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BiTS: I had the great pleasure of seeing him, unfortunately in what I guess must have been the

very last concerts with John Renbourn. That would be in a place called Topsham in Devon, which
I’m pretty sure you know.

DB: I do know, yes. Julian Piper used to run the Topsham Blues Club, didn’t he?

BiTS: Absolutely, he did.

DB: Yes, and I used to go down there and, in fact, when talking about that place, Julian Piper got us
in to do the sound for John Renbourn at Topsham, actually and I’m talking 2000-2001. What was

the name of the hotel? It wasn’t The Railway or something like that, was it?

BiTS: It’s called The Globe.
John Renbourn
DB: The Globe. That’s it. Julian brought us
in to do the sound for John Renbourn,
which was really excellent. We were

running a little agency at the time. Jim
Condie and various people passed over to
Julian for gigs there. It was a nice little
place, actually. It was a great club.

BiTS: Tell me how you ended up in France.

DB: I just wanted to get out of the UK. I
was brought up in a republic [laughing]

and I’m living in a republic. No, I first came
to Britain in 1980. I was playing with a guy
called Ronnie Gerrard, who was a top fiddle
player from the North East of Scotland and we had a duo throughout the 70s. Where I was living at
the time there wasn’t any acoustic guitar players or not many. There was a guy in Inverness who

played ragtime and blues. Otherwise, everybody played folk music and you’d be hard pushed to find
an acoustic guitar player anywhere because at that time, everybody was into electric guitars and
plugging in, so if you wanted to play acoustic music, you had to play with whoever was available.
When I started the folk club, there was this chap turns up who was Ronnie Gerrard and he played
mandolin and fiddle. He did his training in Strathspey reel societies, so he had all the traditional
Scottish stuff, and he also had this marvellous jazz touch because he played a bit like Grappelli and
he was really passionate with bluegrass and stuff. He lives in Norway now. He’s still doing it,

actually. We started a duo and all over Scotland, we were playing in the 70s. A lot of TV
appearances on Grampian television and he went off and he joined a band called New Celeste and
New Celeste was a band from Glasgow. Very, very big folk-rock band in Brittany and in Europe and
not very well-liked in Scotland, funnily enough. He played with them for quite a while and then he
left, and we reformed the duo and then he arranged a number of gigs for a guy called Gérard Bono

who was a banjo player and an agent here in Brittany and he organised a tour of the north, all
around Brittany, actually. That was in 1980 and I kind of fell in love with the place. It was very
vibrant. Lots of music everywhere, just a great place. I went back to Scotland, then I was always
thinking about getting closer and closer to Brittany. Eventually in 97, I just had to get out of
Scotland. I think the drink was getting me. I just had to leave. I moved down to Devon, where I met
Jackie, my wife. I spent five years in Devon and the reason to move to Devon originally was to be