NICK DEW
Nick Dew arrived at Holyground with students from Bretton college to make the eclectic LP, JUMBLE LANE. He plays a variety of drum styles with equal ease, and through Holyground met Bill, joined Bill Nelson’s Be-Bop-De-Luxe, eventually recording on their first EMI record, Axe Victim. More recently he played again with Bill on the Be-Bop reunion tour, and has been recording with Mike Chris Coombs and Pete Taylor for their new CD, “In And Out Of Time”.

Nick Dew : I feel sure it was Pete Tidball who probably got me involved with Holyground in the first instance, through his connection with Chris Coombs. At Bretton there was much banter concerning the Number Nine Bread Street and A to Austr records, very little of which I understood. More confusing still was that Mike O’Connor, almost out of the blue, metamorphosed into Mike Levon and it wasn’t until I ventured into Kirkgate one steaming summer afternoon, found Cass Yard and discovered Mike’s studio at the top of (was it?) three flights of steepish stairs, that the mysterious sounding ‘Holyground’ began to make some sort of sense – especially when I found that there was indeed a drum kit, as foretold, and much else sardined into that topmost room.

I must confess to not liking the sound of those drums very much, but understood that they’d been set up specifically for recording and that they were part of the HG sound! I became a regular visitor, with many others from Bretton, as Mike gradually recorded tracks for the album called Jumble Lane, the name, incidentally on the signal box that controlled the level crossing near Barnsley railway station! Mike was so enthusiastic in those far off days (still is!) and would play us his latest recording, whether it was the famed ‘Thundermother’ or the equally celebrated flush of the bog from down on the next landing, before doing a few takes of the latest Bretton offering. Happy days!

(The drums Nick mentions were probably Mike’s. They did sound pretty poor. Mike’s favourite kit for recording were Haymans - but money was tight!)