Featured Musician: Colin Ward

Hello to all the readers of Linda’s blog.  I am happy that Linda invited me to be a guest writer and talk a little about my music and songwriting.  Thanks Linda.  I became acquainted with Linda through Just Plain Folks, a national organization and website for songwriters.

Like many others, I started playing guitar as a kid in England and I performed in bands during my high school and college years.  At that point, work got in the way and music was in the background for a long time.  Finally, I was able to jump back in and start playing and writing seriously again about ten years ago.

My family was musical and there were lots of instruments around even though nobody was an expert….pianos, bagpipes, a banjo, and a concertina.  Guitars were the cool thing to play and my grandfather happened to own one so I was off and running.  I was influenced by the instrumental groups of the day such as the Shadows, the Ventures, the Tornados and others.  There was no YouTube and there were very few guitar teachers in those days so it was do it yourself by dropping a needle onto a record and copying the guitar parts.  I became a fan of blues guitarists like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Skipping forward to 2000, I was off sailboat cruising with my wife Colleen and we were travelling the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW) from Florida to the Chesapeake Bay.  There were lots of problems, challenges and hazards to deal with and I had the idea to write a song about it which became the ICW Blues.  The song became quite popular with other cruisers so I was inspired to write more and I became a songwriter.  More sailing songs followed and later I branched out into songs in lots of genres.

I loved to play with others and found opportunities to jam in the Bahamas.  I played twice in the Bahamian Music Festival in George Town, Bahamas in a cruiser band, along with top Bahamian stars.  The bug got stronger!

Back in Florida, I joined up with Bruce Kula and formed the Blue Island Beer Club, a band named after our favorites: blues, islands and beer.  We recorded our CD, Lone Palm Tree and followed up with Have You a Taste in 2010.  Both are available on CD Baby https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/blueislandbeerclub2.

I also play in a tropical band called the Trop Rock Junkies http://www.troprockjunkies.com/index.html. We recently performed a pre-concert at the Jimmy Buffett concert in Tampa, FL.

In 2010, I placed one of my songs in a FOX TV show called The Good Guys as background music.  I also placed an instrumental as the theme song for an independent movie called Dingo and Ringo and another instrumental as background music for a Canadian radio advertisement.

I think my personal favorite of my original songs in Cappuccino in the Morning.  It is well received when I play it live which is the acid test.  Here is a link to listen or download it free http://colinward.bandcamp.com/track/cappuccino-in-the-morning.

I am close to finishing a new solo CD which will be available this summer.  Stay tuned!