Tom McGuinness:
Solo Projects
On his first solo album,
Tom
McGuinness, released October 2001: "I'm always
writing songs and over the years I've built up quite a stock-pile of
un-recorded material. For some time I'd had the feeling that I'd
like to record my own album and a couple of things came together to
push me finally into doing it. Firstly, we were touring Australia a
couple of years back with The Manfreds and a man came up to me after
one of our gigs. After saying a couple of nice things about the show
he then said, in that direct way they have down-under, "You're
a good guitarist. It's about time you did a solo album". He
made me feel really lazy. After all, I have spent nearly 40 years as
a working musician without doing my own album. So that got me
thinking. The second factor which got me enthused was working with
Marcus Cliffe. He'd recently joined The Manfreds on bass and
although there is a generation between us, we really hit it off
musically. We went into his studio and just the two of us laid down
the album. It took about 3 weeks from beginning to end and was a lot
of fun. It was great to find that so many ideas I had on paper or in
my head worked so well in the studio. I suspect I might never have
got down to doing it if it hadn't been for Marcus. The only problem
is that he is already nagging me to start the follow-up!"
The Lyle McGuinness
Band
In the early 70s Tom had
worked with Graham Lyle in the short-lived but successful band
McGuinness Flint. Then in 1980 they got together again to write some
songs for The Blues Band. It soon became clear that a lot of the
material wasn't right for the band so they decided to make an
album. Elise Elise was released first on Coolking Records,
then a few years ago Roger Dopson put it out on Diamond Recordings.
It's a low key project,
just Graham, Tom and a few old friends ... Hughie Flint on drums,
Chrissie Stewart on bass and Alan Dunn on accordian, keyboards and
tin-whistle. Some of the songs have had a life of their own.
Christy Moore recorded "Darling Man" aka "Sweet
Music Roll On" when Hughie brought it to his attention. The
Furys did "Irish Eyes" and in 1999 Don Williams
recorded "Elise".
Tom considers this album
to be one of his all-time favourites.
(Click on thumbnail to see larger
versions of pics.)
