About
DLM are Andrew Cresswell Davis guitar, ukelele and vocals, Clare Lindley violin, guitar, ukelele and vocals and Brian Mullan cello and vocals. They employ a number of styles in their repertoire reflecting a desire to entertain audiences of all ages and musical tastes.
A typical DLM set list will contain beautifully imagined original material, some traditional music from Britain and Ireland and a few carefully chosen covers by such luminaries as Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Bessie Smith, Blue Nile and Robbie Burns.
Andy Davis was born in Yatton, Somerset, UK in 1949. He took up the guitar at an early age and played in a number of west-country based bands until he formed the inimitable melodic rock band Stackridge with James Walter in 1968. Stackridge went on to record 5 albums over 6 years. The best of these The Man In The Bowler Hat was produced by the fifth Beatle Sir George Martin.
Almost as soon as he had set foot in the London music scene of the early 70s Andy found himself playing acoustic guitar on John Lennon’s Imagine album.
In 1978, he formed pop duo The Korgis with James Warren and the duo had a couple of notable hit singles, If I Had You and Everybody”s Got To Learn Sometime.
As an antidote to the manicured pop of The Korgis Andy picked up the guitar again and immersed himself in the fantastical Slow Twitch Fibres, a confection cooked up by Bristol bass wizard Pete Brandt. In 1984 Andy formed The 3 Caballeros with Peter Allerhand and Stuart Gordon. Though rarely straying outside the Bristol Bath area the legendary “3 Cabs” lasted from the mid 80s to 2012.
It was while visiting the same seedy west-country nightspots as the embryonic Tears For Fears that Andy was asked to join their live band on keyboards. Later he toured with Julian Cope on the World Shut Your Mouth tour and he has also done time with the Bill Nelson Orchestra and Goldfrapp.
There followed several years of writing songs with and for a diverse collection of artists including Roger Cook, Flo Mcsweeney, Yaz, Tracy Ullman and Rod Stewart. The real satisfaction though lay in performing his own material and Andy recorded his first solo Album Clevedon Pier in 1990 and then formed the imaginatively titled Andy Davis Band, who didn’t get the exposure they deserved though they did played 3 consecutive years on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury Festival.
In 2010 there was a new album from a re-formed Stackridge titled A Victory For Common Sense followed by several years of touring with a re-vamped line-up.
Clare Lindley grew up in the 1970s in rural Aberdeenshire, where a rich traditional music culture still sits happily amongst popular music.
She learned classical viola at school and played in string quartets and orchestras. She left school and moved to the bright lights of Aberdeen, discovering blues jams and folk music sessions where she started to find Scottish fiddle music more socially acceptable, as well as knocking around with lots of blues guitarists and pretending to play lead guitar on her newly acquired fiddle.
She played in the duo Green for nine years and they released an album on Lochshore Records called Found on The Wave. They played lots of lovely Scottish folk festivals in the highlands and islands as well as gigging extensively all over Europe. At the same time she learned how to dance-call for ceilidhs, which were a popular feature of the Aberdeen music scene and, as it turns out, a canny career move.
In the late 90s she moved to London and played on the London Irish scene with cult band Six Mike Walk for five years, after which she decided to move west and get out of the big smoke.
She has played and dance called at possibly thousands of ceilidhs, in quite a few different countries and to people who have never danced a step in their lives. She regularly plays concerts for old and vulnerable people for the charity Music in Hospitals. She has toured with a Taiwanese tribe, taught hundreds of children how to play Smoke on the Water on guitar, has played Iranian folk rock music and toured Germany with Jan Allain.
In 2009 she joined Stackridge who gathered her up into their bus and showed her a good time in the tea shops and takeaways of the towns and cities of England. She has her own ceilidh band called Big Jessie.
Brian Mullan is originally from Cornwall and moved to London to pursue a career as a professional cellist. In 1991 he joined the Sterling Quartet which gave its Wigmore Hall debut in 1996, and recorded the complete Rubbra quartets for Conifer Classics.
In addition to his work as freelance concert cellist, Brian has recorded for radio and television and has been involved in projects over a wide range of musical styles, including touring as solo cellist with Abdullah Ibrahim at the Royal Festival Hall and the Glasgow International Jazz Festival. He later became involved in the London folk scene, playing cello with The Other Brothers, Beware of the Dog and Six Mile Walk.
Brian still plays for opera companies and in chamber groups and is a regular dep with the Bath Pump Room Trio. He works with Clare Lindley in several groups – they give concerts for Music in Hospitals, run a ceilidh band and they both work with Andrew Cresswell Davis. They both travel to Tanzania annually to play at a fundraising ball.