In 2005 Andy Mills and Dave Rea both placed adverts in local music shops looking for musicians to form a blues band, Dave replied to Andy's advert and after meeting up the search for other members began.
The first musician we met was a young guitarist from Uplyme, near Lyme Regis, who had a cellar music room complete with a drum kit, a bass combo and his Mesa Boogie stack, it sounded like the " Spinal Tap Edition " (volume to 11), plus more effects pedals than most music shops.
He was a stunning player, but the words " can you turn it down a bit " just did not seem to get through, after putting up with various hums and buzzes from the pedals and a Gary Moore style onslaught on our ears we both decided that this was not the way to go.
Next up were two very good guitarists, one of which was a good singer as well, we got together and the lead guitarist/singer decided what we were going to play, he produced a tape of six songs and we were told to learn them, he also had a problem with turning his amp down.
We had two sessions with them where we were told by him exactly what we had to play without any variation or interpretation, so we gave up on that.
We then met a blues singer/harmonica player, who knew a guitarist, we set up a session with both of them, before the session Andy Mills heard about Andy Knight and he was invited to the session as well.
We ended up with a singer who did not know the words to several blues standards that even I knew the words to, one guitarist that did not seem to bother to play much at all and Andy Knight who impressed us after about 2 minutes.
We had two sessions like this and after the singer decided that Andy Knight did not fit in, we decided that in fact it was the singer and his guitarist that were not going to fit in.
Andy Mills decided that if we could not find a singer at that point he would sing at a rehearsal, after a couple of songs we knew that this was the right sound and style for us, and the same evening " The Reds " name was decided on and the line up was finalized.
After some serious rehearsing we went into the Coombeshead studio in Newton Abbot in April 2006 and recorded eight songs, mostly in one take, and the c.d. " The Reds Play The Blues " became a reality with some sensitive engineering and mixing from Neil George the resident engineer, and final production by Andy Mills.
We played our first gig in the Angel in Queen Street in Exeter just after that, as they say the rest is history.
Dave
