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Band FAQ Page
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Q: Where does the name
"Wandle Delta" come from?
A: The band is based in the south London Borough of Wandsworth through which flows a little tributary of the River Thames known as the River Wandle. This river once formed the industrial heart of the area with power being obtained from watermills along the river bank. It runs very close to Mike's home and actually forms a delta where it meets the Thames. This area is known as the "Wandle Delta" and happens to be where Mike started gigging in his own right at the "Cat's Back" pub. The association with the Mississippi Delta is very appropriate as much of Mike's bottleneck style derives from guitarists who played the Delta blues. We felt the name aptly linked the bands base with the music style and just happens to remind Mike of where he started. |
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What is jug band music? A: British audiences may remember "skiffle", which was a lively kind of music played in the '50s by people like Lonnie Donegan with home-made or cheap instruments including cardboard box/ broomhandle single string bass, washboard scraped with sewing thimbles and anything else musicians could lay their hands on to make a pleasant noise.
by black musicians in the USA in the 20s and 30s known as jug band music. Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, the Memphis Jug Band and the Beale Street Jug Band were among the most well-known. Washboard, kazoo, pan lids, harmonica, corn liquor jugs, banjos, fiddles and guitars were used to play country dance blues music with a distinctive humour and excitement. Despite the fact that black and white music could not be sold in the same music stores in those days, black and white groups were well aware of each others music and much jug band music and white "Cowboy Swing" numbers were versions of hits of the time from both sides of that musical divide. We try and do this fantastic music justice, just listen to "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do". |
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Q: What music do you play at gigs? A full list of our public reperoire is on the Music page. A: The music on this site does not at present fully represent
our repertoire and at gigs we tend to play pre-planned sets that vary
every time (so people don't get bored!), but often adjust these sets
on the fly to please the audience. If people are in a dancing mood
we play faster stuff and, if we get a bunch of real blues aficionados
in, then we play some more esoteric numbers. We do many R&B (the
original meaning of the word!) numbers in the dance section and play
really old things occasionally like "The Original How Long Blues"
and "Sloppy Drunk" by Leroy Carr, "Nobody Knows You"
by Bessie Smith, "Diamond Ring" by Brownie McGhee and acoustic
Delta slide stuff including Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Blind
Willie Johnson and Fred McDowell. Gary has added some excellent harp styles to our repertoire and Wolfgang, besides playing bass and whisky jug, also plays acoustic guitar in ragtime, traditional country blues and bottleneck styles. Ken and Wolf have also started doing vocals, too. Mike also plays original tunes he has written himself such as "My Baby Says" and "Carpetbagger Blues" and plays regular acoustic or electric guitar solos, duets and medleys. |
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Q : What equipment does the band use? A: The band has its own PA based around a pair of JBL Eon powered speakers rated at about 450 watts equivalent and a Spirit Folio FX8 mixing desk. This set-up covers large gardens and halls and is exceptionally clear and vibrant in sound quality. At venues with their own PA we use the available set up. Mike amplifies through a combination of a Marshall Reverb 12 practice amp and an Acoustic Model 117 combo - although both are solid state, the combination gives a completely different set of sounds to others and sounds good with electro-acoustics and electric bottleneck styles similar to Hound Dog Taylor's sound. Mike has a set of guitars including a hand-made Strat copy possibly made in a night school class and without name, which is his main guitar - it is unique and he loves it. He often uses a Peavey Raptor Strat copy and Ken's Columbus Washburn copy electro-acoustic and has a Hohner Crafter electro-acoustic of similar type which sounds nice amplified but is not perfect for bottleneck. Except for the Hohner, Mike has his guitars set up in bottleneck tunings, although he plays all styles on these. He also uses a DanElectro U2 and an Epiphone Sheraton. When he is rich and famous he will of course buy a National resonator. He uses brass, stainless steel, copper and glass bottlenecks including a lovely curved , heavy brass one. Ken uses a Marshall ValveState 80 combo amp mostly but has a Roland Cube as well. He plays a Fender Strat with custom modifications and also has a unique Kawai electric guitar, which Mike now uses often for jazz chord backings.  Ken plays Mike's Hohner electro-acoustic on the acoustic sets, as Mike prefers the Columbus for bottleneck work. Ken's sound is exquisite. Gary plays using a Shure Green Bullet harmonica mike or straight through a vocal mike and amplifies through an amazing old Vox amp, which has great character and real nice reverb effects. He has all sorts of harps. Wolf uses a handmade (well, it looks hand-carved actually) bass guitar, which I think he made himself - he is a luthier by trade. He also plays a Martin electro-acoustic and occasionally acoustic guitars he has built himself - they are gorgeous! He's amplifying through borrowed kit at the moment, so we won't tell you what!  Mike has also bought the Boss BR-8 digital recorder from a previous member of the band, Joe Gillespie. Not the best solution for full band recordings but good for duets and practice recordings etc. Four tracks playable in this site were recorded on it, however, with Joe as recording engineer. He also added MIDI drums on one of them as the drummer was not available. |
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Q : How many gigs have you played? A : The band now known as the Wandle Delta Blues Band started out as the "Windy City Blues Band" with completely different personnel in September 1998 (Mike, David Marshall, Dougie McDonald, Jane East and Leroy Griffith). That band managed five gigs in SW London before collapsing. The Wandle Delta Blues Band started in February 1999 with Mike, Ken, iang, Joe Gillespie (March), Dougie MacDonald and a harp man called Alistair Hall. Alistair could only stay for two gigs as he was committed to another band but after that we took on Lorenzo, a French harp man, whose recordings are still on this site. He joined after we played the summer gigs with Mike's brother Paul Gilbert on harp. This basic grouping got a weekly residency at the Jolly Gardeners pub in Mortlake and played exactly 52 gigs at that venue during the residency through 1999 - 2000 as well as gigs at the Cartoon in Croydon and the Leather Bottle garden gigs in Earlsfield. The weekly residency at Mortlake stopped because of a change in management, but the band then got a monthly gig at the same old venue under the new management. This arrangement went on until Mike got the Bulls Head gig, which was consecutive with the closure of the Jolly Gardeners as a venue. That was a seven month period during which the band also did an acoustic gig at BB's Acoustic Blues Club at Merton Abbey and played a student party at Cavendish College. The personnel in the band changed during early 2001, though. Lorenzo left to start up his own band and then iang and Joe left in May. Gary came in in April and Wolf joined in June. John Buchanan joined on drums in July. This grouping has done eight gigs at the Bulls Head , the Frome Festival in July, 2000 and the Kings Cross Festival last September. That makes a total of about 85 gigs since late 98, although Mike has also done solo and duo gigs on his own as well and previously did shared gigs with Harry Kane of the MoneyMakers, ran two jam sessions at the Cat's Back and the Ferret & Firkin in Chelsea for about 30 sessions and also did break spots with bands such as Axis, the Blues Engineers, Harry Kane and the MoneyMakers and Getzloose earlier on between 94 and 98. Anyway, we now have a year of Sunday afternoons at the Bulls Head to look forward to and are looking to expand into Festivals and venues around the periphery and in the centre of London next year. Might even look into a trip abroad, too. Mike played in Stockholm at the Stampen Club last January to great acclaim. Come and see us and help us on our way! |
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