Well, I'm both a solo performer and a band member, with plans for a change in both sides of this balancing act. That is, my solo performing is leaning more and more heavily toward doing my own songs as opposed to the traditional or all-round eclectic collection of influences I'm known for. Not that I'll always do just my own stuff, but that the main thing I do these days is my self-penned material. I play guitar, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, fiddle, dulcimers and autoharp, but, as a solo performer, it's mostly guitar, some banjo, and vocals.

Now, my band is called Sidekicks, and we bill ourselves as either a "frontier and western band," or "geezers with guitars," depending on the circumstance. We're a trio, myself (on all those instruments and vocals), George Stephens (on guitar & 12-string and stunning vocals -- our strongest singer without doubt), and Pete Kreamer (on guitar, banjo, dobro and bass, plus vocals). We try to present a wider range of western US song than the typical "cowboy" music group, and we deliberately avoid both the Sons of the Pioneers and the Bob Wills traditions in our sound. So, in addition to doing western songs from the US, we do frontier-oriented songs from Australia (bush songs, etc.).

Our web page is at

members.aol.com/sidekicks999/

Now, the change in direction for me, band-wise, is a hankering to expand the music I do with Pete (and George and others) to encompass some arrangements of both folk material and my own songs for mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation (i.e., reinventing folk-rock). Pete and I in particular have these "sounds" in our heads, ways we'd like to do some songs, but it takes time and other talents (and other people) to accomplish this. We've named the group already, even though we haven't formed it as such. We're calling it our "Sideband" project. I got to Pete's house last Sunday for an hour and a half of playing, the first in several weeks if not months, and we made some progress, but we do need to find some other musicians and a drummer if this is going to go anywhere.

Pete and I did come up with a little of this for a Woody Guthrie/Carter Family workshop at the Folklore Society of Greater Washington Minifestival last year (not this year), arranging three songs with some electric instrumentation. Went over well, despite its being in an otherwise acoustic-only surrounding. So we dream on, and try things on a small scale, edging toward a finalized state of readiness.

So I'm involved in a wide range of music (even sing with my wife!) and in bands both real and imagined. Practically a legend in my own mind!

Bob Clayton