Who is Alan Hayes – Jazz Guitarist & Musician?
Well, this is the hard part, writing about oneself. Most musicians get other people to write about them. I don’t want to bore you with a lot of BS so I’ll try to be brief. I’ll add more later.
I’m Irish, as you probably gathered already, born and bred in Dublin’s fair City, Ireland. I’m a guitar player, working on becoming a keyboard player even though I know it takes a billion life times to learn, and wouldn’t consider myself to be keyboard player. I’m still working on the guitar though. The guitar is a mind boggling instrument, you can do so much with it, you’d need another billion life times to learn it. I got my first guitar at between ages 10 or 12, I think, the memory isn’t too good anymore, a 3 pound 10 shillings piece of junk plywood, actually I still have it in the attic . I started listening to old blues records, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, etc. Then came The Beatles, The Stones, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and all the rest and I got into that. I did my first gig at about 15 and got 5 pounds for it, jeez, I thought this was great. I started jamming with musicians around the area, there were a lot of great musicians and song writers around Ireland and there still is.
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The guitar is a mind boggling instrument, you can do so much with it, you’d need another billion life times to learn it.
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I left Ireland at about 18 and went to see the world, I guess I was trying to be a hippy. I hadn’t played guitar for a while.I spent three years in Frankfurt, Germany doing all sorts of things even busking on the streets, I had a great time there. Then I came back to Ireland and started to get back into the guitar seriously. I formed a band with Steve Rawson called The Cool Breeze Band, it was a rock thing and we were big on the scene at the time, doing support to a lot of the big named bands and I really thought with the right backing and the right songs we could have made it,but the guys in the band weren’t ready to go the whole hog. So I left, I believe they are still doing weddings and stuff today. I formed a band with Dave Ryman ex Rockin Berries drummer and Bill MCormack called Kabalas. It was a funk outfit. I did that for a while and got fed up with just doing gigs around the country and getting nowhere.
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I played with so many musicians at this time, I’d need a few hundred pages to list them all.
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Then, I got into the showband thing because I really wanted to make a living out of playing music. The management of these showbands used to run us from one end of the country to the other in one day and they’d get well paid , and we’d just get tired, but there were some funny moments too. I got stuck in that rut for a few years, but I met some great musicians along the way, because they were in the showbands too, they didn’t want to starve either. I was going to see Louis Stewart play a lot when I didn’t have a gig myself on the same night, he’s probably one of the best Jazz guitar players on this earth, but he’s a humble man. That got me really into the jazz thing, once you get the Jazz thing it’s hard to let go. At this time I was jamming with lots of different people and gigging all over Ireland, playing everything from Dixieland to Django type stuff.
I played the jazz trail at The Cork Jazz Festival many times. I played the Rouen Jazz Festival in France, that was a gas. I played with so many musicians at this time, I’d need a few hundred pages to list them all. People used to call me for gigs instead of the other way round. Then out of the blue one day a guy called me and asked me would I like to do a stint in the Sheraton Hotels in The Middle East. I thought that would be interesting to take a break, get a bit of sun and make a few shillings at the same time. So, I took the chance to see that part of the world, fascinating places they are indeed. I didn’t realize at the time what I was letting myself in for, I knew my guitar playing would suffer from that. I did that for almost two years, Bahrain, Qatar and Syria, 5 or 6 nights a week entertaining the elite of those countries. Anyway, that was enough of that, but it was nice seeing that part of the world though.
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now I’m living back in Ireland again.
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From the Middle East I went to Thailand for a two week holiday but ended up staying there for a year. It’s like paradise Island. I had an apartment in Bangkok off the Sukhumvit Rd. I got to play in a very famous jazz club there every week or two called Brown Sugar, there were many great musicians that past through there. Then I came to Boston, USA in 89 and stayed there till 2005, now I’m living back in Ireland again . MORE TO COME Later, now you can go to The CD page.
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