Tape 'n' Tab Club (T'n'T)

Following this I decided to make attempts to pull together a number of the guitarists in the North West (and eventually across the country & beyond) to share experiences, music, arrangements, compositions, styles, methods, tablature (tab), and recordings. This started out with Kieran Fish, myself and Mike C. Martin, who also used to play at Clancy's and who amazed me by playing flawlessly and with 'fire and passion' for most of the night that we first met - wonderful, and to me, at the time, unbelievable. The Tape'n' Tab Club (T'n'T - for short), formed in Runcorn in 1978, had formally established itself by early 1981 with a number of other people from Clancy's joining the fray - Alan Hooper, Dick Wildman, Wally, and eventually for a few all too rare visits Mike Brown and Virginia. As time went on more people joined - some from Yorkshire, some from Wales and even from as far afield as London. These people included Chris Cassidy, Ian Jesse, Patrick Garrigan, Joe Cainen, Andy Gibson, Steve Conway, Bill Dinsdale and many more - my apologies if you have been missed.

The 'sessions' were set up for around four to five events per year with the people arriving anywhere between 5pm on Friday afternoon through to early evening on Saturday. Saturday evening was always given over to a form of party where the main items were playing guitar, occasional singing, and having a beer. Sunday arrived all too soon, usually after about 2 to 3 hours sleep having played into the early (or late) hours with most people not hitting the sack until 4 or more in the morning. Despite hangovers etc. Sunday was a serious day given over to recording the tunes which people had assiduously worked on during the weeks and months prior to the session. It is great now to play the reel-to-reel recordings back - someday I'll have to get round to putting them on CD and maybe streaming them on the Net for people to listen to (see the YouTube links below). Sadly, Sunday evening would see everyone leaving to return to their own homes, however far away, and to their own lives of work and bedroom guitar practice ready for the next session. After about 5 years worth of this frenzied activity people moved, got married, had kids, went abroad, and did all the things which life dictates - have you ever noticed how much life gets in the way of guitar playing ?

The club wound down to a great extent and has never really climbed back up to the dizzy heights of those early 1980's years - they were good years and with the Kicking Mule Record label in operation at the same time they were good years for acoustic fingerstyle guitar (especially ragtime and country blues). Nonetheless, most of us have still kept in touch, and most of us are still playing guitar - albeit probably not as often as we would like, and some of us still meet up once per month on Zoom (now on WhatsApp video). All I can say is that if you play acoustic fingerstyle guitar and would like to improve - set up your own Tape 'n' Tab Club and learn from each other - its great for tunes, playing, friendships and lots and lots of great memories. Good luck !!

M&O Blues and Canned Heat Duet - Mike Martin & Kieran Fish (1977)

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The Future

Here we now are in the early dawn of the New Millennium (as at January 2000) the role/mantle of the Tape'n'Tab Club has been taken over by a new generation of players who are but a few miles down the road. After teaching Fingerstyle guitar at an evening class at Halewood Comprehensive school in Liverpool for a few years a number of the students, lead by Phil Lawton, have set up a club in the upstairs of a pub in Gateacre, Liverpool. If you fancy going they meet in the Grange Manor at 9:00pm every Tuesday evening and you would be more than welcome. Phil can be contacted at: philiplawton@cableinet.co.uk - Sadly, the Grange Manor subsequently closed its doors and the guitar club also ceased meeting - a dreadful shame.

By 2021, a newer and equally exciting aspect had formed. Some of the members from the original T'n'T club, along with some newer members, have now started to meet online, via Zoom, once per month where they discuss guitars and related kit, give presentations on music related software and hardware, play tunes/arrangements/compositions for each other and discuss any changes to their construction and required playing techniques, and generally chat and expand upon friendships and the creation of new memories. Definitely a worthwhile evolution of the old Tape 'n' Tab club (T'n'T) ethos.

A new YouTube Channel has been created to showcase all the old cassette tape contents from the recording sessions during the T'n'T meetings all those years ago. Added is also some newer material from newer members. These recordings can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEuu1wZ1moZaAt-Qb3tzT0A

Alongside the old T'n'T recordings a separate YouTube Channel has been created to show all the tablature, in TablEdit (.tef) format, actually playing in real-time as videos. These can be viewed here: Tape 'n' Tab Club (T'n'T) Tabs - YouTube .

The surviving archive: The club's musical legacy also survives in the tablature archive on this site. Arrangements carrying the T'n'T name include works dating from the club's early years, including Weeping Willow (1978), That'll Never Happen No More (1979), and Bye Bye Blackbird (1981), alongside many later transcriptions and arrangements. These records preserve not only the tunes but also the names of the players, arrangers and the methods by which the music was shared.