SOLWAY DELTAS

Famous Whitehaven solicitor, partner in Brockbanks Solicitors and blues guitar legend John Dugans place of refuge from a hard mornings work was the Three Tuns Pub. There he would eat his Crosbys fish and chips and pass the time with landlord and fellow legend Jack Carr.John was a former club guitarist whos passion was the blues. It was during these chats that he decided to stop playing in front of a 60 watt light bulb at home and form a band to play his beloved blues.Using Jacks contacts he recruited busker and punk rocker Paul McGhee on bass guitar and lead singer of local seventies band Necromandus, Billy Branch on vocals. Bill brought his 15 year old son John with him on drums. Thus in 1994 The Solway Delta Blues Band was formed.Bills untimely death in early 1995 led to his widow Fran recruiting Steve Smith to try out for John.Steve had been singing for 10 years with the local Operatic Society performing Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas amongst other things.So in the bar of The Tuns one Sunday afternoon Steve auditioned and John did his Simon Cowell impression.The bands first nervous performance was in the Tuns in April 1995.John Branch left for university in 1997 and to play in much louder bands (www.myspace.com/john_branch and www.myspace.com/novasmoke for example) and was replaced by Brian Sowerby and it was this lineup that recorded their first CD “The Rosgill Incident” over a bank holiday weekend in 1999 at Rosgill Studios, Shap.The album was totally self written bar one classic blues number and when Border TV got to hear it they invited the band to appear in a local arts programme for which they filmed a video of the song “Dressed to Kill” which was shown throughout the region.Another track "Beefsteak Blues" was about the beef on the bone ban in operation at the time and parodied local MP and minister responsible for the ban Jack Cunningham. As luck would have it they obtained a gig at which Jack was to be the honoured guest. The organisers got wind of the song at the soundcheck and only nervously allowed it to be performed. "Dr Jack" either liked it or relised he couldnt be seen to have had a humour bypass. The national press hearing of this reported it and reproduced the lyrics. The Minister thanked the band with an official thank you on commons notepaper!!In 2001 Paul found love and moved to Manchester and Brian moved on to new things, they were replaced by Graham O’Neil (Unyan to all who know him) on bass guitar and Ian Sweeney on drums.John and Steve still had many songs waiting to be heard and so they decided to do another album but this time record it themselves in Johns basement.This second album took two years to complete!Tracks were revisited and tweaked and added to and sometimes chucked away to start again before they were satisfied. One track, a John Lee Hooker tribute called Hey Hey had sat for months waiting for something special.They found that something special one summers night aboard a tall ship in Whitehaven harbour. Booked to play a private party on deck, a downpour sent them packing down below where they performed in the low ceilinged bowels of the ship. It was here they discovered that the ships mate Tony Bate was a superb blues harp player even when paralitically drunk, jamming with the band mainly flat on his back on the deck.Supporting a massive hangover he accepted the invitation and turned up next day to play harp on Hey Hey. He listened to the song once, played two different accompaniments, chose his favourite which can be heard on this site and sailed away never to be seen again.“Old Enough To Know” was finally completed just in time for Maryport Blues Festival 2004.The “Solway Deltas” gatecrashed the festival that year playing four gigs (over eight hours of blues) at The Middle Tap pub between Friday night and Sunday lunchtime. They have played the festival each year since.Unyan moved on to a different “style” of music in 2006 (www.myspace.com/blindmountain for a taster).The band auditioned a number of bass players and was lucky to secure the talents of Alan Stubbs who fitted in perfectly and brought a new energy to the band in its second decade.2007 became the bands busiest and best year so far playing gigs at four festivals culminating in Solfest in August. Early 2008 sees Alan decide that his musical direction and ours lie in different directions and Steve and John also branch out by starting to play some acoustic blues gigs as a duo ("Alias Smith and Dugan" at the moment).Unyan came to the rescue for a couple of gigs including Cock Rock but again we struck lucky on the bassman front when Mark George (known to many as Plastic Paddi) volunteered his talents. Mark has been a familiar face at gigs since the early days and performs solo on the local pub/club circuit . He was obviously getting lonely out there and its great that his style and musical tastes match ours so well. He is able to recall and reproduce many old basslines from songs that had disappeared from the repertoire.We have just played our fifth year in a row at Maryport Blues Festival.