Lindsey Freckleton on Pure Local Extra

Other than our guest, this show was dedicated to covers. If you’ve been listening to the show over the past few weeks, you may recall mentions of a Covers Club. In short, the idea was that many local artists would all pick one of each other’s songs to cover in their own style. For this show, we played those covers and the originals for comparison.

Lindsey is part of Ampersand Collective. A group of many different musicians who come together to play together. No one is committed to playing at every gig or on every song. Each member plays what they want and when they can.Lindsey focuses on Reggae, Funk, Disco and Jazz but the collective play any genre they want.

Lindsey himself took part in the Covers Club. He covered Mynydd Machen by The Flying Spider Revival. During the process, he learned what Mynydd Machen means, a hill in Caerphilly. He gave us a little insight into the creative process behind the cover. He told us that his studio is broken right now, so he went to fellow bandmate Kevin’s studio instead. He told us that he arrived a little later than he was supposed to and he found that Kevin had written the whole cover! Lindsey added some bass and other details in the end.

The song by Ampersand which was covered was Sinnerman. Rob Pennington gave a cover of the song which was completely different to the original Reggae song. Despite this, it was still a great cover.

We got a little insight into how Lindsey got into music. He told us that he was taught guitar chords by a family member although he didn’t have a guitar. So, he took a guitar from church. He told us that as a child he wasn’t allowed to watch TV after 7pm, so after that time he would practice his guitar and everything went from there.

Before Ampersand, he played a number of gigs and shows. He’s played at Ronnie Scotts in London, a venue in which many big names have played. He also played on the main stage at Glastonbury many years ago. He was also a part of the Red Wedge Tour from years ago. He also played in a Reggae group.

As this show was focused on the covers, we and Lindsey are already planning to come back and talk more about him since he has many stories about music and life in general.