Live Events
The MWR&BC Presents Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Dave Speight…
August 22 @ 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm
£20
The MWR&BC Presents Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Dave Speight…
He has played the Blues for nearly 60 years and is described by Blues in Britain as a “national treasure”.
Dave…
As I’ve got older I’ve found the applause lasts a bit longer and is louder. Have played clubs, pubs, bars, concerts, festivals – wherever there is a good atmosphere and someone in the audience, appreciates the performance. I was proud to be inducted (at last) in 2017. I’ve been performing acoustic blues for nearly 60 yrs.
And with more and more feeling that I have a good reason to do so as I age and life presents its various scenarios. The fingers may have slowed… but the voice still works. At my age, it’s always good to be able to sing “Woke Up This Morning”.
NORTH COUNTRY BLUES
60 YEARS AND STILL PLAYING THE BLUES
MEETING UP WITH DAVE SPEIGHT
There’s an old folk song that stated that if you go to the North Country, well you will find one hugely unsung but a British national blues treasure in Dave Speight. Recommended to me by photographer Jennifer Noble, we just had to find out more of the man, born in Liverpool, but these days resides in Yorkshire. If fact if you’ve been to any blues festival in the area you’ve seen him, heard him, and been drawn in by his mastery and love of the music he plays, just one man and his guitar.
Asking Dave through all the years he’s been playing his blues, and supporting many major names along the way. What in the first instance place drew him towards it in the first place, Dave replied;
‘First heard Howlin’ Wolf singing Smokestack Lightning and from having been a Motown boy until 16 years old I was instantly locked into the blues. There were no blues albums to be had in 1963 other than Josh White. But after some digging around, found some. Only started playing guitar after a visit to a folk club in nearby Warrington in 1964 and seeing people properly unplugged in a room holding 300, and you could hear a pin drop. There was an old guy who worked at Hessy’s in Stanley Street in Liverpool who played a couple of Broonzy licks, plus I bought a Big Bill Broonzy album, and worked it out, even played it at 16rpm so you could hear what was happening (half speed). Robert Johnson’s album left me open mouthed. Then later a wondrous record store opened in Leeds, and one of the staff there saved all the acoustic blues albums he came across – Blind Boy Fuller, Skip James, Blind Willie McTell, Scrapper Blackwell, Mance Lipscomb (although my first copy of that was a wedding present from my best mate). Along with listening to the very popular Mike Raven’s Blues Show (BBC), along with albums borrowed and never returned ‘
Like pretty well every other aspiring young guitarist Dave got going with Bert Weedon’s Tutor ‘I wondered why it hurt so much and was so difficult. Soon gave up strumming though once I heard Bob Dylan fingerpicking. I met Paul Simon he showed me his style and I gave him a couple of Angi riffs he hadn’t quite sorted. We’d both been listening to Davy Graham at that time’.
So countless blisters were achieved on his right hand as he learnt these songs for himself
‘Having seen Rev Gary Davis I gave up folk music and just wanted to play the blues’ In fact there is a photograph of Davis playing at a festival and sitting to the side of him Dave Speight watching. He also tells the story of that gig plus meeting the great bluesman, who over the weekend smoked over 100 of Dave’s own cigarettes.
To that first gig every musician goes through
‘I played blues at my first paid gig; in fact there’s even a recording of one of the songs on my website still today. It was at the Minor Bird folk club in Warrington. Earlier they had “made me” get up and perform, so if I played there, I got in for free. In 1966 they thought I was good enough. Interesting to note Paul Simon had played the same venue in 1965 and he was paid twelve guineas. I was paid a fiver and thought I’d made it’ Wish I could have kept that same wage differential!
‘When I saw Rev Gary Davis, I stayed up all night with him and late at night when no one else was around he played ‘Cocaine Blues’ and ‘Della’ for me. Sang them when he knew no women were watching. (His wife disapproved of profane songs). So my cigarettes were my payment for the lesson plus a bottle of whisky. He wasn’t supposed to drink and his minder the folk artist Maddie Pryor went nuts. Before that he had passed his guitar to me and said ‘play me some, let’s see what you got’
Davis thought he played well but he thought it was too clean, technically good but not enough bite, a lesson in living and breathing the music, not just playing it well!
Asking Dave if he’d always played solo or had been in bands as well, he said;
‘I have not always been solo, played in duo’s and groups when playing folk clubs when blues wasn’t fashionable in the mid/ late, 70’s . Then a couple of years with a crazy jug band the Hot Pot Belly Band-they were insane, and one night playing at a local university we were joined by Steve Phillips, Brendan Croker and Mark Knopfler (he played my guitar) and Pick Withers who played bones’ Dire Straits had been playing support for Talking Heads in a bigger hall and so Steve dragged them up, to join us’
Then of course later Croker, Phillips and Mark Knopfler teamed up for one album and tour performing mainly blues with The Notting Hillbillies. Steve Phillips has for years played a regular gig at The Grosvenor Hotel in Robin Hood’s Bay Yorkshire, where often Mark Knopfler would join in the sessions, and bought his famous National metal guitar from him. Dave then went onto say he was also the front man for another R & B band during the early to mid 2000’s.
‘Thinking of others I have seen or played alongside there’s John Lee Hooker, Son House, Champion Jack Dupree, Fred Mc Dowell, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and David Honeyboy Edwards (four times). On the same bill I’ve played with Juke Boy Bonner, Jack Dupree and a whole raft of UK players, some you may not know including Ian Anderson (the one from Bristol), Mike Cooper, Duster Bennett, Steve Phillips and Jo Anne Kelly. First time Jo Anne came up north she was my support, that quickly changed as I supported her the next time. She had such a great voice, sadly passed on far too young). Others at that time included, The Hokum Hot Shots, Ray Stubbs, along with my good friend Sholto Lenaghan where we played John Estes numbers mainly – there’s still a few copies of our North Country Blues album kicking around since 1997.’
Dave Speight still remains in normal times a busy bluesman, though he does say now,
‘Of late if I’ve not been the star attraction then I’ve been the opener for quite a few blues bands. Was due to be supporting ‘The Colonel’, but with Covid, Steve Cropper was not arriving from the USA. Hopefully though as I already have a booking with Catfish Keith later this year, if he is able to come here. I’ve played the warm up for him before, so it will be nice to join him again’.
‘Mind I play a lot quieter than he does’.
Alongside being a performing musician like several others Dave also teaches guitar , ‘Yes, I do teach but I’m not a great teacher if you don’t pick it up quickly. One notable success is a young guy named Will Savers who has just released an album, he learns very quickly and has really applied himself – he lives in Italy’.
It was time to ask Dave about his own music, the work put into it to grasp that authentic sound of the early blues,
‘Great question that – it is random. I always have about eighty numbers that can quickly be brought back to performance level. So, with each of the three albums I have released, when I record, all the tracks are in one take, no overdubs, they come as they are. It is what it is on the day and often it is one new number that prompts me to head to the studio- or as on the last album being offered free studio time which was nice’ The albums so far released are ‘A Seam Of The Blues’, ‘Blues Around Midnight’, and ‘Last Chance Blues’. It’s also true that one was done in a very long late night take, the way blues used to be done in the old days.
So asking Dave about his music brought some sound advice for any budding musician, hear this;
‘I have always said do it like you mean it, really mean it. For young guitarists: learn your craft then put the guitar down. Throw your head back and sing without the guitar, really go for it, make those words matter to you, don’t just say them like a hymn or folk song – feel it. Then pick up the guitar again and don’t let the guitar drive the singing. Let the singing/performance drive the guitar. Never stop!!. This music has been around me for sixty years and it will always be what I do’. Work on it and learn your craft, live the music you’re playing, surely sound advice for everyone who plays.
Then about his guitars ; ‘I have a number of guitars that go on the road with me. My main guitar is one that Steve Phillips built for me back in 1979. Loads of bling and Brazilian Rosewood- it’s good but not as good as the 000 Martin it’s based on. Have a guitar that I now use as a baritone, as I age my vocal chords won’t reach the high notes anymore so I need to play the same but in a lower key.
There is also a 12 string (tuned down to A) and both were ladder built by Pete Howlett (who is currently building his thousandth Uke). I used to have a Belotona tri-cone built this time by Steve Evans that rings like a bell and more humbly, but increasingly used, and an old ‘Michigan’ Parlour guitar of indeterminate age (made around the 30’s) that I use as an authentic sounding slide guitar. Then most recently a beautiful little 12 fret Vega, I bought from my good friend Jim Murray. I have a luthier nearby, who replaced the fingerboard, bridge and tuners then re-finished the back and sides for me. It has an amazing balance and to think it was originally built c1910 so that helps. This is now my main stage guitar’
The man, his music and his instruments, after sixty years playing the blues, he has much still to offer live but some great advice as well. So where next for Dave Speight, once things get back to some sort of normality, and his return to playing the music he loves
‘There are no ladders, just snakes. Missed a bunch of festival gigs last year that will hopefully happen at some point in the future. Just keep checking the website (a great place to catch Dave playing live at various venues via You Tube). But we’ll be back. Though sadly I’ve heard that a few of my favourite venues have called time for the last time and they will not be returning. There are many others of us here in the North of England who love and play acoustic blues…and we will carry on playing with that passion we always have done…ladder or no’.
Dave Speight may not be a household name to many being based in the north, and all his years as a musician it’s made him one of the finest artists in the country playing the real Delta blues. One thing Dave certainly wanted to add to our time was the influence of Wizz Jones (sadly recently died).
‘He was’ says Dave,’ the first person I heard play Blind Boy Fuller and that was jaw dropping back in the mid 60’s. Then there was the time he took me along with him to The Troubadour and I played in the same line up with him (we had played together before because Wizz is very generous with other performers), John Martyn and Stephan Grossman. You know it may not mean a lot to others, but for me it was a real milestone as a young player, just coming out of my teenage years’.
Thanks to Dave Speight for his time, energy and great blues over many years, do check him out it will be far more than worth it, As Jenifer Noble said to me, ‘Dave Speight is a real national treasure and should be heard’
That sums it up perfectly, Delta blues lives !
Pete Clack
Two days after this event with the club Dave plays at The Great British R&B Festival in Colne on Sunday, 24th August 2025 on the Little Theatre Acoustic Stage | 17:15 – 18:15 so really pleased to get the date before that musical adventure.
https://www.davespeight.xfr.co.uk/
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