Musical fusion with dad on piano and son on sax

MUSICIAN Tom Waters has followed in his father Ben’s footsteps, dropping out of school for his love of playing (although he did go back later).

The duo, with Ben on piano and Tom on saxophone, will play the Kenton Theatre later this month.

Ben, 51, lives in Weymouth with his wife, Ruth, a dog trainer, and they are parents to Tom, 25, and Molly, 23. Ben himself dropped out of school at the age of 14, playing honky-tonk and boogie-woogie tunes on the piano and performing with lots of different musicians.

Tom first expressed an interest at the age of five, when he asked if he could join his dad on a flight from Bournemouth to Edinburgh where he was playing a concert.

“It was August 2006 and I’d booked my flight weeks ago,” says Ben, “and nobody wanted to come at the time, but as I was leaving the house, my son said, ‘Where are you going, Dad? Can I come?’

“So, we flew up there and it was freezing cold and we were doing an outside concert at Kelly Castle, we’d just gone up in shorts and T-shirts because it was 30 degrees down in Dorset.

“So I zipped him into this suitcase and propped him up next to the saxophone players. He watched that for two hours and at the end of the concert, he said, ‘Can I play saxophone?’ I said, ‘Well, don’t ask me, ask the saxophone players’, so he went up and asked them, who incidentally were the cream of English jazz saxophone players.

“There was a guy called Don Weller, Willie Garnett and his son, Alex Garnett and a trombone player, Mike Hogh. Willie Garnett, who was the nicest guy in the world, said to Tom, ‘You can’t play saxophone until you’re eight years old because it pushes your teeth out’.”

When Tom reached the age of eight, his parents obliged and he began to learn the instrument.

“I’ve got a group of musicians that I know and love, but my favourite thing in the world is playing with my son,” says Ben.

“He gave up school at the age of 13 and toured with me for three years. We did 900 shows around the world and he was meant to do all his work as we went round but he never did. When he got back he got into the Royal Academy of Music.

“Being of the same flesh and blood, I think we have this almost telepathic thing that goes on. Even now, when I haven’t seen him for a while, I just look at him and we know exactly, it’s uncanny sometimes, we just do a weird sort of stop, he knows how daft I am.”

Ben says he is “not a conventional musician”.

“I can’t read music and I can’t read the chord charts, I’m pretty basic, which has hindered me in lots of ways but it’s helped me in lots of ways as well.

“Some of the people I’ve played with, they just love the natural approach and they don’t like things to be too clinical and stuff.

“I’m a messy player, I’m just more all over it kind of thing which some people like. A lot of those old blues players, they weren’t scholars, maybe playing wrong chords half the time and that’s what people loved about it, that it wasn’t perfect.

“I did an album years ago, when I was 18, and I recorded it in one take, the whole album, no overdubs, there were mistakes all over the place.

“I was speeding up, I’m slowing down, I’m singing terribly, but funnily enough it was my most successful album, really.

“I remember Andy Kershaw taking a liking to it and he’s saying ‘What, how does an 18-year-old lad from Weymouth know about Professor Longhair?’ That’s what he seemed to be more intrigued about.”

Having travelled and toured the world for years, Ben set up Rock n Roll Holidays, a company which combines world travels with local music and culture.

“I’ve been a musician for
35 years and then I went and played in this place called Penticton in British Columbia, in Canada, about 14 years ago.

“I’d never heard of the place and I fell in love with it. It’s on the Okanagan Lake and the lake gets up to 28, 29 degrees, the water, in the summer and it’s white sandy beaches and palm trees. It’s a breathtaking place and a lovely place to stay. You can even go up into the mountains and go skiing and come down and swim and I just loved it.

“All the tour operators tell you about Vancouver and Whistler and Niagara Falls but I’d never heard of Penticton and I thought if I come back here again, I’ll take a load of people with me, see if they want to come. I got home and I was playing in Memphis and New Orleans next so I just thought it was quite a good idea to see if anybody wanted to come, so I asked if anybody wanted to come and 35 people came with me, including my mum.

“So I started a company called Rock n Roll Holidays. We’ve done about 200 trips around the world now and I’ve just come back from the Arctic. We went up and saw the Northern Lights and stayed the day with the Sami people and I did a couple of concerts in Tromsø in Norway, so everyone comes to the concerts.”

In December, Ben and Tom played the Crooked Billet in Stoke Row for an annual gig. “Paul [Clerehugh] is one of my best friends, he’s helped me so much through the years,” adds Ben.

“He’s quite a cool guy really, he knows so much about the music industry and he’s very gentle as well. He’s very thoughtful and gives me words of encouragement. He’s got a special place in my heart.

“I met a famous producer once called Don Was and I was speaking to my son, who was really nervous about meeting this famous saxophone player and he didn’t want to play in front of him.

“Don just said ‘No no no, you’ve got to stop, never say that, because you’re writing your own book. You don’t have to be the best in the world but people will like you for you and they will dislike you for you. So just do your own thing and stay true to yourself’.”

l Tom and Ben Waters play the Kenton Theatre on Sunday, January 25 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £25.25. For more information, call the box office on (01491) 525050 or visit thekenton.org.uk