From teenage guitar enthusiast to professional musician...

Paul was 8 years old when he first wrote in his school work that he would like to play guitar. It wasn’t until the age of 15 that he actually did anything about it!

Hearing his brother playing “The Memory Remains” by Metallica through the bedroom wall was enough to light the fire and after that was a hard road of teaching himself the guitar with only a few chord box and scale books and a pile of Total Guitar magazines. Metallica were the main choice for learning riffs but other influences soon crept in. A fixation with Radiohead’s Paranoid Android brought a whole bunch of chord and riff challenges followed by a fortuitous hearing of Led Zep’s Stairway To Heaven, which sparked an interest in the band and their eclectic folk, blues & heavy rock styles.

An A-level course in Music Technology at South Tyneside College brought with it guitar lessons from South Shields guitar legend Ian Buckingham who introduced Paul to the music of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani & other countless widdlers. The route of guitar hero seemed like a good choice but this was around the time (1999-2001) when that kind of guitar playing was going slightly out of fashion so when the time came to go to Salford University, a different approach to guitar was required.

The first year at University should have been spent working hard on the Popular Music & Recording course but the “clawhammer” style of playing was too much of an attraction. For 8 straight months “The Guitar Of Chet Atkins taught by Chet Atkins” was not in the library and in Paul’s possession. An obsession with acoustic master Tommy Emmanuel’s playing also taught Paul that a guitar didn’t have to just be a guitar, it could be an entire band. Bass, drums, rhythm & lead all with one instrument.

After finishing the Popular Music course in 2004, Paul worked in retail for a short period while also playing in amateur dramatic shows in and around Manchester. It was in 2006 that he was invited to tour with P.J. Proby for 3 months performing the Johnny Cash Songbook. After that came a change into private guitar tuition, which then led to teaching in schools. That snowballed into full time school guitar tuition and a seemingly never ending list of private students, gigs and shows.

While in a school one day, a teacher asked if he would play at her wedding ceremony. Nerves set in and Paul practiced relentlessly the week before the wedding, arranging 4 songs that were requested specially and pulled it off in spectacular fashion. There started the bug for playing weddings, being responsible for accompanying walks down the aisle, one of the biggest moments of most people’s lives and generally making a living doing what he loves.