My Passion with Martin Sissons

MARTIN Sissons, a partner in Sheffield law firm Simpson Sissons & Brooke, talks about his love for acoustic guitar

I HAVE an absolute lifelong love of the acoustic guitar, which I’ve been playing since I was nine or ten.

I don’t remember picking up a guitar because I had seen somebody playing it or anything like that. I just remember that they had advertised guitar lessons at school and I realised we had one at home, which I think my dad must have bought originally.

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His family were quite talented musically – I have one uncle in particular who, in his heyday, was a multi-instrumentalist with the Lord Conyers Morris Men, playing things like the accordion and the guitar, so perhaps it’s something in the genes.

You go through your teenage years thinking you could be a rock star and for a while, in the late seventies and early eighties, I did play with several local bands – one was called Cynthia and the Argonauts – but it wasn’t to be the career for me, even though we did get paid sometimes.

I think eventually reality kicks in and the bills start to come in and you have to get on the housing ladder. You realise the rock career isn’t going to happen and there’s never going to be the multi-million pound recording deal.

Nowadays there are more opportunities for aspiring musicians – open mic events and that sort of thing, more chances for people to simply get up and play music at little venues but there wasn’t so much like that when I was young.

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And then there was the cost element too – you would dream of having the best guitar, the best amp and all the rest, but it all seemed to cost so much back then.

So you go through that phase when the kids start arriving and your other life goes on hold but one day a mate of mine who had been living in New Zealand for a couple of years phoned me and said there was a guy playing at the Boardwalk in Sheffield and I had to see him because he was the best guitarist in the world.

His name is Tommy Emmanuel and he just blew me away. The fact it was just one guy up there playing an acoustic guitar and making it sound like there was a whole band on stage was extraordinary. I’m sure he must think I’m stalking him because I’ve seen him eight or nine times now and have all his albums.

Now, for the first time in many years, I’ve actually played in public again. One of the lads I used to play in bands with when we were young had a 50th birthday and he had this big party that we ended up calling Dave Fest because it was like a mini Glastonbury, even though it was actually in Bradfield on the outskirts of Sheffield.

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We played till one o’clock in the morning and it felt brilliant. In fact, the only sad thing about it is we rehearsed for weeks before the night and now we’re all emailing each other wondering what we’re going to do with our Wednesday evenings.

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