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BiTS: Ah, that must be nice, yes. She's a great singer, there's no doubt about that.
GG: Yeah, and I played bass for her at the end of last year. She played at the last ever
gig at the Redcar Jazz and Blues Club, and Emma's band was supporting The Stumble.
The guitar player in Emma’s band at that time said to me, you play bass. And I said
yes, I do. So he asked me if I would do the gig, and I did it, and it was good.
BiTS: Gary, how did you learn to play the bass?
Did you just pick it up and start playing it, or
what?
GG: I’ve always been interested in playing the
bass and enjoyed playing it. In fact, when I was
in this professional show band in 1972, March
Hare, we were called, our bass player had quite
a high, like a falsetto voice. So for the first
couple of numbers in the first set, he would be
up front singing, and I would play the bass on
a couple of tunes, and then he would pick the
bass up. So that's how it started really. Well, I
was in a blues band called the Herbal Remedy
for four years playing bass with some good
friends of mine. They had a duo called Auld Mans Baccie. Brilliant kind of juke joint
style blues, and they decided they wanted to go electric, and they asked me if I would
play bass, and I did. We recorded a really good CD, which got quite a bit of airplay
as well.
BiTS: And speaking of which, you've got a couple of CDs yourself of live gigs. Are
they still going?
GG: About ten minutes ago I thought it's about time, even though I'm not doing
engagements, it’s about time, that I promoted what I've got. So I put a post on Twitter
saying here’s the cover of my last CD. You can download it and two more for free,
and I put the link in. And then I said if you like it, you could buy me a coffee or two
and I've got a link to this buy me a coffee thing as well. So yes, the last one, the last
album that I recorded was I was playing at The Barrels in Berwick, I hadn’t decided
to record it. I didn't know I was doing it until I looked in my bag of equipment and
found my digital recorder. So I just turned it on and put it the side of the stage and
played the gig and then packed it up and went home. A couple of days later, I thought
well, I'll have a listen to that and see how it sounds. And it sounded quite good. So
what I did was send some tracks to people who've seen me play, but also sent some
tracks to people who haven't seen me play, to get an opinion on was it worth doing
anything with, and the general consensus was, yes, it was worth doing something
with. So I selected some tracks because I've got a previous live album “Live at
Brooklyn Bowl” in London. I didn't want to duplicate too many of the tracks and