Press Here you can find a collection of past interviews, features and reviews. Just click on your chosen article from the following list. Articles Mark S. Tucker, Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange 2009 Sam Wise, Acoustic Magazine 2009 Tersztyánszky Krisztina, Vas Népe 2008 Frank Gutch Jr., Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange 2007 Sam Wise, Acoustic Magazine 2006 Owen Bailey, Guitarist Magazine 2006 Simon Bradley, Guitarist Magazine 2006 Patrick Regains, Minor 7th 2006 Giles Duffy, Rocks Magazine 2006 Henk de Veldhuis, Bridge Guitar Reviews 2006 Phil Jackson, BBC Southern Counties 2006
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Owen Bailey, Guitarist Magazine 2006 "Lee Westwood - No, not the golfer... an emerging acoustic instrumentalist with blazing technique, ensuring the fingerpicking tradition remains in safe hands. Like most kids getting into music for the first time in the late eighties, Lee Westwood was inspired to pick up the guitar by a certain legendary rock export from Stoke-On-Trent. Back then it was the law. "When I was nine my mum started playing Guns N' Roses in the car and that was it, basically, I wanted to be Slash," he says. Despite seven years of playing electric in rock bands, his all-acoustic debut album To Sleep - with its intricate fingerpicking and counterpoint melodies, and its jazz, folk, blues and classical influences - has more in common with Pierre Bensusan and Eric Roche than Guns N' Roses. "At university in Brighton I was fiddling around with the acoustic guitar and my friend told me to throw away my plectrum and start learning again with my fingers," Westwood recalls. "I started hearing people like Tommy Emmanuel and Pierre Bensusan and I'd never heard anything like it before. That was about five or six years ago. Then, about three years ago, I found out they were playing in DADGAD. Finding a new tuning was a new means of expression that made everything fresh again." From then on the 20-year-old Westwood "didn't really do anything else". He explains: "For a good three years I was just playing eight to 15 hours a day in my house. That's how you get good at things, or familiar with them at least." And the result of this dedication is that To Sleep's range of styles is dizzying, but never hackneyed. Whether taking in John Renbourn-like bluesy picking on Calamity, or tracing unusual time signatures in A Star Above The Arctic Circle, Westwood either sidesteps DADGAD's failsafe riffs altogether, or transforms them into something fresh. "It's not so much the shapes and styles to avoid, more a question of how you use them. And if in your head you can hear this massive band playing and you've just got an acoustic guitar to replicate it, then you start using all these rhythms and polyrhythms." His choice of instrument is equally humbling. "For the album I just played a pretty cheap Epiphone PR775S dreadnought: spruce top, laminate back and sides, with huge cracks and dents in it. In fact, in the past two weeks, it's reached the end of it's life. It's sad... but I'd never break it up for firewood or anything." While adamant that he's not trying to be a revivalist, and that nowodays he's actually more interested in sounding like Rachmaninov or Debussy on the guitar than anyone else, he doesn't rule out the possibility he may be part of a new folk revival. "I was busking the other day and some guy was telling me he thought there was some Celtic folk revival in England, that it was all coming back in fashion, that there seem to be a lot of ceilidhs going on - so you never know. Maybe he was right. Or maybe he was mad. Passing Notes... Favourite guitarists: Ralph Towner, Michael Hedges, Pierre Bensusan, John Fahey. Favourite Gear: "I'm really looking to play a Richard Osborne guitar. He's a luthier in Lewes, his guitars are fantastic - just beautiful. Id be after a rosewood back and sides, probably Brazilian, Sitka spruce top, dreadnought shape, things I've become familiar with. Try if you like: Eric Roche, Pierre Bensusan. Out now: To Sleep (Farewell Songs). - Owen Bailey, Guitarist Magazine 2006
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