Nobody's Business was a performing acoustic duo comprising Steve J. McWilliam on six-string guitar and Ian Jesse, a remarkably versatile singer and multi-instrumentalist who could move between voice, guitar, clarinet, flute, whistle, mandolin and keyboard. Our repertoire ranged through country blues, ragtime, folk, contemporary material and a little light rock.
Steve and Ian
Steve J. McWilliam — guitar
Steve provided the principal six-string guitar part, drawing particularly on fingerstyle country blues and ragtime. The duo grew naturally out of the wider North-West acoustic-guitar scene and the Tape 'n' Tab Club, where arranging, playing and sharing fingerstyle material were central activities.
The guitar could provide a complete rhythmic and harmonic foundation for Ian's singing, or become one voice in a more conversational arrangement when Ian switched to clarinet or another instrument.
Ian Jesse — voice & multi-instrumentalist
Ian sang and played mainly clarinet within the duo, but could also take up six-string guitar. His wider instrumental range included 12-string and electric guitar, mandolin, penny whistle, keyed and un-keyed flutes and keyboard. His acoustic guitar style combined strumming and fingerstyle with influences from his earlier rock playing.
Ian's clarinet and flute gave Nobody's Business a sound quite different from a conventional two-guitar or guitar-and-vocal folk duo. He could provide a melodic counter-line, answer the guitar, accompany the vocal or change instruments between pieces.
The music
Country blues
Traditional and early twentieth-century country-blues material formed an important part of the repertoire. Guitar, voice and clarinet could be combined in different ways, allowing the arrangements to move between a close-to-the-original acoustic feel and something more distinctly our own.
Ragtime
Ragtime fingerstyle was another important strand, reflecting Steve's long-standing interest in the genre and the wider Tape 'n' Tab tradition. The repertoire was not restricted to piano-rag arrangements: the guitar-native ragtime and Piedmont fingerstyle traditions were also part of the musical background.
Folk and contemporary material
Folk songs, traditional tunes, contemporary pieces and a small amount of self-composed material broadened the programme. Ian's ability to change instruments made it possible to vary the texture considerably without needing a full band.
Surviving recordings
The surviving recordings below are supplied as MP3s rather than embedded web players. This keeps the archive simple and preserves the original files for visitors to and play with their own audio software.
The old archive contains a small set of surviving low-quality MP3s. They are valuable less as studio recordings than as evidence of what the duo sounded like and the sort of material we were performing.
Other surviving Nobody's Business material
Sugar Babe, composed by Mance Lipscomb, survives as a particularly useful piece of the paper archive. Steve arranged it in 1987 and tabbed it in TablEdit in 1998; the surviving score identifies it as played, approximately, by Nobody's Business — Steve J. McWilliam & Ian Jesse.
A little of the history
Before Nobody's Business: Steve was already deeply involved in acoustic fingerstyle, ragtime and country blues, while Ian had developed through acoustic guitar, rock groups, folk-club appearances and a growing collection of instruments.
The duo: The two eventually formed Nobody's Business, with Steve's fingerstyle guitar providing the foundation and Ian bringing voice, clarinet, guitar and other instruments into the arrangements.
1990s performances: Steve's surviving CV records gigs from June 1992, including pubs, outdoor shows, craft fairs and charity functions. One documented event was Sailing the Sankey at Spike Island, Widnes, on 17 September 1995.
2000: The original Nobody's Business page records that the duo finally disbanded because of the pressures of work and life. The music, however, survived in recordings, arrangements and memories — and now in this small archive.
Part of the wider Guitar Pages story
Nobody's Business belongs to the same North-West acoustic-guitar community documented elsewhere on these pages: the Tape 'n' Tab Club, the local fingerstyle players, folk clubs and music weekends, and the informal exchange of arrangements and recordings that kept tunes circulating between players.
The surviving material is therefore more than a record of one duo. It is a small snapshot of how acoustic musicians actually made music together — adapting old blues and ragtime, playing traditional and contemporary songs, swapping instruments, recording themselves and passing arrangements on to other players.
