Chris Francis

I first picked up a guitar at the age of sixteen and got pretty much obsessed with it straight away. I was self-taught until I was about twenty, at which time I went to study at what was at the time London’s M.I. (Musicians’ Institute) for a year.So I left in 1999 and moved back home to work at developing my playing and song writing full time, as well as starting to privately teach guitar. My Dad had the idea that I should have some kind of showcase material for my playing, to help launch my career, and that lead to my making the instructional video (filmed in front of the fire-place at my parents’ house, for which I am still ridiculed to this day) and later that year I entered (and reached the finals of) Guitarist Magazine’s Guitarist Of The Year contest, which was a huge boost to my confidence and removed any traces of doubt that I wanted to make a career in music.I started working as a guitar instructor in schools around this time and shortly was doing my first sessions, all while playing for a covers band and writing more material (my first proper instrumental “Freedom Machine” was my entry in G.O.T.Y. 1999). I entered G.O.T.Y. again in 2000 with my song “Thin Air” and won. I wanted to make an album of my instrumental material, which I had been writing over the previous couple of years, so in 2001 I booked the studio and the musicians and spent all my savings making my first album, which I then released independently.At the start of 2002 the British melodic rock band TEN were looking for a new lead guitarist so I auditioned and was offered the gig, which I accepted. This new job meant I got to do exciting new things like tour Japan and play festivals and play on albums that people will actually hear. So all in all throughout my now completed six year tenure I got to play on a lot of albums and play a handful of shows and festivals. Along the way I formed my own band (the Chris Francis Band) to play my instrumentals live, but due to various issues (plus a rather unfortunate experience at The Music Live Show 2003 in Birmingham) we went our separate ways.I’ve also done some University lecturing along with a lot of private teaching, written, recorded and released a second solo album in the Instrumental Rock genre (which I also used to learn how to engineer and mix), worked on more sessions for commercial albums as well as T.V./ Film music recordings, toured as a pit player for a musical theatre production, performed my instrumentals at guitar trade shows and written a new album incorporating vocals, to be recorded imminently.