Dave Keir

Dave Keir picked up the guitar at a very early age - too early, in fact, to learn any extant songs or tunes so he became accustomed to picking out his own tunes from the very start. The habit become so deeply and irrevocably ingrained that even a concentrated effort to mend his ways during an interregum in the 80s and 90s had little effect - a relapse was always just around the corner. Dave's pedigree includes many years playing and recording in London and touring the UK and Europe before he retired from the professional scene in 1981 for family and personal reasons.

Dave's pedigree includes many years playing and recording in London and touring the UK and Europe before he retired from the professional scene in 1981 for family and personal reasons. But he always kept a finger on the pulse. And the songs just kept popping up.

With the advent of project studios, Dave equipped himself accordingly for the purpose of recording the now substantial back catalogue of songs that had accrued during these years and also to record local musicians who happened by. One late example of these collaborations resulted in the release of a CD of fiddle tunes for some local musicians. Not suprisingly, this marked the beginning of the end of the hiatus.

Dave's songs have been described as "quirky", "wry", "sly", "wiry", "muscular", "poignant", "scurrilous", "sleazy", "philosophical" (huh?), and "tuneful" - it depends on the song, he says (duh!).

But always, they are "about" something. They range from being almost journalistic about his experiences to wild extrapolations from a single glance or passing smile. Tax worries and mountaineering play a big part in some of the songs - but a higher proportion yet appear to be about unrequited lust.

Dave's guitar playing has been described at "gatling-gun", "complicated", "fast", "slow", "simple", "bright", "dark", "dense", "spare", "percussive", "songfull", ? (yes, I know - it depends on the song). It happens that he's a left-handed guy who plays guitar right-handed. There is no space here to muse on the net effect of that.

As for so many independent artists, the coming of the internet has given Dave a new window of opportunity to reach an audience whom, some would say, may be called "niche", and difficult to reach by traditional means. All this has enabled the production release in 2006, of this CD, "Interim Reports", which has been thoroughly welcomed wherever it has been heard. Dave's public performances are, at the time of writing, limited in number and scale, however wherever he does play, the performances are enthusiastically received without exception.

So he is now embarked upon a path of recording and issuing songs that are either freshly composed or have been accumulated through the years. However, nothing will get released on a CD that hasn't served time in front of an audience, so the recording and performing sides of the work are closely connected. Plans for the future are centred around not only playing regularly throughout the UK and Europe again, but also to open up new horizons by way of performances in the US.