A Brief History of The Acme Band
 By Bob Armstrong
, Alston, Cumbria.
MY FIRST AWARENESS of ‘The Acme’ was when I read a review in Bluegrass Unlimited back around 1977 of their Country Band’s album Bluegrass Machine. The review was the best I had ever seen on a non-American band. As I recall, it said that “they have discovered the deep dark secret of Bluegrass - build your act around a crackerjack tenor”, Brian Curtis in this case. They said he was the “Queen’s answer to Jim McReynolds” - praise indeed - and hoped the band would survive and that the mortality rates were lower in the Mother Country! Little did I expect to be involved, but 20 years on we’re still trying to base our act around good singing, solid picking and good taste. The dates in what follows are approximate but are probably near enough!! 1976-1981 was the era of The Acme Country Band, comprising Brian Curtis (bass) Ron Stevens (mandolin), Graham Sowter (guitar) and Jim Irvine (banjo). Terry Foster later replaced Jim on banjo. Two recordings were made - an LP called Bluegrass Machine and a cassette. After a brief spell of inactivity from 1982 to 1983 the band re-formed as Train 45, with Brian Curtis (guitar), Ron Stevens (mandolin), Keith Colven (dobro), Derek Thompson (bass) and Bill Forster (banjo). It wasn’t long before I joined on dobro, then Keith switched to bass when Derek left. Within a few weeks Ron left due to pressure of work but insisted that we soldiered on. We wondered how we could manage without either a mandolin or a fiddle. Somehow we did make our Edale debut and recorded a cassette - Train 45. We played a weekly residency in Coventry which proved to be enjoyable even though quite stressful. In 1983 it all came to an end and once again a spell of inactivity followed.
The Acme Band In 1983 John Allen joined on bass and we decided to re-adopt the Acme Country Band name, but it didn’t last long - we soon switched to The Acme Bluegrass Band. In the period 1983-1989 the personnel were Brian Curtis (guitar), John Allen (bass), Bill Forster (banjo), with myself on dobro. We soon recognised that we had a good trio sound and this has been the mainstay ever since. Bill, however, soon realised that there was more to life than hot picking and so took up singing, completing the quartet for gospel numbers. We rehearsed every week, often spending hours at a time on one song. Every note was analysed before moving on to the next. Some songs, such as Stepping Stones, took minutes to learn, while others evolved over many weeks or months, even. The first pure instrumental we decided to learn was Siempre. It gradually took shape and we premiered the tune at Edale (’84, I think) along with a cassette of the same name. It was strange to walk around the campsite on Sunday morning hearing your tape being played on car stereos!! Soon after, we worked on the Once More tape and that was finished in 1986. We worked all over the country and did particularly well at Neil Coppendale’s club in Brighton where we were voted ‘Band of the Year’ 2 years running - and that against all the Country Music bands! To commemorate this we were presented with a cup at a special gig, when we were joined by Bob Winquist for the evening. Bob was also with us at one memorable session at Edale. Another high at Edale was singing Lover Of The Lord, with Doyle Lawson present in the audience. When Bill announced he was leaving for Leeds it looked like the end. We recorded Memories in one evening! In 1989, when Ron had not played for 7 years, he brought his mandolin out of retirement! He got involved in singing and we kept playing without banjo and just calling up Bill for the occasional festival. In 1993 Mike Reynolds (banjo) came along to a rehearsal and he was pitched right in the deep end! He did an excellent job of learning 10 years worth of material in about 10 minutes but he was not helped when I moved to Cumbria in November 1993. 1994 to the present: Mike’s job made it difficult to get away to festivals and we missed the banjo. So in July 1994 we convinced Bill that if an idiot dobro player (me) was prepared to travel from Cumbria then he should be able to make it from Leeds!! After a hesitant start we are now developing new material and writing some songs ourselves. We played numerous gigs in 1996 a well as doing five festivals. We hope to start work on a new recording later in the year. The travelling gets us down sometimes but we still feel that ‘buzz’ when we’re up in front of a crowd. As long as that’s there I guess we’ll keep on doing it. Thanks to everyone who’s made it possible! And now we’re called just “The Acme Band”, but that’s another story. I hope Bob likes the ‘Acme’ photo on the cover! Ed.
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