I've played guitar since my mid teens, and was never really much good at it, but I did build myself an electric guitar in the woodwork shop at school. I went to college, ended up in a few bands, made a record, got it played on the John Peel show, shared flats and played alongside some people who went on to be famous (Dexys Midnight Runners, The Beat, UB40) built myself another guitar, and built a couple for other people. Nothing much musical happened for many a long year.....working, getting married, having children...but at some point I started thinking that I'd like to play some live music again. So I got on the internet, tracked down some folk clubs and open mic sessions and started going out and playing. I started playing a bit of slide guitar again, and had a hankering after a resonator guitar..but couldn't afford one. One day, walking down the street in Birmingham, I saw that someone had thrown out a guitar with the rubbish..I couldn't resist it, so I picked it up put it in the car and took it home. It occurred to me that it might be a candidate for converting into a resonator guitar..it was a black "Kay" dreadnought. It was all in one piece but rather battered and neglected, left out in the rain....and for some unknown reason someone had stuffed a load of chickenbones in through the soundhole. I managed to track down a source for the necessary hardware, and figured my own way of converting it into a resonator guitar. It turned out pretty decent, I started using it to play at the various clubs and eventually I though it would be cool to have my own blues name...so that's where the "Chickenbone John" came in..it seemed as good as anything and had some genuine connections...so the name has stuck.

My first reso. guitar the "Chickenbone" Kay.

After trying various folk clubs, I tracked down a local blues club in Birmingham UK, The Sutton Blues Collective. This was the real turning point for me, as here I found other people with a lively interest in blues music. I was made to feel very welcome, and soon established myself as a regular player, and seeing some outstanding performers at the club...Catfish Keith, Steve James. Mojo Buford and Ian Siegal to name a few. I even got the opportunity to play support spots for Perry Foster, Catfish Keith, Kent DuChaine and Watermelon Slim. I took advantage of pretty well every slide guitar workshop I could find, including those run by Kevin Brown, Jim Crawford, Catfish Keith and Steve James. By then I'd had a hankering for upgrading from my old "Morris" acoustic guitar, and was almost on the verge of choosing between a Martin and a Lowden, but then discovered the joys of eBay. I started buying old cheap American guitars such as Stellas, Harmony, Oahu, Kay etc, finding out that they needed repairing and learned how to re-set necks, repair loose bracings, fix broken headstocks, French polishing, refretting and a host of other stuff.

An old Harmony Stella 12 string: I did a neck reset and added the "Leadbelly" type pickguard and tailpiece.I really like these cheap no-nonsense guitars that were originally sold through the Sears Roebuck catalogue.

I also tracked down some modern copies of these old-time guitars, in particular the Harmony Stellas. Someone asked me at a gig about one of the guitars that I was playing, and I thought that if I could get another, then I could perhaps sell it and make a modest profit. Well, indeed I managed to track down some more guitars, and the sold for a handsome profit, which I ploughed back into buying more guitars..and so it went on. Buying these old fixer-up guitars and cheap modern copies cured me of of my desire to buy a flashy expensive instrument - besides, a lot of the old-time bluesmen played on cheap workaday guitars, so I reckoned it was a lot more authentic and in the spirit of the music to go the same route.

One of my Stella "Blind Blake" re-issues. I bought 6 out of the limited run of 100, and I've still got a pair as my day-to-day instruments. My favorite slide guitar is one of these with a Bill Lawrence soundhole pickup.

Finding myself intrigued by the old-time approach, and pretty well having turned my back on the world of conventional expensive commercially available guitars, it was a natural progression for me to delve even further back. I'd heard the stories that people like Lightnin' Hopkins had made their first guitars from a broom handle, a cigar box and some wire, but thought it fanciful nonsense. However, after considering it for a while, and doing a bit more research, the idea of using only 3 strings (to get a chord) and playing with a slide (which I do) seemed to make sense. So I had a go, made a 3 string cigar box guitar, and to my delight it was playable and worked well. And I started making more, then selling them..and so it went on. All this time I'd been buying and fixing-up guitars, but the US Dollar / Pound Sterling exchange rate wasn't conducive to importing guitars, so I changed my focus to making more Cigar Box Guitars and related instruments. On the music playing scene, I'd drifted from playing folk clubs to blues and jazz clubs, and fell into playing with a couple of other people, and old friend Pete Harris on drums, and from a contact with a neighbour, an amazing young harmonica player called Dave Smith. We teamed up to form "ChickenboneBlues", and since then have been joined by Ken Stratford on double bass, and a host of other people who occasionally join us. This also led to Ken and myself establishing the weekly Crossroads Blues Club in Birmingham. I'd latched onto a few cigar box guitar articles and sites on the web, but the real revelation came when I found cigarboxnation.com . Here was a whole bunch of people who were doing the same sort of thing, each with their own different take on things. After a while of hanging around on there, posting my own stuff, someone suggested the idea of a UK Cigar Box Guitar event. I proffered our club as a possible venue, and this seemed to a act as a catalyst - I settled on a date, booked the venue, booked a headline act and it all actually happened. Since then the UK CBG scene has seemed to grow...so that's why I'm here to spread the word in my own little way.