I’ve been playing guitar for about as long as I can remember. My earliest memory was my grandad travelling down to come see us, he brought this old beaten up acoustic guitar with him and he started singing and playing a few songs. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Growing up on various army estates across England and Germany, it was hard to keep making new friends. Then finally I moved to Andover, my house was only a few minutes down the street from my grandad’s house. It was then; at the age of 9 I could finally start learning guitar.

My grandad was the first person to teach me, so in many ways I owe him everything. I guess I started out learning the same way as everyone else, on an acoustic guitar, learning chords and riffs. When I started playing guitar I didn’t use a pick, this gave me an advantage when learning finger picking. When I was old enough my grandad got my parents to enrol me in the Test Valley Rock school based in Andover. It was there that I started to play with other people and had my first experience of playing live. At first I found it scary, I remember coming home from lesson one day crying because I thought I couldn’t do what everyone else was able to. But when my oldest brother, Owen started learning to play, he went to guitar lessons with me.

Ok, ok I’ll admit it, I went through a metal phase. Oddly enough that’s when I started learning acoustic tapping. whilst everyone was raving about ‘Killswitch Engage’ I was listening to Andy Mckee. I cut myself off from everything and just sat at my computer working out how to play ‘Drifting’. The first original track I ever made in this style is ‘Hopeless’ which was a big step forward for me in my song writing.