About the Eric Street Band

INTRODUCING THE ERIC STREET BAND

Hi, I'm Dennis Siggery. In 2016, I formed this new line-up pf the Eric Street Band with Gordon Vaughan, Henry Smithson and Adam J Perry, with a view to doing more live work. After a few gigs, Gordon and I started writing songs together which ended up as the 'Purple Passage' album - recorded and released in late 2016. More live dates followed, including the 2017 Wokingham Festival. Then in 2018 Gordon and I started writing the material for 'Eye Of The Storm' which we recorded in Nov 2018 and finished off in Feb 2019.

This band is some of the best musicians I've ever worked with! Gordon is without doubt one of the finest guitarists in south of England - just check out his playing on the albums. The writing partnership we have means that the songs develop with a mixture of varying styles, but remaining true to the blues-rock genre. The solid and creative rhythm section of Henry and Adam - both highly skilled and experienced players - allows us to stretch out in the studio and lay down the backing tracks as a band - live! We're getting the feel and the vibe off each other, and I think this gives the songs on these two albums a slightly harder edge and more excitement than on the previous albums. Meet the band...

DENNIS SIGGERY - LEAD VOCALS

I became interested in music at very early age. At just sixteen I joined a band called The Five Diamonds as lead vocalist and we played a number of local gigs and youth clubs. I stayed with the band for a few years before taking up a career as a DJ in an R&B club playing Blues and Soul music.

Then I did what most of us do, got married, got a "proper" job and let music take a back seat. But by 1996 I had the urge to sing again, and with the help of a few friends I formed The Acoustic Blues Band. We played bars and clubs and recorded one album, 'Our Kind of Blues' - half covers, half originals. I got hooked on recording and decided to try a solo album - and ended up making seven! The albums turned out to be basically Rock music, all except the last one 'Back To The Blues' which began to hint at a future direction.

In 1999 The Acoustic Blues Band became The Southside Blues Band. This band were together in various line-ups for nearly a decade playing pubs, clubs and festivals, but only recorded two albums. Then came the Eric Street Band. See below for 'How It Started'...

GORDON VAUGHAN - GUITAR & KEYBOARDS

Gordon has been a long-time member of Reading band, Jive Alive - now the house band for the legendary Twyford Blues Sessions, where he has played with many top British blues names including ex-members of The Yardbirds, Savoy Brown and Jethro Tull.

He was also lead guitarist with The King Earl Boogie Band, along with ex-members of Mungo Jerry and Status Quo.

He continues to play with Jive Alive, the Keith Allen Band and now the Eric Street Band!

HENRY SMITHSON - BASS

Henry started off supplying the low-note groove in Reading in the late 70's into the early 80's, when he played with new wave power-poppers, The Romantix, Swindon's 90Six Tears, and local songwriting legend Terry Clarke.

More recently he did the function band thing with Short People and All Wrapped Up, and the big soul band thing with 99lbs.

Latterly, he's been playing retro funk with The Fever 45s, tango-influenced acoustic rock with Jackie Doe's Uncertainty of Passion, soul & r&b with Rufus Ruffcut, and acid-jazz-funk instrumentals with Basingstoke's Fusion 6.

"Playing with Dennis and the Eric Street Band is real fun for me. We're solid, dynamic and tasteful behind Dennis's unique vocals, but we can also stretch out and be inventive in the solos. It's a band that really goes for it!"

Henry is also the Mastering Engineer at CD MASTERING BY HENRY

ADAM J PERRY - DRUMS

Adam started playing drums at primary school, having been encouraged by a teacher there called Bob Christopher and inspired by watching drummers on 'Top of The Pops' during the 1970's. Before long he was gigging and recording with bands locally. Being the era of New Wave and Punk, it was a great time to start. He was playing gigs in London by the age of 17.

During the 1980's he started gigging and recording with his own groups writing his own songs and music. This led to him joining a UK based band called Asylum. They wrote and recorded 3 albums and went on to tour and record across the UK, Europe and USA. He also worked with the legendary UK rock group New Model Army.

Next he recorded an album and gigged with indie/folk singer/songwriter John Forrester and started playing Soul and Funk with Henry in Short People and 99lbs. He then worked with indie singer/songwriter Mike Halliwell on his debut album.

Adam now teaches drums, both privately in his own studio, and at schools on the Reading area. He's also still out there gigging, recently with The Mick Ralphs Blues Band (featuring Mick Ralphs, legendary guitarist, songwriter and founder member of Mott The Hoople and Bad Company), Jack Cade and the Everyday Sinners, The Kickback and now the Eric Street Band.

ADAM J PERRY DRUM TUITION

HOW IT STARTED...

The Eric Street Band started in 2008. I had a band, the Southside Blues Band. I wanted to write and record my own music. I just wasn't happy playing blues and rock covers - I wanted to put my own stories to music, but the band just wouldn't play or record my songs. We went to No Machine studio to record a new demo, as we were due to play the Wallingford Blues Festival, but I heard that Sailor John, the guy that started the festival, had passed on, so I wrote a song about his life. I asked Neil, the studio owner, to help me put this song together as a tribute to John's life. It went so well, and I enjoyed it so much that we ended up recording a whole album - the songs just kept on coming. The album was called 'Executive Blues' which I released under my own name.

I wrote five of the songs and co-wrote five withn Neil. I loved recording my own songs, and it went so well that we made two more albums 'Newtown Boy', and 'Monday Morning Blues'. I wrote all the songs and played guitar on a couple of them. With the great feedback from the music press, we decided to form our own band using the musicans that had played on those three Dennis Siggery albums.

We needed a name for the band, and my nickname in the offiic was Eric. I happened to be in London for business in my day job, and I was stuck in a traffic jam on the Mile End Road. I looked up and saw the strret name - Eric Street - and that was it. I registered the name!

This is a list af the albums we made:

1. The Eric Street Band Live

2. The Route To The Blues

3. The Journey

4. The Drifter

5. Company Man

6. V

7. Shades Of Blue

8. Across The Board

... and also several 'Best Of' albums and one limited edition, '20 Years Ago Today'

The band did lots of major gigs over those years, and I also made several Dennis Siggery solo albums. But the band broke up in 2016. Around that time, I was given some major gigs by my manager at the time, but didn't have a band. I became close friends with Henry Smithson who had mastered almost all of the Eric Strret Band albums. In addition to his mastering skills, he was also a top bass player. He said he would join me and help to put a band together. We auditioned a few players but they were all no good, so Henry got some of top players that he knew, Grordon Vaughan and Simon Price, and bought them to studio for a jam. I felt so at home playing with these guys. We did the first gig, which went great - they were all top musicans, and, man, could they play!

We decided to do a demo using one of songs and three blues covers, but afterwards, Simon decided he wasn't happy playing blues, so we soon replaced him with anther top drummer, Adam J Perry. Gordon, as well as being a great gutarist, was also a songwriter so we got to together every week and came up with the songs for our first album together, 'Purple Passage'. We did a bunch of promo gigs and sent the album to the music press for a review. On the album we also included the demo songs as a bonus. We put the album on CD Baby, and made some videos for YouTube - the video for 'Stop Take A Listen' has had over 2.000 hits and most of the others tracks have had thousands of hits too. The feedback from online and the gigs was fantastic, so we just had to follow up the album. We played live seeral times - the fans' favourite was 'Payback Time'. Check out the videos on the Videos page!

With all those great reviews and vibes, Gordon and I got togerther twice a week and started writing together for a new album..It was great working with another songwriter, and we came up with ten great new songs. We put down demo backing tracks and sent them off to Henry and Adam, and with them being great musicians they nailed them quickly with only two days in the studio. Gordon and myself went back for three days for the vocals, keys and guitar parts, and Neil helped out with the backing vocals on some.

'Eye Of The Storm' turned out to be a great album and it got some of the best reviews we'd ever had from the music press and great vibes from our fans when we gigged it. We made several videos for YouTube - they are also on our Videos page!

Again, we had such great reviews and feedback from that album that we were inspired to make another follow-up album. So Gordon and I got together and put down six or so tracks in his demo studio, but along came Covid and the lockdown - so were unable to meet up! The rules were that only one person was allowed in any recording studio, so there was very liitle point in carrying on.

Just to keep my hand in, I continued writing, and because the rules allowed, I went to the studo and during those lockdown days, I wrote and recorded three solo albums - but the less said about them the better!

Anyway once the Covid situation got better, Gordon and I managed to get back togerher but during the lockdown his demo gear had packed up, so we lost all those songs and I couildn't find the words that we wrote for those lost songs. So we both decied we would write and recored a raw blues album with a live feel to it, in order to bring back the smile after those sad, bad days!

Gordon bought some new recording equipment for his home studio and we got togerher about twice a week, put our heads together and came up with an album's worth of new demo songs and sent them to Henry and Adam. The idea was to record at No Machine studios where we always record, but sadly Neil and I had a falling out, and he had already decided to move away and close the studio anyway.

So I contacted several studios and came up with Creation X Studio, run by Nikki McGuinness, just outside Wokingham. We fixed a date for two days in March this year (2024), and the guys turned up and put down the backing tracks for all twelve tracks. Full marks to them - being such great musicans they'd practised beforehand from the demos and nailed it in those two days. Gordon and I went back in April for three more days and put down all the vocals, lead guitars and keys parts, and came back shortly after to add blues harp from our guest, Dave Raphael. Nikki did a great job throughout!

The files were then sent over to Henry, who mixed and mastered the tracks in his own mastering studio over the next few months in between his other mastering work. This album has turned out very different to all the other I have recored over the years. The songs were not put down until we we were all happy with them, and the way we recorded them has retained the live feel and spontaneity of classic old-school recordings. I actually think this is the best album I've ever recorded. I never listen to my albums afterwards, but I can't stop playing this one. Every musican wants to record their classic album, and I think this could be mine!