Dan Sandman
I began playing the trumpet in the school orchestra. At twelve I gave up on brass because my older brother said, “you’ll get lots of girls if you play the guitar”. After giving up on the guitar two times I finally had a breakthrough when I learnt how to play the melody to Blowin’ in the Wind – third time lucky I’d say!
It wasn’t until August 2006 that I truly discovered what Folk Music is. I had traveled up to The Green Man Festival somewhere in the Welsh Countryside by myself. It was here that I encountered Bert Jansch, a guitarist who I’d been told was “as good as Jimi Hendrix”. I started wandering around the campsite listening to people singing old songs around the campfire. I went for a ramble singing a melody to the wind; there were some very tall sunflowers around.
So I finally put away my electric guitar and focused on songs, only songs. I was teaching the guitar to make a living, reading inspiring books and learning more about my instrument. My confidence grew as a singer singing in his own voice about things that had affected me.
Then Chris Monger asked me to travel to his bedroom studio for a demo...
It was late October and autumn was all around. Chris had set up some microphones, I had brought my Taylor 514CE and a portable recording device with some sounds on it. Suddenly we were listening to Ryan Adams Heartbreaker very loudly, drinking beer, adding e-bow and playing with keyboard textures. Having another person’s sudden creative input made such a huge difference, finally it was sounding like it was always meant sound. Whilst Chris was mastering, I was busy making sure that the album would also look like it was always meant to look.
Since releasing the album in January 2008 we’ve been enjoying playing the songs live as a two in London and in Oxford. The album has also received praise from those who have been kind enough to listen to it. It’s been great fun so far and we can’t wait to see where it will all go.
Dan Sandman, June 2008
For further sound-clips / info / blog please visit www.myspace.com/danvsandman