Before you Know it, It's March - Nigel Hopkins Music

It was a funny old February. I visited Scotland with The "Some guys Have all The Luck" show, which features Paul Metcalf as Rod Stewart. I travelled there with Al Vosper and Phil Groyssboeck, two great friends who've graced the stage with Chris de Burgh on numerous occasions. David Levy was on another continent with Andrew Roachford, so we missed the full complement of CdeB'ers.

The Shows were met with wonderful enthusiasm. The Scots really let you know if they're enjoying themselves. The Shows continue onwards and it goes from Strength to Strength.

I've just started the String Arrangements for Chimpan A, the Robert Reed/Steve Balsamo project that I was involved with back in 2004. It's brilliantly written songs with a wonderfully exciting vibe to it. So far, we are about 3 arrangements short and my time has been taking up this week creating a track for the Chris de Burgh new CD song collection from his previous catalogue. 3 new songs are being added to 25 songs (one from each album) and I have one to work on. Makes a change from 23.

I've managed to find a few bits of kit that I'll be selling as I don't use it anymore. Sometimes technology forges ahead and we forget that some synths stand the test of time, and some are left behind. The Emu 6400 Samplers that I have are going one by one. At a point in time, there were 7 of them. Now 2 remain. Two got obliterated in a truck on tour, one froze up due to excessive heat. One ended up being used as a donor to save the others. So many synth collectors love them, but with new technology....you have GIGABYTES of Libraries. The Emu's were 128mb tops. They were used for all the Chris de Burgh shows up until 2017. Now it is all computer based and sometimes ease of operation is far more acceptable than dragging 20-30 year technology half way across the world. The Emu samplers had been to Russia, Canada, the US of A, Turkey, The Lebanon, and survived (all bar the driver of the truck's intervention.)