Hi all! Apologies for the radio silence on here for a while – hopefully normal service will now be resumed. We’re really excited to tell you about lots of new things that Martin is involved in at the moment, including the first upcoming dates for his new band, ’The Magpie Arc’, featuring the fabulous talents of Adam Holmes, Nancy Kerr, Tom Wright, Alex Hunter and Martin, of course. If you like mellow folk rock, Little Feat style grooves, fabulous songwriting and superb musicianship, you’re going to love this combination. You can hear our current favourite track, ‘Autumn Leaves’ here. Martin is very excited about flexing his electric guitar chops this group!
We are all very proud to hear the positive reviews about Martin’s friend, Steve Harley’s new CD, ‘Uncovered’, on which Martin plays acoustic and slide guitar with fantastic musicians and a great production team. It was a process he thoroughly enjoyed and is really proud of. The CD is out now and we love it – it’s on rotation along with The Magpie Arc and ‘Rooted’ in the Simpsonian Music office.
Martin was really sorry to have to cancel a couple of recent gigs due to a shoulder injury which he has since been diligently resting in order to get back to match fitness. It’s been very odd to have him here and to not hear him playing guitar at every given opportunity, but not as frustrating as it has been for him. We’re delighted to say that he’s well on the way to being OK but we’re never going to ask him to lift boxes of CD stock again! Martin goes to Denmark next week and you can get details of those gigs in the Concert section of this website.
We’ll soon be starting to take bookings for Martin’s November Guitar Weekend Workshop in Sheffield this year. Watch this space and the Workshop page for details. It’s limited to 20 people and is a very popular return visit for many so please feel free to register interest now by emailing info@martinsimpson.com and putting November Workshop in the title and we’ll sign you up asap. We’re hoping to increase the number of weekend workshops that Martin will be doing in the near future but for now this will be the only opportunity in 2020.
Finally, we were all very moved to hear of the passing of Martin’s dear friend, Henry Gray. Henry lived a fantastically rich, musical life and Martin had some of the best times of his life playing with Henry’s band, when Martin was living in the States. You can listen to Martin talking about the song he wrote about Henry which he released on the recent, ‘Rooted’ album below.
RIP Henry, yours was a life very well lived and you will be missed.
Please keep an eye on Martin’s Instagram and Facebook pages for more instant news and also follow Martin’s adventures in guitars, nature, banjos and travels on Twitter, by clicking the links at the bottom of the page.