Bio, influences and gear

Gav has a guitar with 6 strings. This makes it very fiddly to play, especially if you don't put them on the guitar in the right order. Gav stands in front of a small box which despite it's size makes a loud noise. It belongs to a man called Bender or something who may want it back one day. That's why Gav packs up quick at the end of our gigs. Gav is good at chords so he became the pig's rhythm guitarist.

Gav is influenced by big guitar amplifiers and pedals with lots of lights.

Gav's guitar

....and now the real Bio, influences and gear

Hi there Pig fans. I am Gavin and I can usually be seen (or not as the case may be) hidden at the back of the stage behind one of Boyce's PA speakers, generally looking down at what I am trying to play. For this reason I should be known as Bashful Pig, however Mark thinks that I look scary so Scary Pig it is :)

I bought my first guitar back in 1980, a genuine USA Fender Bronco, which is a single pick up guitar with a very wobbly tremolo arm. I then backed it up with some monster of an amp, whose make eludes me at the moment, and a 4x10 angled Marshall cab. The amp was ferocious and I could not turn it up beyond about 2 in it's low powered setting and when we used it play music for parties, from tape recorders, it could be heard easily a 100 yards down the road.

I was asked to join my younger brothers, Liam, school band, which was formed of Liam (vocals and keyboards), Richard Jamieson (bass guitar) and Robin Schink (drums), and we called ourselves Bonner Halt (still have no idea why). We practiced a lot in our backroom at home as well as the rather lovely Allan Gordon studios in Leyton (wonder if they are still there). It was brilliant to play in the band and we had a great time, even writing some of our own songs (usually to Richards morbid lyrics), and we even tried to cover Pink Floyds "Dark Side Of The Moon" album, leaving out the "Great Gig In The Sky" and "On The Run".

The only problem was, and it still haunts me to this day, that I have a total phobia against playing single notes, which meant solos were non existent. Liam used to play them all on the keyboard, which left me very happily playing just the chords, thus I am the rhythm guitarist of the Pig's.

When Liam left school and the band broke up, after our one and only gig at Liam's school leaving do (you never forget your first gig), I just played the guitar occasionally and Darren, the other brother in the band, persuaded me to sell my amp and speaker, a decision I sort of regretted in later life, and I went in to guitar wilderness.

This changed many years later when Darren asked me if I would want to play in one of his bands (he was in two at the time) for a few songs at his birthday party. So I blew off the dust from my trusty Bronco, borrowed an amp from Richard and set to rehearsing for the first time in nearly 20 years. It was brilliant to play in a band again and I loved playing the three songs on stage.

Afterwards I was asked if wanted to join Archie O'Chopperless (the other band) as rhythm guitarist and we went on to form what is now known as Boyl'd Pig.

My wife kindly bought me a Squire Telecaster (one single coil and one humbucker) and a Marshall MG50DFX combo so that I could be heard properly. Later I fitted (or Paul our original guitarist fitted) a Seymour Duncan Little 59 in the bridge to give it a beefier sound, and we started rehearsing and gigging in pubs, which is just awesome and still gives me a buzz to this day.

My gear now consists of the following. The ever present Bronco (now retired), the Squire Telecaster, a Japanese Tokai Loverock (Les Paul copy, but a beautiful guitar), a Fender Pro 185 2x10 combo, a Boss TU 2 stage tuner, a Boss GE 7 graphic equaliser (hardly used), a Behringer OD pedal and a Beringer Chorus Pedal.