Hi , Just want to introduce myself , I’m Alastair , a non-professional musician. I enjoy playing at the St Ives September Festival of Music and the Arts. This is held the last two weeks of September in beautiful St Ives , Cornwall.
The Sessions are held in various pub venues around the town, a five hour music marathon named “The Cauldron Session” is held on a Saturday afternoon in the Western Hotel usually hosted by Mr Toni Carver.
This is my favourite session and always look forward to meeting up with old friends and making new ones through the power of music.
The first time I played in public was at the Castle Inn in 2015, and on that occasion I played a Lancashire song “Peterloo” written initially as a poem by Harvey Kershaw of Rochdale , a friend of my late fathers.
Music was later added to the poem by John Haworth and the “Oldham Tinkers” and appears on their album “Oldhams Burning Sands”
I reconnected with the acoustic guitar in 2012 after a long gap of over 25 years, and purchased a Yamaha Fg730 new from Guitar-Guitar in Birmingham.
I currently own 3 Guitars, the Yamaha Fg730 acoustic, a Yamaha 611HFM Pacifica 6 string electric, and “Honey” my 2017 Gibson Hummingbird Electro/Acoustic.
As I have said , I enjoy bringing songs “back to Life” for a new audience , as well as writing and arranging my own songs.
To me song writing is still a process that either happens or it doesn’t , I’m not like Gene Simmons from Kiss who can sit down and write a song a day, they come , like in the case of Corona Town, really quickly with words forming and verses and music coming together, or they start as an idea , and I have to put it together like a jigsaw