Mike Dowling

What a great concert we had with Mike Dowling. He was well into his annual UK club tour and visiting the Fingers and Thumbs Acoustic Guitar Society for the second time. This year Mike arrived in Radcliffe-on-Trent in time to fit in a visit to our local comprehensive school where he kindly gave a demonstration of acoustic guitar playing to the music department. We also managed a 20 minute spot on BBC Radio Nottingham on Alan Clifford's afternoon show when Mike discussed his work and played a couple of tunes. Mike brought three guitars with him including two vintage and well used National resonators, a 1922 El Trouvador and 1935 Duolian. We witnessed some wonderful slide guitar work on these instruments. Mike is a great singer and he did some exciting versions of traditional blues numbers. His ragtime and good old swing playing were just brilliant. Mike was generous in his praise of people who devote time to organising guitar societies and club events such as this one. Mike sold quite a few CDs and spoke to many of the audience particularly about his interesting guitars. We had 44 in the audience which is good by normal standards but still two less than came to his show in 2004