Our band finally settled on a name after over half a years deliberation. It’s The Gotham City String Band! It’s not that we wear our pants outside of tights or anything! No, our American Dobro player, Vernon Ward, actually lives in a place called Gotham, just south of Nottingham. Added to which he’s one of the most zany guys you could ever meet and there you go! Vernon was a pro steel player in America for many years and took to Dobro with no qualms at all. He freelanced with the likes of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, no less. You may have seen him with myself, Steve Read, Jonny Hulme and Tom Travis on the TV promo-trailer for the 1996 Edale? The film company couldn’t make it to Edale for the festival so we went up and faked the festival for the camera the week before. They had bemused campers whooping and jumping up and down and saying what was so special about the festival for them!!! Oops! Straying from the thread...

Mark Tyndell plays a fine fiddle, mandolin and guitar. Our bass/vocals man is Pete Christian - he’s a real laugh-a-minute guy plays nuclear bass. His first brush with Bluegrass was maybe 25-30 years ago when he backed Bill Keith and Jim Rooney. As fate has it, I saw that at Leicester. Yours truly is on banjo, mandolin and fiddle. We’re doing steady bookings now and though we’ve “miles to go before we sleep,” we get some satisfying response which makes it very worthwhile. The GCSB has been together for about fifteen months now and is getting bookings every three-to-four weeks locally.

My wife Pat and I also have done a couple of Hucknall local charity things recently, with Pat playing upright bass. We got to play in a couple of churches, one of which had just amazing acoustics and knocked ’em dead! Together, we’re The Misk Hillbillies, after our local Misk Hills! Well that’s the end of the local news... here’s the weather forecast!

Gotham City String Band are on at Wollaton Park (home of the Edale-Weekend Festival) in Nottingham. We’re also doing three days, two spots a day, on the Bank Holiday weekend just prior to the Edale Weekend; we’re really looking forward to this dooo... it’ll showcase Bluegrass to the locals and give them a taste of even better things to come at Edale Weekend.

Unfortunately our zany dobro player is swamped with work at the time and we have found an excellent temporary replacement in Mike Wareham, of Borderline and Stoned Cold Sober. He is an excellent singer/guitarist with a good sense of driving, traditional bluegrass. I sang and played with Mike when he first came to Nottingham and can tell you he is top flight.

We’ll be doing our thing at both these do’s so green tights and capes will be standard issue!

Geoff  “Batman” Bowers, Nottingham.

Updated 23rd Jan 1999