Dai Thomas

A few notes from Dai...

To accompany my singing, I mostly play acoustic instruments - standard guitar in various tunings (Martins 0-15 from 1954, 0M-18V from 2006, 1915 Gibson L-1, 1925 Stromberg -Voisinette concert, The Loar L-600 VS archtop), two flavours of National (1933 Duolian and a 1994 Polychrome triplate) and a Dobro F-60 square-neck, 12-string (1972 Guild F112 and 1968 Harmony Sovereign), mandolin (1921 Gibson A-jr., a souped-up Chinese National copy), Gibson Mastertone 5-string banjo, banjo-mandolin (1920 Reliance), a Chinese National uke-copy, a self-built guitar-banjo and a Vietnamese tenor guitar. I use techniques that people used before electronics intervened, so I am quite loud and raucous and I wave my arms around a lot. My material is drawn from many acoustic bluesmen, e.g. Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Gary Davis, Peg Leg Howell, Furry Lewis, Robert Johnson, Robert Wilkins, Leadbelly, Luke Jordan, Papa Charlie Jackson, Clifford Gibson, Geeshie Wiley (blueswomen too), John Hurt, Blind Willie Johnson, William Harris, Sleepy John Estes, and many, many more. Because there are so many good blues around, I don’t often write my own! I also appear with a variable skiffle group called “Class 49” where I can add washboard and kazoo to the above list and have been known to accompany other singers, including “Barrelhouse Barbara Thomas”, my wife. 

I'm based in Salford, but I play festivals, concerts and clubs all over the U.K. and the odd time in Ireland, Italy and the U.S. I’ve played on a lot of trains, the occasional bus, in transport museums and on street corners. I've had tracks on many charity recordings and played and sang on some tracks of the Jim White Warner Brothers album "No Such Place” and lots of other peoples’ recordings. My own CD is called “Songs From The Ragged Backside Of The American Dream”, or SFTB for short, and has 15 tracks, all recreations of songs from the pre-war acoustic era and all but three blues. It also features sleeve-notes from Max Haymes! If you want a copy, they cost £10 (including postage) from me at 42, Lancaster Road, Salford, Lancashire, M6 8AW, U.K.

There is also an Old-Timey side to my music (the stuff they called hill-billy before WW2); it has an awful lot in common with the Black music of the time. To accompany this side, I play 5-string fretted & fretless banjo, autoharp, Appalachian dulcimer, Dobro, french harp and some very bad fiddle. The remaining SFTB tracks are from this genre (but no fiddle!). To add to the list, other peoples’ CDs have also been graced(?) with my bass playing (electric and acoustic fretted, but mostly electric fretless and electric upright instruments), electric guitar, piano (rudimentary) and the bad fiddle as above. To find out more about my cottage-industry record label, Acoustic Redeye Records, search out www.acousticredeye.com  where you will find all the artists and a contact email address.

Check out Dai's article on Blues Singers and their instruments

You can contact Dai by e-mail at d.thomas@talktalk.net

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Text (this page) © Copyright 2016 Dai Thomas. All Rights Reserved.
For further information please email: alan.white@earlyblues.com