Deacon Guthrie

 

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Mike Deacon, who has played guitar since he was a teenager, and dabbled in electric guitar at that time, grew up in Reading listening to the Faces, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Tamla Motown and Neil Young. He claims to have played rhythm guitar while hiding behind an amp.

More recently he has played acoustic in a finger-picking style, having decided that blues, with an alternating bass, was a more interesting way to go. Mike likes what he describes as “the best blues pickers", in particular Robert Johnson.

Mike’s singing style is, he says, pot luck. “I open my mouth and it comes out. I have no influence, no style – it’s just what I have got.”

Mike is a plasterer and lives in Reading.

Sandy Guthrie, is originally from south west and west London, Having grown up in a house full of Woody Guthrie, Tom Paxton and a variety of acoustic blues records, Sandy moved on to spend his teenage years listening to Faces, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper and others like that, while hanging on to his folk and blues influences.

He played guitar badly from the age of 16, and in the 1980s spent some time trying (and failing) to sound like Dexter Gordon on the tenor sax. In the past couple of years, Sandy has settled on the harp, and feels much happier with it.

While Sandy claims an eclectic, almost recklessly wide musical taste, he has a particular liking for people like Butch Hancock, Steve Earle and Townes van Zandt as well as blues.

Sandy is a writer and journalist, and lives in Amberley, West Sussex

Mike and Sandy met through the Big Road Blues website forum. In March 2003, the UK members of the website got together for a weekend of music making, and Mike and Sandy quickly realised they were on the same wavelength.

Neither had much experience of playing live, but within six months or so, were taking tentative steps together to play in front of people. A mutual liking of music from people like Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt has led them sliding off a pure blues path to take in anything that takes their fancy.

Mike and Sandy started to play together at the Blues Etc jam at the White Lyon in Worplesdon, Surrey. Mike has been known to play solo, while Sandy also plays at the twice-monthly Washington Music Club in West Sussex. Other Deacon Guthrie gigs have included two appearances at the Cognac Blues Festival in France.