Kettering Rocks

I've been away... I'm back. A lot of time was taken up arranging the KettStock festival, son of the eight-year-old Tootstock festival.

KettStock in Kettering recreated the spirit of south London's Tootstock – and then some. We had a bigger venue, an audience twice the size, and we raised four times the amount for charity.

So, a major success and a night packed with poignancy, emotion and good music.

And as with all good things... everyone wants to do it again.

Many thanks to Russ Payne and Unison Bends, the Shark Dentists, Bill Deacon, Pete Derbyshire, Mez, Mark Turner, Olli Turner, Dave Part and Nevada Summerley, the musicians who made KettStock happen.

Now, who wants to play at KettStock 2?

Drumming With Taste

I’ve been away (at the Rory Gallagher Festival in Ballyshannon, Ireland)... I’m back. I enjoyed three full days and nights of inspiring music, played in tribute to this great musician who died tragically 22 years ago.

The greatest highlight, among many others, was watching again the great drummer John Wilson. I saw him many times in the 1960s playing with Gallagher’s power trio, Taste.

Wilson combined technique with passion in equal measures in a way that few drummers do. And 50 years on, performing with his own power trio, A Taste Of Rory, he is an even stronger player.

I should also mention the phenomenal Pat McManus (now arguably Ireland’s finest guitarist, since the loss of Gallagher and Gary Moore) who played an epic outdoor set to an audience soaked by, but oblivious to, a hard rainstorm.

And the pleasantest surprise was to take refuge in a tiny bar and find a band called Catfish playing Gallagher’s back catalogue with a fire and spirit all the more remarkable since none of these young players looked as if they could have even been born before Gallagher died.

If you love blues/rock (and Guinness) and have never been to the Rory Gallagher Festival... go!

No Sleep Till Tooting

For six years, with the help of many people, I've organised a modest little music festival in Tooting, south London. Its original name was SummerFest but it soon became known to regular attenders as Tootstock.

Last year's event was the best ever, thanks to some great musical performances, and thanks to my teenage daughter's friends who provided a new, younger, bigger audience. Despite the success, it had been so stressful to organise that I put a note at the end of my diary for 2011 saying: "Do NOT organise Tootstock 2012... "

But so many people asked when it was going to be and said they wanted to take part that, well, it's more or less set for Saturday June 30, 2012. And I also noticed that just after that diary entry was a PS that I had written to myself. It read: "But if you do, here's a suggested line-up... "