Below the Border - 70s Rock Band - GIGS in the diary + Band in London, EN

SEEKING

ABOUT

Mature 70s Rock Hit Covers Band of ex pro musicians with GIGS IN THE DIARY

SEEKING: A good lead guitarist

London / Kent / Hertfordshire / Berks / Bucks/ Surrey

Our website has videos, studio recordings, set list, gig list, history, who we are etc. Google “below the border rock band” and we will come up first.

Our lead guitarist of the past six years will be leaving us soon and we want to start rehearsing his replacement now.

We are a friendly bunch of highly experienced and educated old gits who are very good players.

The sound file is our previous function band which ended in 2019. Please look at the videos here to see us as Below the Border, the rock band we formed thereafter.

This profile is a bit of a long read but if you’re interested in joining the band everything below will tell you a lot about who we are, what we do and who we seek.

We’re looking for the right sort of person as much as we’re looking for a capable lead guitarist. We are nice, educated, relaxed, older, ex-pro musicians, now in our sunset years!

We play at functions, parties, music-pubs and festivals, performing the rock hits EVERYBODY knows from 70s and 60s.

Cream, The Faces, The Who, David Bowie, Free, Steve Miller, Bad Company, The Sweet, Badfinger, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Credence Clearwater, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Marmalade, Slade, T Rex, The Kinks, etc, etc,

Recently we’ve been turning gigs down at a ratio of around 3 to 1. See the gig-calendar on our w/ste for the type of bookings we’ve been playing and the gigs in the diary.

We currently rehearse at a studio near the Dartford Tunnel / QE2 Bridge on Sundays once a month and we gig about once a month, almost always on Saturdays and usually within about a 60 mile radius: London, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Berkshire. The rehearsal location could change a little to fit in with whoever we find now.

Videos - Studio Recording & Live phone footage:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/-dTpGykHXKI

YouTube: https://youtu.be/vLDq_wYiN0w

The band is for fun. We go out for between £400 and £600 (£250 for pubs). We’re not doing this for the money.

We prefer to charge less and pick and choose our bookings.

Some of us had minor record deals about 150 years ago - on original vinyl! We’re not trying to write and publish our own material. We are just enjoying playing the soundtrack to our youth well and entertaining folk.

We go down a storm, we get amazing compliments from our audiences and people always want to rebook us. We’re a very good band.

Both of these comments are obviously rubbish but . . . . . . at party we played last week a Frenchman in his 60s told us he’d seen Status Quo in Paris a few months ago and we played Caroline better. A lovely old chap from New York told us he’d been at Woodstock (!!!) and we were the best band he’d seen in decades. As I say, obviously rubbish but nice to hear nevertheless.

Finding the right type of person to join the band is as important to us as your ability. We are all easy-going with a liberal worldview and like to have a laugh. We’re not up our own arses about the music or anything else but if you’re a raving Tory Brexitier, we’re probably not your sort of people.

We support each other and we’re good friends. It’s a very nice band as well as sounding bloody good. There are no egos or band politics - we’re grown ups - we don’t sweat the small stuff.

We have just one rule (which we stole from the Beatles): if anybody doesn’t want to do anything, be it a song, a gig or anything at all, then ALWAYS and without ANY further debate, we don’t do it.
~ ~ ~

ABOUT YOU:
You should be able to listen to an original song and replicate the guitar solos and rhythm parts reasonably accurately - be it Hendrix or Clapton or be it Marc Bolan or The Sweet!

Our current lead guitarist is leaving having been with us since 2017. We are using this opportunity to bring just a few songs into the set that better reflect our name, - a few well known danceable Tex-Mex type numbers.

You should not take yourself too seriously . . . we don’t !

You could be in your twenties or you could be in your sixties - like us!

You should like and be able to learn the usual 70s rock hits. Our Setlist is on our website. It’s extensive but we don’t play all of those songs all the time.

MORE ABOUT US (if you’re still reading!):-

The band comprises:

Rob - 67, lead vocals, lead guitar and rhythm guitar. Retired art teacher now part-time artist selling his work in galleries on the Kings Road. Beautifully melodic blues lead guitarist.

Noel (me)- 65, Bass, retired head of faculty, ex-filthy capitalist when a young man, ex-pro musician. I’m not the band leader but I tend to handle all the marketing and promotion. For my sins I have been burdened with some modest entrepreneurial skills.

Gail - 68, backing and harmony vocals. Wonderfully gifted singer with a great voice (who comes from musical family in Newcastle. Her cousin is Dave, Stewert!) Still working as an acupuncturist and Chinese-medicine doctor.

Mark - 58, drums. London bus driver. One of the best drummers Rob and I have played with over the past 35 years. (When we auditioned people, we asked them to learn Black Night to see if anybody could get close to Ian Pace’s drum fills. He nailed them, and then afterwards admitted he hadn’t actually practised them on a drum kit. Just listened to them in the car. How can anybody DO that!?!)

If you’ve got this far and you’re interested, feel free to get in touch with any questions at all.

Thank you for reading all this!

Noel

Screen name:

Below the Border

Member since:

Jul 20 2016

Active over 1 month ago

Level of commitment:

Committed

Years together:

5

Gigs played:

Over 100

Age:

65 years

Influences

Please see our website, it has a set list.

We’ve got into the habit of playing songs in pairs from classic artists: Cream, The Faces, The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Who, David Bowie, Free, Steve Miller, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company, The Doors, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Slade, The Sweet, etc, etc. . . . recently, adding Los Lobos and the Mavericks.

We’ve just started to introduce a little more well-known danceable Tex-Mex numbers to go with the name of the band. We pick material that we like but which also makes old folk leap to their feet and hit the dancefloor.

Members Of Band

Rob Taylor - Vocals & Lead Guitar
Vacancy - Lead Guitar
Noel Price - Bass
Mark - Drums
Gail Newton - Harmony Vocals

EQUIPMENT

Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker,
Marshall, Orange, Markbass
Yamaha 1000w PA with foldback, Sure SM58 mikes,

MUSIC