Member Since: 10/9/2006
Band Website: web.mac.com/mikecollins4
Band Members: Mike Collins plays guitar, tenor banjo, mandolin, pedal harp, bass guitar, hand percussion and various keyboards. Blair Cunningham plays drums and (occasionally) piano. Jim Mullen plays jazz guitar. Damon Butcher plays keyboards with occasional guest appearances from Keith O'Connell. Winston Blissett plays bass guitar with guest appearances from John McKenzie and David Hadley. Lyn Dobson and Chris "Snake" Davis make guest appearances on saxes and flutes. Roger Beaujolais is now playing vibes on several recordings and Noel McCalla is adding vocals.
Influences: Started with folk music and country blues before getting into urban blues, R & B and soul. Stax and Motown were very big influences for me - everyone from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin to William Bell and, of course, Booker T & The MGs. All the big rock albums in the 1970's such as Little Feat, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, all the great soul music from The Sound of Philadelphia and others, and the jazz-funk of George Benson, The Blackbyrds and Donald Byrd, Hubert Laws, The Crusaders - the list goes on. Reggae when Bob Marley was alive was always a big influence, and there were some great singles around in the 1980's and even into the 1990's. By the time the 1990's got into full swing, I started to explore jazz much more than previously. Firstly by reaching back to the earliest jazz from the 1920's and 1930's - Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Dick McDonough and Carl Kress, to mention just a few. Then I re-visited the 1940's and 1950's swing and bebop - everyone from Charlie Christian to Miles Davis. Miles crossed over into the 1960's and 1970's and introduced me to names like Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter and the like. Weather Report, Chick Corea and the like stunned me with tracks like Birdland and several of Chick Corea's recordings - but at other times I found these too clinical or too technical for my taste. Today I am listening to lots of tenor banjo, mandolin and pedal harp players - because I'm learning to play all these instruments since last year. So I'm listening to Harry Reser (Tenor Banjo), Jethro Burns and Jacob do Bandolim (mandolin), Deborah Henson-Conant (harp) and various recordings of classical harp pieces by Ravel, Debussy and others. Meanwhile, the search for great new albums I haven't heard yet continues...
Record Label: unsigned
Type of Label: None