Fairholt–The Band

  • Adrian Powell – percussion
  • Bob Haynes – guitar
  • Martyn Winters – guitar, vocals
  • Pete Renn – bass, keyboards, vocals
  • Steve Mills – lead vocals, guitars, synths

Adrian Powell – Percussion

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I first met Bob as a classmate at 11; started to play drums after leaving school and a couple of years later we met up again as students in London. I formed Raven with Steve, Martyn, Nick Hamblin and Dennis Cowan and also played in The Collectors with Nick Paul and Pete, with Bob playing with the band in its early days. Lost touch for a few years due to building careers and families. Ayesha and I lived and worked in Botswana for a number of years in the 80s where I did some playing with expatriate South African musos. On returning to the UK in 1990, began playing regularly again mainly with blues/rock trio Mojo and African jazz band Faultline, both based in Hertfordshire. Mojo played in many parts of the UK and in Europe and released ‘Mojoblues’ in 2000. On moving back to the Thanet area a few years later, I played with the Electric Druids and several other local bands including The Cara Harrison Band with Bob. After being diagnosed with MND in 2012 I retired from full time work and playing gigs. When Steve approached me with the idea of getting a band together for a recording project I knew it would be a great experience, which it certainly has been. The quality of writing and musicianship from all concerned has been fantastic and Paul Sampson is an inspirational producer! The album title sums it all up for me, thanks guys. I am really proud of this album.

Influences – I love a wide range of music from punk to jazz to classical but my first musical love was rock and bands important to me include Free, Doll by Doll, Stray, The Stones, The Faces, the Pink Fairies and The Clash. I like drummers who have finesse as well as power such as Simon Kirke (Free/Bad Co), Charlie Watts (Stones), Topper Headon (Clash) and Ginger Baker as well as the jazz giants such as Max Roach, Elvin Jones and Billy Cobham.

About MND (Motor Neurone Disease)

MND has no known cause and currently no cure. Most people die within 18 months of diagnosis as the motor neurones cease to work, causing muscle wastage and gradual paralysis throughout the body. Limbs cease to work, speech and swallowing become impossible and eventually breathing ceases, even with artificial assistance. Although thankfully rare, MND occurs throughout the world and has been present throughout history. Research into finding a cure is very underfunded – please give all you can to the MND Association or The Broad Appeal which was set up by England cricketer Stuart Broad who had a family member suffer from this hideous disease.

Bob Haynes – Guitar

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Like many of the kids of my generation, I grew up listening to the marvellous music of the sixties. In 1968, at the age of 12, a friend played me Cream’s “Fresh Cream”, ”Disraeli Gears” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Are you experienced?” and “Axis bold as love”; it literally changed my life. The wonderful guitar playing inspired me to want to learn and after a few years of hard work I found myself at the age of 19 in a local band called “Liquid Lunch”, with old school mates playing covers and writing original songs. We gigged the pubs as you do and even hired Margate’s Winter gardens to put on our own promotions. An old school friend and drummer, Adrian Powell suggested I should study for my degree in London at his college and as a consequence met Steve, Martyn and Pete there and Fairholt was born!

Subsequently, back in Thanet, I was involved in many bands and recording projects over the years and when I met talented young singer/songwriter Cara Harrison in 2008 I found myself playing in a band with Adrian again after almost 30 years. The idea of reviving our college band was mooted and in January 2013 we reconvened in Coventry to start this current project. So great to see the guys again; it’s every bit as exciting as it was back then and our collective enthusiasm remains undiminished.

Steve Mills – Lead vocals, guitar, synths

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Never had any intention of ever playing music rather, was well on track towards making a career as a promoter, something I started at school in the sixth form. Played a bit of Bass guitar and that led to Martyn asking me at college, if I fancied forming a band? During one particularly drunken ramble home, Martyn heard me bellowing out the Coverdale version of Mistreated to the unheeding glass inlaid stone canyons of Moorgate and here we are, decades later, still none the wiser, if a tad more gnarled around the edges.

Post college, I was the singist with a couple of Metal bands before embarking on a psychonautic quest and finally working out where I wanted to be musically. Turns out that, that “where”, was a moon orbiting a small planet in the middle of a squirmy wormy timey wimey type thing. One has also wandered into the world of full on “Prog” with drummer and fellow DoGnaut Mike, via his own band “Michael’s Statement”.

That said, as a child of the late 60s and early 70s, music has always been a huge smorgasbord of flavours and it’s great to be able to give vent to a side of me that grew up to listening to Free, The Rolling Stones, The Faces/Rod Stewart, The Doors et al . Music that peers at the world from inside a glass of Wild Turkey with a cigarette hanging from the corner of a wry smile.

Fairholt however, is not some college kids middle aged conceit. Amongst the remains of the dubious takeaways, overflowing ash trays and empty bottles, Keef aside, Ade is the only actually still living person with a bottle bank named in his honour, there’s some damn fine tunes that pay a genuine heartfelt homage to a simpler less complicated time. When mixolydian scales was something your pet rabbit would have to visit the vets for and you owned a Marshall stack primarily, cos it gave you something to lean against so you didn’t fall over on stage.

As Ade’s mum often used to opine after another of our collective adventures…. “Yes boys, that was very intelligent wasn’t it?”. Thirty years down the line, it’s still just the same, we’re just a little tighter musically.

Martyn Winters – Guitar, vocals

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It’s 1969 and Rob Mills is to blame. I was about thirteen and he came around my house in Cardiff with an electric guitar his dad had bought him. No amp, just the guitar. We’d just got into music and endlessly played Beatles and Stones records on the obligatory Dansette mono, but when I saw Rob posing in front of my gran’s full length mirror with his guitar strapped around him, I knew there and then I wanted to be a guitarist.

My formative guitar years were mixed. I wanted to be a Beatle at first, then Woodstock happened, or at least it happened in the Ninian Cinema in Grangetown. Most of the lads I was with came out raving about Hendrix, some argued that Santana had more going for him, but I was in love with the guitar work of Alvin Lee of Ten Years After. That’s who I wanted to be; the album Ssssh remains one of my most played albums some forty-five years later and the solo on “I woke up this morning” still sends shivers down my spine.

My first band, a three piece, was a school band with Ted Reece on drums and Rob Mills on bass – well, it wasn’t actually bass, it was a lead guitar on which he played bass lines. Our first (and last) gig was the school Eisteddfod which we surprisingly won with a Black Sabbath inspired piece called “Death of God” written by me and Rob. Following this immense achievement, I found myself playing in a couple of blues bands who gigged around Cardiff and the Valleys and then left for London, where I fell in with a bad lot, together with whom Raven was formed.

Post-college I gigged for a while with a heavy rock outfit called “Rough Justice” who jointly saved up enough to buy our own PA only for the lead singer to blow the money on a half weight of dope. I had to physically restrain the bass player from braining him. Rough Justice lasted a few years, although gigs were few and far between, with lots of bands chasing too few venues in the South Wales area. Eventually, marriage, children and long hours put paid to my fledgling rock star aspirations and my platform sole boots were retired, but not my guitar: instead I became a bedroom player, until I got a call one day, “Hello Mart, it’s Steve. Fancy getting the band back together?”

Pete Renn – Bass, keyboards, vocals

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Blah, blah, blah

Latest News!

We meet again…


Summer 2013

More tracks are laid down and recording engineer, Paul Samson starts the long process of mixing it; we’re beginning to sound like a real rock band.

So, anyway…


May 2013

We recorded a couple of tracks over the first weekend, some were old and others were new, including a real tear up called “Crazy Bay”, written by Steve. It set the tone for band’s sound and was the first song actually in the can.

More News!

There was a twist


May 2013

We met at a rehearsal studio in Coventry in May. It wasn’t “the band”, because some of the old members couldn’t be contacted. So we blended a couple of bands with Ade as common factor.

Fairholt assembles


January 2013

Steve rang me, “Fancy getting the band back together again?” The idea was to record an album, sell it and donate the proceeds to the Motor Neurone Disease Association. It took me about a nanosecond to make my mind up.
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