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Nigel Bullock |
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The Folk revival of the mid sixties was entirely responsible for bringing Nigel to acoustic music. The new wave of American contemporary song writers, particularly Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, seemed to have more to say than the populist writers of the day. Nigel had always been interested in the guitar but the ability of these songwriters to expertly accompany themselves on guitar introduced Nigel to the growing world of the acoustic guitar. As so much of contemporary American music has its roots in early country music it was almost inevitable that Nigel would come under the influence of other types of acoustic music, such as Bluegrass, Folk Blues, and Gospel. His various guitar styles emerged almost by accident, primarily as a means of accompaniment, but their influence is the basis of Nigel’s playing today. It slowly became obvious to Nigel that America was not the only source of Folk Music and that Britain had a tradition just as strong as America. In fact many of the songs and tunes had their origins in the UK and had merely travelled across the Atlantic with the early settlers and were now being sent back in a new guise. So in a sense Nigels Folk Music education had now gone full circle leaving him better able to enjoy the evolving traditions of both the UK and the USA. Nigels major influences these days are people like Tim O’Brien, John McCutcheon, and Chris Smithers, all good writers and all good players, in fact, that is his bottom line, the music must be well constructed and be as good as it can be.
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