Yesterday I had my first ever ZOOM music lesson on Octave Mandolin, with my dear and super talented friend Nathan Lewis Williams who has recently moved from Glastonbury to Frome.

Nathan is one of my closest friends and an astonishingly talented musician. We met when I moved to Glastonbury in 2002 after 5 years of travelling and many adventures.

It was so lovely to meet a fellow Welshie and have the opportunity to not only speak Welsh but to sing with someone in our beautiful language after such a long time. Nathan is actually one of the reasons I’m here writing this now as he made me realise what I had been carrying with me for many years. To be brought up surrounded by our beautiful music, mythology and traditions is so precious, Nathan helped me realise that I had music inside just waiting to be let out.

I remember when Nathan and I learned to sing Tra Bo Dau in harmony,  we were both absolutely buzzing and headed straight over to a friend’s house to sing them the song. We were like excited school children! It’s still my absolute favourite to perform together.

It’s been amlost 13 years since I moved back to Wales from Glastonbury but we still (in normal times) perform together at every opportunity.

A few years ago I bought myself a Raithin Octave Mandolin from Hobgoblin music and have been noodling ever since. I’ve decided to record a new album this winter to try and keep myself sane (like many of us I’m desperately missing playing gigs) and would like to use the Octave Mandolin on it, so it’s time to up my game.

Who better to enlist for some music lessons than my dear friend…. and no it wasn’t like being taught to drive by my parents! It made me realise just how much I’ve missed my friends this year and was great to hang out together on Zoom for an hour or so.

Nathan is an amazing teacher who has patience and sensitivity (he taught at a private school for dyslexic children for many years) and if you can take it, he has an inner musical nerd just waiting to share all sorts of cool knowledge. If you want to know more about things like binary harp notation and improvisation, he’s your man!

To book a lesson, you can find him on Facebook (Nathan Lewis Williams) or email nathanvibration@gmail.com

You can also buy his music at;

https://nathanlewiswilliams.bandcamp.com/album/across-the-water