first jam with Mark Hewins

I'm going to be interviewing Mark Hewins for my Canterbury Soundwaves podcast soon (he lives in East Kent and has played and recorded variously with Richard and Dave Sinclair, Hugh Hopper, Phil and Steven Miller, Lol Coxhill, Elton Dean, Pip Pyle, John Greaves, Gong, Soft Heap and others of the Canterbury school. He's based down in Margate where he operates a studio, and recently invited me down for a jam (he's also a friend of Paul Clifford, the Canadian percussionist and studio engineer who's been jamming with our little Random Article collective some weeks). So I headed out there on Friday evening.

My first sight on exiting the railway station was the high-rise block that dominates Margate's skyline. During the incredible "Hawklords" concert tribute to Robert Calvert in Herne Bay a couple of years ago (on the 20th anniversary of his death), just before they played a mighty version of "High Rise", Nik Turner mentioned that Bob had lived there with his parents and that it had inspired the song. That one has been rattling around in my head these last few days (see a couple of posts down).


Mark got his twelve-string acousic out and we locked into each other's playing pretty quickly. Promising. We both hope to do this more often. I recorded most of this:

Listen Here