Interview - Tom Doughty

Tom is one of the most original new artists I have heard in a long time. The music just flows." Woody Mann.

With 30 plus years of re learning his craft, Tom has developed a unique sound and technique that makes his music instantly recognizable. ‘He is a master of the Lap Slide Guitar, nothing less’. Ian McWee, Diamond Bottlenecks.

With three nationally and internationally acclaimed CD’s to his name, studio sessions, a growing reputation as a slide guitar teacher and workshop leader, Tom entertains audiences throughout the land.

Expect Blues, Roots, Folk, Standards and his own songwriting skills.

"A must see performer" Michael Prince

© Copyright 2012 Alan White. All Rights Reserved.

Tom: I was born in Frodsham in Cheshire. I was found in a coracle in the River Weaver sitting on top of an old wind-up gramophone that was a playing a Booker White track and smoking a Woodbine.

Tom: Yes, in terms of my father played the mouth organ very badly and really believed he was Larry Adler. But the great thing about my dad was that he was the village blacksmith and he got really into his music in a really great way, and I always think you are influenced by the first things you hear and as 7 or 8 year old I was able to listen to music from Tchaikovsky and opera to Jim Reeves’ Bimbo, and everything in between. And in that record collection my father introduced me without ever mentioning it because Sunday morning he put his records on. All the American standards like Cole Porter to Gershwin, through to Son House through to bits of Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, then German classical music and the pop music of the day so I was brought into this great musical listening family. I’d wake up some mornings and the number of times the bugger would give me If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof or mom and dad would be singing to South Pacific, even Paint Your Wagon, but the beautiful thing about that era is that even though it’s not blues it’s about melody and rhythm and the lovely twisty turns and twirls, and I listen to Booker White who’s songs have one chord and one riff but he does start to interfere with both the melody and they rhythm and the patterning and the touch in such a way as to set it apart. I’m not a massive Booker White fan; my music is probably as wide as my father’s but he’s in there.

Tom: I have a brother who’s 9 years older than me and he got into the 60s folk blues revival in a big way and he played guitar, so at the age of 6 he showed me a few chords. He showed me in that old fashioned way. You know, I’m only 55 but how things have changed. We used to learn a piece of music by listening to it, maybe watching somebody play if you were lucky enough because it was never on TV and there were no computers, but by listening to the record and the bit you’d really want to play you’d start by picking up the needle on the record and moving it back to the beginning and playing it again. Chris, my brother, had a lot of things like Woody Guthrie, old blues, Dylan, David Graham, the whole gamut of English and American folk blues revival plus all the modern popular music of the day.

Tom: There are too many! I can’t say I want to copy anyone and I teach quite a lot nowadays and I try to teach people to find their own voice and sound but all of my influences are in there and I hope it comes out sounding like Tom Doughty. Although I write a lot of my own songs I also play loads of old blues material and some new, and it's all heavily influenced by what's around me.

Alan: After your injury you spent a lot of time without being able to play so what got you back into being able to play?

Tom: Desire. It’s as simple as. Undoubtedly the biggest hurdle in my life was losing the use of my hands. I was a 17 year old finger style guitarist, testosterone-fuelled, adrenalin-junkie kid and I was bound for a fall, and my fall happened to be a spinal injury. That put paid to me walking around and having a sane sort of life but that was quite easy to adjust to. That wasn’t a big deal, people make it out to be but it really isn’t. 95% of people like me do what I do and get on with it, but for me the biggest hurdle was that I lost the proper function of my hands yet I would play music in my head in silence and couldn’t get it into the air. I’d compose music and I’d listen to music and I’d know what was going on but I was an avid listener and not player, and that desire overruled the pain of not being able to do it. So, I started by taking a guitar off the wall and my father, being that blacksmith, managed to give me the genes of inventiveness and resourcefulness and I started to find ways in which the hands I’ve got could make sounds which become more pleasant. 8 out of 10 times it would sound bloody awful, one time it would sound so awful I should have chucked it through the window but on one time out of 10 it sounded like music and that was enough to spur me on. I think that’s true of any musician and I'm very conscious about getting wrapped up in “He’s a special bloke because he plays a guitar and he doesn’t use his hands very well. But you speak to John Williams, speak to the best musician you can find and you’ll see that we’re all frustrated by our lack of dexterity. So, I play in a different style but I make music and I now know that I’m playing music because I’ve got a following and recognition internationally by my musical peer group and by audiences that help me recognise that and I love what I'm doing. It’s taken me a long time but I have a unique sound and part of that is coming out of the way I play. What more could we wish for? I don’t want to sound like a Robert Johnson look-alike.

Alan: In 1999 you attended a 'life changing' guitar workshop with New York blues, jazz, and American roots guitarist Woody Mann - tell me a little about it.

Tom: I’m really glad you asked me that question. A lot of people have pivotal moments in their life, and 1974 I broke my neck, got out of hospital with a disability, got on with life, got a job, got to driving a car and got on with it, and I realised that I could still be a non-conformist and I could still be rebellious by doing normal things because nobody expected me to do normal things like get a girlfriend and drive a car and travel and have a life, so my rebellious streak has managed to resurge by my doing quite normal things, and I got to playing the guitar a bit. But I only played it in the house and I was far too shy and lacking in belief to think that I could play it outdoors. But at the Wirral guitar festival where coincidentally I now play every year, this guy, Woody Mann, had a guitar workshop and I thought, I’m going to bite the bullet here. I've got this guitar tuned in a bit of chord, put this tube on my hand and decided to go. I went to the workshop, fully aware that I’d be the one who couldn’t play regular guitar and couldn’t play finger-style guitar and we all introduced ourselves and it came to me and I was at the pivotal point of going, “Errr, I can’t really play. I’ve got this disability and I can’t move my hands” but I, for once, managed to shut myself up, and I said, “I play in a different way to you and I’ve turned up here to see what I can learn” and that pivotal self-belief was enough for me to stay for the day. Woody Mann, being the consummate professional and a tremendous bloke, said “Don’t worry about it lad, just play the melody line if you can, do what you want” and he introduced people to a straightforward simple blues in D and a couple of other things and I just went, “Yeah, I can do that, and that” and by then I’d acquired my own ways of playing. We had a tea break and he took me on one side and said, “Yeah, that’s interesting. Can you play this?” and he played something and I repeated it. I’m fortunate because I learnt to play by ear and I know I can listen to something and usually get it. Then he said, “Can you play this? Can you play a bass line in here? Can you play a melody line in there?” so I did that and he said, “I run these international guitar seminars in New York with Bob Brozman. Have you heard of him?” I said, “No, I haven’t heard of him and I hadn’t heard of you til today mate” and he said “Will you come?”. I basically said, No, I can’t do that. I’ve just left a job because I’m tired out and I’m just getting divorced and I couldn’t even contemplate it. But he said, “If you can get there, I’d love you to come. I think you’ll learn a lot and be able to contribute a lot”. So I cobbled together the airfare and through Woody’s self-belief in me and through his sponsorship by companies who supported the initiative, they paid for my place there for the week. So I was stuck in the middle of New York with 60 other musicians of all standards, although the bar was quite high. The tutors were people like John Renbourn, Martin Simpson, Bob Brozman, John Cephas who’s sadly no longer with us, Steve James, Woody Mann, just a tremendous accolade of players, the best in their genre really. I came back from New York and within two months had recorded my first album and it made me realise I was playing the blinking thing and it gave me that confirmation. The first album was released and within 3 months it got me playing live on Radio 2 on Paul Jones show and got regular air play. It was recorded with a massive chunk of spontaneity, not with any clever recording equipment but just an enthusiasm and belief in what I was doing. It has things on it like Charlie Patton tunes, a couple of my own tunes, a bit of Robert Johnson, Skip James, some interesting old tunes in there and it still gets regular listening.

Tom: There’s so many brilliant writers. If I could write one Bob Dylan tune or one Leonard Cohen tune I’d be happy. I love trying to wrap words around interesting melody lines and shapes. My song Zimbabwe does that, it’s well out of the regular but the initial riff came to me as I was playing the guitar with the telly on and the sound turned down playing an almost Marc Bolan/T-Rex tune, similar to Jeepster, and that gave me the basis of that first picking rhythm.

Alan: You play a wide range of songs and styles, are there any songs that have special meaning to you?

Tom: There’s loads, yes. And some of them are my own. There’s a song called Something Ain’t Right which I really enjoy playing, a song Running Free and there’s also special meaning in Zimbabwe. But you’re right, my music is very firmly rooted in blues and I could play it all day long but I think we move too much in categorisations and I move into old standards, Beatles songs, old standards I was brought up on. I don’t think there’s anything that can’t be played on lap slide guitar.

Tom: I do teach it and I’d like to think it would now be my instrument of choice. I’ve entered this black hole of minutiae where I look at finding variation in pitch and tone and I spent a bit of time studying with an Indian slide guitar guru and it’s a really fascinating instrument.

Alan: What’s your approach to budding guitarists when you do your teaching?

Tom: It’s all based around finding out what they want to play for, is it to play in a band, to play as a solo player, to play at home for yourself and I like to find out what’s motivating them to be there. It’s not music exams like it is with children, and then I help people find their own voice and sounds.

Alan: Your last album was released in 2008. Any future albums in the pipeline.

Tom: I’ve got the material for at least another two albums but haven’t really got the recording facility at the moment. I’ve just recorded two of my own tracks with a band in Brighton. It’s a guy called Nick Boyes who plays bass at Scarborough Blues Club and is a wonderfully subtle player, and a percussionist from London and we got together in a studio in Brighton and recorded in the old style, live, two of my own tracks, Journey Blues and I Can’t See Your Face. So it’s based around my music and I’m in the front of it, but adding that depth of the soft subtle bass playing and a full drum kit has really enhanced some of the ideas I’ve got. That’ll be released early 2013 as an EP and if the response is good then there’ll be a full album to follow it. (Providing I can find a way of paying for it, but that’s a side issue!). I’ve got mixes so far, not masters, and in Journey Blues there’s a lead break in the middle where this Hammond organ just gently rises out of the ashes and gives me this lovely superb resonant sound in the background to allow me on the lap slide to just whizz off on the lead break. I’m really proud of what I’ve heard so far.

Alan: I’ll look out for that in 2013 and meanwhile Tom thanks so much for your time.

"Exploiting overtones that many lap style guitarists try hard to suppress, Tom delivers a musical complexity, depth of tone and raw emotion that lesser mortals merely dream of".
Clive Sheard, Blues in the South

"This is a gorgeous CD full of imaginative performances played by a peerless virtuoso of the slide guitar. Another of our home grown treasures, Tom Doughty is certainly a rare talent. Do yourself a favour and get this now! Just superb".
Alan Jones – Ready to Rock Magazine

"This is quite simply one of the finest acoustic guitar albums I have heard for a while. Rating: 10/10" Michael Prince, Blues in Britain

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Early Blues Interview Tom Doughty, singer/songwriter/guitarist

Early Blues Interview
Tom Doughty, singer/songwriter/guitarist