1996 - 2007

I moved from Hull in 1998 to a small seaside town in North Yorkshire called Whitby. On the first night (Wednesday) I went to the folk club run by Mick Haywood, having got to know him from numerous previous visits, he greeted me with "welcome home" and it felt like it for a long while. On the Friday he knocked on the door and took me on a pub crawl to introduce me to parts of the town I didn't know. I used to play at the folk club and in various local pubs and did some busking. I was teaching myself fingerpicking, something I had never been able to get to grips with but was determined to learn. I was working in the pub one night when a guy called Barry Whiteland walked in, he was a guitar-teacher and window-cleaner from Middlesborough just come to live in Whitby and commute, he was an ace guitarist specialising in fingerpicking. We started a blues night which ran for about a year and a half. During Folk-Week one year we held our blues night in the Black Horse as usual with the words 'Blues On - Folk Off', the folkies were horrified and at the end of the night some members of the Wilson family ran in, sang a quick bit of folk music then ran out again! Barry was also a really good fisherman and had a secret bait we used to call 'Barrys' Secret Bait'. He taught me lots of good fingerpicking stuff but had a problem with shaky hands cos he was fond of whisky. At some point in 2001 I was smoking a joint and listening to The Beta Band - 3 EPs, something happened and What Katy Did Next was born again in my head. I started to slowly collect some equipment but it was a long time coming to fruition due to the fact that I had a serious breakdown in 2002 and another one a year later in 2003, a couple of months after having to go bankrupt. I slowly recovered, helped in 2004/05 by meeting The Geezer and smoking vast amounts of weed. In 2006 I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland.