue.. (Bell Vue Gardens) easily the best properties in Sunderland. In early 1995 me and rita performed as a duo and with mags as driftwood often but not as often as before, studies ended and i went to Spain with my Dutch girlfriend, Rita went to Africa teaching English (so I was told) and Mags (the normal person of the three of us) became a teacher back in Yorkshire.
With the advent of new Artifical Intelligence Software around all things including music its going to be an amazing future for the music of driftwood, the sound quality online will become perfection as will any video footage and photograph images.. all HD, all done by AI in real time by super quantum computers. I see a future where sound and even one single photograph could be changed into a full concert performance maybe even in 3d (probably). This future technology will be available to everyone but i think music is always something special, the future is a long time, that is a long time for the music of driftwood to become known and appreciated. I feel lucky to have met Rita and Mags they enriched my life and helped me create some of my best music, as with the music they are forever in my memory.