band - Gary Mullins - Professional Guitarist

What a Weekend – Frankie Valli, Richard Shelton, Waddesdon Manor

October 12, 2015PermalinkBye Bye Baby, Denmark Street Big Band, Gigs, Jazz, Live Work, Solo Workaylesbury, baby, band, big, bye, club, dean, denmark, express, film, four, frankie, guitar, jazz, london, manor, pizza, seasons, solo, street, themes, valli, waddeson Leave a comment

This weekend has been a really varied, interesting and fun set of gigs, covering over 700 miles!

On Friday I was in Whitley Bay with Bye Bye Baby – a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons tribute show. This took place at the Playhouse where we played to 500 people, and had many of them dancing in the aisles!

This is a great production – incredible music, faithfully recreated by myself and my colleagues. It’s loads of fun and I really look forward to these gigs, partly because I get to play my Gibson double neck!

I also take my Gibson Les Paul Gold Top as a back up, and I needed it this time as I snapped the high E on the six string on the double neck!

600 miles later, and I was in central London with the Denmark Street Big Band for the Richard Sheltpn album review show at the Pizza Express Jazz Club on Dean Street, London.

Amongst some original tunes arranged specifically for the big band, we also played a lot of Sinatra classics. My highlight of the gig was an instrumental performance of Under My Skin, where bass and tenor sax were largely playing together, and they were incredible!

Richard was great too – entertaining the crowd with great stories and anecdotes, and his voice is fantastic too. I particularly enjoyed his duos with pianist Ben who was loving it!

The weekend got wrapped up with a solo performance at Waddesdon Manor, playing during Afternoon Tea. This is a bit of a slog (4.5hrs!!) but it’s wonderful to share my arrangements and performances of tunes like Li’l Darlin’, Pure Imagination, Misty and more!

Like the big band gig the night before, I played my Gibson ES175, which was exquisite! I used the AER Compact 60, and have started using a little bit more gain on the first channel with the guitar which has been great – it gives the guitar more presence and sounds really full.

Needless to say, the food was great, and it was really busy! You should check it out – one more week to go – next Sunday is my last slot, 12:00-16:30.

The coming weekend is going to be just as hectic, with a workshop from Clive Carroll at the Aylesbury Music Centre to facilitate, a gig with Rollacoaster and the final Waddesdon Manor performance. Before then, prep and practice! Bring it on!

The Bye Bye Baby Tour Begins!

June 12, 2015PermalinkBye Bye Babybaby, band, bye, bye bye baby, carlisle, clacton, croydon, four, frankie, live, seasons, tribute, valli Leave a comment

In recent weeks I’ve been working with a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons tribute act called Bye Bye Baby. Fronted by four guys, I’m one of seven additional band members and collectively we’re touring theatres all over the country.

We kicked the tour off last week in Croydon and Clacton-On-Sea, and tomorrow night we’ll be in Carlisle, so there’ll be some miles going on the car!

The music has been arranged specifically for the band, the sound team are incredible and the other musicians are superb, so it really is a great play and a great night out, with the fantastic iconic music Frankie Valli.

Be sure to check out http://www.byebyebabylive.co.uk for the dates!

A New Era with the New Jersey Jukebox

January 26, 2015PermalinkGigs, Live Work, New Jersey Jukeboxand, band, boys, four, frankie, gibson, henley, jersey, jukebox, kenton, les, new, on, paul, production, professional, seasons, show, thames, the, theatre, touring, tribute, valli Leave a comment

This Saturday marked the start of a new project that I’ve been asked to be involved with, namely the New Jersey Jukebox, which is a tribute to the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

It goes without saying that the songs are fantastic, and it is a privilege to be involved to perform them.

The band has several guises – the four singers with either backing tracks, four piece or seven piece bands – and the outfit is incredibly professional with personal mixers and in-ear monitoring and bespoke arrangements and tracks.

Signed to a production company, we will be touring major venues throughout the UK (and possibly beyond!), so keep an eye out for us, as this promises to be a brilliant show with wonderful music at it’s core!

Christmas at Cliveden House

December 30, 2014PermalinkBig Mama Funk, Gigs, Jazz, Jazz Juice, Solo Workband, berks, big, bucks, cliveden, function, funk, guitar, herts, house, jazz, juice, london, mama, oxford, party, solo, trio Leave a comment

Christmas has been a pretty hectic time for gigs this year, with a performance on Christmas Day, and 3 on Boxing Day. Still, with them all being at Cliveden House it made for a very special couple of days.

In her regular attire, Cliveden is spectacular, but during Christmas she is even more resplendent in no small part due to the Christmas trees, and general extra decoration throughout the place.

It has been quite busy there this year, and myself and my musical colleagues have worked hard to provide the best quality jazz music possible in our time there. We’ve received a great number of positive comments, and hope to hear back from the business cards that have been handed out.

It’s now time for a quick rest before another clutch of New Year gigs, and then back into some sort of routine!

I wish you all the best for the New Year, and hope to grace a stage alongside, or in front of you sooner rather than later!

Sweet Charity with Abingdon Operatic Society

November 2, 2014PermalinkTheate Work60, abingdon, aer, amey, band, big, blues, charity, classical, compact, electric, fender, guitar, junior, les, musical, operatic, paul, raimundo, society, sweet, tango, theatre Leave a comment

I’ve just come to the end of a run of Sweet Charity at the Amey Theatre with the Abingdon Operatic Society. This is the second time I’ve done the show, and I had a real blast doing it.

The music is really interesting, and in many ways quite unlike any other show that I’ve done. The pad is quite unhelpful, really, since it has some directions for the guitarist (such as ‘no amp’ or ‘all on highs’) which aren’t straightforward to interpret! Having said that there are a variety of different styles (big band and tango are the highlights for me) that you have to cover, as well as interesting time signature changes.

A lot of the show is in 2, so quite rapid for much of it, and this requires a good knowledge of lots of chord shapes in each area of the neck.

I mainly used my Les Paul and Raimundo classical for the run, and these guitars did a great job to cover the disciplines required. Playing the Raimundo with a Tango feel was great fun, and sounded pretty raunchy to my ears!

The theatre appeared to be packed every night which was exciting to see, and all appeared to enjoy the production.

It’s now time for me to concentrate my energies into a completely different show, as next week I’ll be playing in Avenue Q at the Court Theatre in Tring. The writing and instrumentation is very different to Charity, so it’s going to be good fun and a good challenge.

Tenerife with Rollacoaster

October 11, 2014PermalinkGigs, Live Work, Rollacoasterband, disco, function, funk, gig, international, jazz, latin, party, rock, rollacoaster, soul, tenerife Leave a comment

Earlier this week I was privileged to be flown with the Rollacoaster guys to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tenerife for a gig with a Canadian insurance company.

This is the second time I’ve been lucky enough to be flown abroad for a booking, and as such I was very much looking forward to it, especially since I hadn’t been to Tenerife before.

The weather was fantastic – 27•C and wonderfully sunny – which made the time spent on the beach and by the pool before the gig all the more enjoyable!

Having said that, there are many trials and tribulations a guitarist needs to navigate while in one of these ventures, and the critical one is to do with gear.

Ordinarily, the amp would be hired from a local company, and in this case I turned up expecting a Marshall JCM2000 head and 4×12 cab, and actually got two Fender Twins…! Either amp would have been fine for me, but with uncertainty in what amp will actually be on site when you arrive, you need to be quite clever with your pedal selection so you don’t get caught short, particularly in the overdrive department.

The Fender Twin I used – only one in the end! – was beautiful, and the clean setting was lush as you would expect. The size and volume of the cabinet moved air really effectively, and made for an exciting amp to use.

I had to strip a few pedals from my board and cram them cleverly into my small luggage case, and for this reason I was extremely selective and methodical.

The Fulltone wah, Wampler Ecstasy, Zvex Distortron and Line6 Echo Park all made the grade, and since I wasn’t sure what the power situation would be like at the venue, I used trusty 9V batteries to fix this problem. Only the Line6 drained its initial battery and needing replacing halfway through.

While this got me through the gig, I also like to have a chorus, phaser and additional tuner/buffer/boost/compressor units at my feet. /9 this was a but if a challenge and encouraged me to be creative with the wah especially in moments that needed a bit more interest.

The final piece of the gear puzzle is the guitar (my red Fender Strat with Seymour Duncan Little ’59 in the bridge), and I managed to get this on as hand luggage in my Reunion Blues case. This is a great case. While it is a soft case, it is super sturdy and has a great set of pockets which are well thought-out for accessories and cables etc. I want to try and avoid having it hit the hold of a plane, but from what I’ve seen in promo videos it would probably be ok – it seems to protect guitars well enough when thrown off a two-storey building, so that’s a start!

The gig itself was great fun, but at 2.5hrs straight playing was tough at times, especially since it’s a reading gig. The whole band did great, and the quality of all the other guys really forces you to raise your game. On to the next one!

P.S. Contrary to all the 5* pictures, some work was done!!

Montcalm Hotel, Marble Arch

August 18, 2014PermalinkGigs, Rollacoasterarch, band, function, hotel, international, london, marble, montcalm, party, rollacoaster Leave a comment

I had a lovely gig at the Montcalm Hotel near Marble Arch with Rollacoaster last night. It was a bit cramped on stage, but we put on a good show and the Jewish numbers were fantastic fun! Plus I had a slightly different amp stand to normal… The Blues Junior was probably the comfiest member of the band last night!

Variety is the Spice of Life

June 21, 2014PermalinkGigs, Jazz, Live Work, Solo Work175, 60, acoustic, aer, band, chicheley, compact, es175, gibson, guitarist, hall, hotels, jazz, juice, quartet, severe, wedding Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks I have been doing a great deal of different types of work, each with different responsibilities. It has been a real thrill too, because I feel like I’ve succeeded in doing a good job with each of the challenges in front of me – particularly with the time I’ve had to prepare – and that gives me the sort of buzz I am looking for.

Since playing in Grease at the New Theatre in Oxford, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the Denmark Street Big Band, playing three gigs with two of them being a bit of a trek, including ventures to Inverness (at the castle where Madonna got married), and to Great Yarmouth to play in a Big Band festival. All three gigs were fantastic fun with material ranging from Glenn Miller to Sinatra, Buble, and Basie, as well as two shows dedicated to the work of Bobby Darin.

I had the privilege to be able to play solo at my brother’s wedding, and also as a special part of his wedding speech, a solo gig for Team GB Triathlete, plus a jazz performance with my quartet to relaunch a stately home/hotel for DeVere Hotels.

Things are fairly relentless at the moment with final rehearsals on Monday for this year’s Live at the Rose event, as well as an Irish-themed recording session coming up where I need to get the mandolin out. Coupled with new ukulele and bass students it’s a very busy time!