Mo Jackson
vocals, banjo
“I
have always been a banjo player! The clues were there even as a child growing
up in the northern town of Darlington — the obsession with all things
gingham — the need to apply fringing to items of clothing — not to mention
the perennial cowboy boots.
As the years went by, eccentric behaviour, a vague scattyness and a large collection of hillbilly hats were added to the mix. I played around with the guitar, singing in friends back bedrooms and kitchens, but there was still an indefinable void. What was it? It took me another three decades to discover what was missing.
Then I saw it! Asecondhand banjo in the window of a music shop I passed every day. Shining and magnificent, it called to me like a siren. I tried to resist but the urge was too strong and soon I found myself clutching this five-string beauty to my breast ... and for the first time in my life I felt complete.
In 2004 I joined FOAOTMAD (Friends of American Oldtime Music and Dance) and took to hanging out round campfires with the bearded ones, playing clawhammer and singing about chickens and trains and the like, and also extending my collection of headwear. In the summer of 2005 I met Lucy Ray and together we formed a kind of Oldtime Support Group, singing and playing in each others houses and making quite a nice noise together. We made a short CD over two days in Lucy's living room and feeling quite pleased with the result, we gave it away to friends, relatives and unsuspecting strangers.
In April 2006 we both attended Sore Fingers Summer School and performed together in the student concert there. John Wirtz, who runs said summer school and who plays a mean rhythm guitar, saw our potential and offered to form a band with us, his wife Moira on bass and John Boston on fiddle. After a whole catalogue of different band names we finally settled on the KittyHawks. John got us a gig playing at Didmarton Bluegrass Festival September 2006 (ok, so he was the organiser of that too!), and the rest, as they say, is history.
HAIL, OH MIGHTY CLAWHAMMER ... SAVIOUR, REDEEMER"