We are heartbroken to relate that Steve passed away after a short illness last Friday.
I (Mike) can’t precisely remember when I met Steve – I would guess it would be in a music rehearsal for church around 2014ish. We hit it off pretty quickly, not least due to a shared love of the likes of Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span (he studied with Peter Knight), the Strawbs (for whom he had a deep and abiding fondness) and country music from the 80s and beyond.
There is no truth at all (honest!) in the rumour that I convinced Andy and Steve to form the band by doing a Bob Geldof and telling each that the other was interested. Steve was a brilliant fiddle player, a deft hand on a mandolin, but more (and perhaps less noticed) he was probably the best rhythm guitarist it’s ever been any of our joy and pleasure to play with. There’s a heck of a lot more to that than ‘just strumming’, and without Steve, Americana would not have been the amazing thing it was. He had a fabulous guitar collection, which changed on a regular basis (Mike: “Steve just texted, wonder what he wants?”; Jamie (drily): “there’s a non-zero percent chance he’s just telling you he bought another guitar”), as well as several Bridge violins (he always joked that he wanted one in each of the Ecclesiastic colours in the Church of England calendar, but that gold was prohibitively expensive).
Steve was a Reader at our church and at the time of his death in training to become a Curate.
Rest in peace, mate – God bless you and be with your family.
Mike, Andy, Anne, Jamie, Evonne.
