Pure Local Extra – John Morris

Todays guest, John Morris joined us on the show after he last visit over a year ago. He had sent us some new music as well as a charity track, all of which we got some insight into.

Firstly, we listened to one of his songs, ‘We did it for the music’.  John used to be in a band called ‘Hobo’ in the 70s and this song was all about reminiscing about the good old days in the band. He told us that the idea came from a reunion with the surviving members of the band in which they all gathered and talked about some of the memories rom their time as Hobo. He mentioned that they talked about why they did it, and they certainly didn’t do it for the money.

After listening to the song, John told us a little more about Hobo. The band formed in 1970. John had just left school and was playing bass in a blues band. He then met soon to be bandmate Colin and they discovered they both had a shared interest in acoustic music. John then left his blues band and (in his words) embarked on a journey to become a famous acoustic harmony band. John told us that he and the others in the band would go around London knocking on doors with their tapes trying to promote their music. They eventually signed with Rockfield Studios and recorded an album. They only ended making one album and the whole ordeal was short lived, but in that time they toured and played lots of gigs. The would go on to support big names such as Humble Pie. At one point, the BBC came to Rockfield and got some footage of Hobo and put it into a documentary which is avaliable on YouTube (Hobo at Rockfield).

John then told us what happened after Hobo. The band ended in the summer of 1976, one of the reasons being that music was changing rapidly and there wasn’t much demand for their style. No one was interested in supporting them so they chose to put Hobo on the shelf and go their separate ways.

During the show, John’s partner Roz came on to talk a little about a charity event  she is doing. She is a nurse for St David’s Hospice in Newport and to raise money for some desired equipment, she and others are going to be abseiling. They are named the ‘Abseiling Angels’ and you can find them on Facebook and their just giving page. John wanted to get involved so he wrote a short jingle for their advert.

John then gave us some insight into how he got back into music. He was approaching retirement a few years ago so he was going to have much more time on his hands. He chose to get back into songwriting which he still does today. He told us that he is always working on something new. Recently, he’s been looking through his catalogue of songs and deciding to revive some of them through re recording them. John is also part of a collective who play 80s music.

Finally, we listened to his song ‘As time goes by’.  This is one of John’s older songs which has be re recorded multiple times. He told us that he got the idea for the song after watching a documentary about Eric Clapton, someone he has always admired. He wrote the song as a reflection of life.

As always, this is only a little bit of the show, you can listen to the full show here