Curriculum Vitea
of singer/songwriter
Dave Keats

Musical Background

1960-1965: Traditional schooling. Achieved good grades in music despite not playing an instrument.

1967: Learnt to play guitar and harmonica. In my first year as a musician I played regular gigs at the Castle Folk Club in Newport, Gwent, U.K. It was in this period that I learnt most of the styles that I have since discarded. i.e. finger picking, bottleneck and vamping on the harmonica. My enthusiasm for song writing had already begun several years prior to this, so upon learning an instrument the words I'd been writing for the previous five years or so were almost immediately put to music.

1968-1970: Continued to play folk clubs at every opportunity in the Newport/Cardiff area of South Wales. Almost without exception my sets were self penned. The song writing continued at a rate of anything from one to twenty songs a week.

1971-1973: Toured with various small time rock bands which resulted in a real good gig from time to time. These dates included some memorable moments like supporting Slade at the Weston-Super-Mare Pavilion and being on the same bill at the Speakeasy in London when the New York Dolls ambled in, borrowed the booked band's equipment, played four or five songs, and split. That was the Doll's first ever gig in Europe. The song writing continued.

1974: I moved to Jersey and in general took time out playing only the occasional gig in the Mechanics and Ann Port Folk Clubs. The song writing continued.

1978: Came second in the Melody Maker regional heats of "Search for a Star" or some other aptly named competition. Melody Maker described me as "an aspiring Loudon Wainwright the Third". On the strength of that performance in Plymouth which included The Proverbial Halter-Neck and Last Stand I was given an eleventh hour booking the next night as support to the Jenny Darren Band, AC/DC and Medicine Head (top of the bill). The song writing continued.

1980-1994: Took more time out due to the impossible situation of living on an island in the middle of nowhere. However.......The song writing continued.

1995: Bought a computer and music software then combined thirty years of song writing experience with my new found computer skills to put a different angle on the sounds I was producing. My initial efforts can be found on Shaenea. The song writing continued.

2000: I made a promise to myself that if I wasn't famous by the time that I was fifty I'd quit. True to my word I haven't written a song or played a single gig since. All else aside, the whole business seems to full of karaoke singers like Britney Spears and Geri Halliwel who mime on stage or bands with so much computerised backing that it's virtually impossible to do a bad gig so I don't want to be a part of that scene. Computerised I hear you say. Yes, but the music on this site is for convenience and should I ever be in a position to make a professional album I'd use real musicians in the studio and on stage with computers as a means of enhancing the music not replacing it.