HERRIES

CHRIS

I suppose I grew up in a musical family. My earliest memories are of Beatles records played by my older brothers. Our house was really swinging to the Fab 4 - Frank Ifield and Glen Miller plus a lot of classical stuff.

At the age of 9 I took up piano lessons and had to endure typical piano music which didn't always excite me, but probably gave me a good grounding for later on. At 13 I became more interested in the chart music of the day and began to experiment on the piano and learnt to play by ear. Never regretted that. My older brother could do that so well and I think that was a huge influence on me.

I may be crowing about the music in me but my general education was another matter. School was dull for me and I would dream about making a living from the music, which has kind of happened but not in the way I intended. 1974 was a significant year for me. I left school with just a few basic qualifications and went on to do a year at the Bath College. I knew absolutely nobody in the entire college and suffered with a feeling of isolation.

In the English class I met the charming Nick Gauntlett who may have picked up on my awkward demeanour. That was the start of a great friendship and within a few days or weeks I was to meet his great buddy, Richard Caden. Was that kind fate at work? Well I never laughed so much in my entire life up until that point, so I guess it was. The three of us became good friends and socialised well into the small hours, usually ending up at Nick’s flat.

At around this time we began singing together and I would play the piano. Musically we had so much in common and we had fantastic fun and were able to harmonise our voices. We were definitely not a band but we could have been if the desire had been there. The thing is, we got up to loads of things together but for me, the music was pretty amazing. No gigs, no groupies, no egos. It was great fun.

30 years later, Nick and I had the idea to recapture our mid 70's sessions and within a short time we arranged a session in an old village hall in Somerset. That was about 7 years ago and in that time we've probably covered all those old numbers and are set to 'do it again' with quite a cross section of material, maybe even our own songs.

So here's to the future. Good rocking? Good God YES!

DICK

When all around him were pretending to take further education and better themselves, Dick decided to get a job. He joined the Army and spent seven years doing stuff.

In 1983, he joined the Metropolitan Police and served in uniform and as a detective and did stuff until he retired in 2009.

He is now works for a big multi-national company.

Dick's love of performing music was discovered and nurtured by the very real talents of Chris. Had it not been for long drunken evenings at Nick’s place, his apparent ability to sing in tune would never have come to fruition.

The Somerset sessions, originally a bit hit and miss, have now become a part of the calendar of activities for this incredibly handsome man. The Dunkerton studio provides him with a perfect forum for his unbelievable range, both musically and alcoholically.

Musically speaking, he loves some Yes, some Genesis, lots of Supertramp, but unlike most of his contemporaries, he embraces modern talent as well. At the bottom end he is thrilled by the effortless brilliance of Rufus Wainwright through to the undoubted attractions of Nicole Scherzinger and Katy Perry.

Married to a goat at an emotional hillside ceremony in Ibiza in 1989, he now has two kids.

NICK

I wasn’t always bald. Well, I was born without any hair but by the time I was 16 I had long, flowing, golden locks. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on the point of view, the genes or whatever kicked in and here we are now.

Similar to Chris, I took up piano lessons at an early age (7 years old I think) but there the similarity ends. Chris went on to be rather good at the keyboard whereas my musical career hit a wall at 11 and there it stayed. Still, I can read a bit of music and occasionally hit the correct notes so that can be useful at times. Whether I hit the notes in the right order is another matter altogether (thanks to Eric Morecombe for that one) and that’s why the instrumental side of Rogue Herries lies firmly with Chris and Son.

My mediocre academic performance at school (where I met Dick) led to a period (fart) at Bath Technical College where Dick and I both met Chris and forged a long-term and firm friendship. The essence of Rogue Herries was created at that time during numerous late night “sessions” at my home where Chris gave my piano a treat by playing it as it should be played. Sometimes, a late night “sesh” would be cut short by my irate mother who, woken up by our splendid rendition of “Thank you for Being a Friend”, would come into the front room proclaiming that the piano is a “percussive instrument darling” and that would be that. How we managed to keep straight faces is anyone’s guess. In fact, we didn’t and somewhere is a tape of one of these rather rude interruptions where you can just hear the three of us young lads trying to stifle cheeky laughter. This wasn't helped by Chris asking me to keep the tea lady out of the room! I don’t think the numerous bottles of Natural Dry Cider helped with our impertinence but it sure helped the vocal cords.

As we all went our separate ways career wise, and after I spent a few fun but dead years in the civil service, I found a niche in mental health and completed a nurse training course followed by a psychology degree. This led to a career in mental health research and evaluation which I pursued for many years until redundancy was forced upon me in 2006. As with many challenges in life this disappointment eventually became an opportunity as very soon after I embarked on helping to set up a charity with my life partner, which we now run to this day.

It was also about this time that another opportunity arose as Dick, Chris and I revisited our adolescence and decided to resurrect our musical sessions - only now with a bit more maturity (well sometimes), with the welcome addition of the offspring of one of us (Tom) and without my mother hovering in the background. The “Natch” is replaced by cool beer, the production is more sophisticated, but the laughter thankfully still remains.

TOM

Dear unlucky reader,

I'm the newest member of the group and seem to mix in well with the other three much older, less wise Herries.

I first met Dick and Nick when I was a young sprog and they seemed like a good laugh. I didn't know back then that I was going to be singing the higher notes some 20 odd years later.

Chris is the old man, and got me interested in his taste of music from a young age, and soon introduced me to his side-project related stuff involving the other two in about 2005. A couple of years later, I started to listen to The Three Gits, The Herries' former band name more and more. Mainly getting accustomed to the banter between the three and attracted me to the Roadie/Refreshments position that would become vacant.

Forward to 2008, and after a few years of lost contact between the three vegetables, an important phone-call is a made and the a re-united session occurs in the summer of 2010.

I have now passed my probation and am unhappy to say that I'm a regular full-time member and a boner-fried Rogue. I still have to provide the refreshments and scrape the mould of Chris's socks.

JIM

I was born, not under a wandering star, but rather, under a canvas awning outside my parent’s farm in Des Moines, Iowa.

Moments after this supposedly momentous occasion, they dumped me at the side of the road. Had it not been for a passing car, I would most likely have perished.

The people in that car were from England and were holiday. They brought me back to this country in a small suitcase; having first carefully shrouded my tiny body in formula milk infused bubble wrap.

I went to school in Peebles, where my parents were toad sexers and then, once I’d graduated infant school, the family moved to the west country. I met Chris and his boy, and little Timmy and I became good friends. After my parent’s died in the Bristol black pudding disaster, Chris took me in and I guess, the rest is history. I now pass myself off as Chris’s son and Tim’s bro’.

I work as the Head Chef at La Grand Mamelon in Down Chipbury having trained under Michel Froufrou and Daniel Bellch.

PAUL

I was born in Vancouver, Canada and first met Dick when we were both in a trench to the west of Kiev shortly after the outbreak of war. By a bit of staggeringly good luck, we both survived the onslaught of a 50 megaton Soviet nuke by being a bit busy in the vault of the Banko Ukrainiosko at the time.

Once the war was won, we returned to an irradiated Britain and with our billions of pounds worth of gold bars, we funded the Shroud - which, as we all know is the gamma ray proof roof over the western areas of the country that keep us all alive.

I was then introduced to Nick and Chris and we formed an immediate bond. We have been chums ever since that fateful day.

It was my privilege to first meet Tim at Nick's wedding to Lewis Hamilton, but I didn't meet Jimbob until June this year.

My main interests now are the production of Fuller's Earth, for those people who have to venture out into the Outer Zone. The photo (left), shows me shortly after retuning from a recent sortie to eradicate some of the three billion zombies that are presently trying to get into Britain.

As Genesis wrote, and then there were six.