Attwood Theatre at Mulberry Academy

It will be a trip back to old home territory as Peter Knight’s Gigspanner Trio plays the Attwood Theatre at Mulberry Academy, Bexhill on Wednesday, November 11 at 8pm (doors 7pm).

Tickets for the gig are available on https://wegottickets.com/f/23063, a return to the area where Peter once lived.

Hastings was home for many years before he moved to France where he still lives: “I could buy a nice house with a couple of barns in France and I could have a studio. I could afford what I couldn't afford in the UK. We live just near Limoges and it's great.”

As for the band, Peter admits he has lost track of just how many years Gigspanner has been going now: “It all started just with Vincent Salzfaas, the conga player. He saw me playing in Hastings. He got in touch with me and we started playing some music together. We did a few gigs and then we decided we needed someone else and the rest is history… if I could remember it!

“Initially when it was just me and Vincent, it was all improvised. But I have always had an interest in improvising, not just improvising around the chord sequence but playing spontaneously in the moment. What we always do with Gigspanner is make sure that there is a place for that, for improvisation in the traditional tunes that we play. It just keeps it fresh for me.

“For me it's a way of making music that arrives as something that could not arrive with you with any other approach to music. It's the first time you're playing something. If you're writing a tune, then you hit a phrase or something that works and then after that it just becomes a good performance of a piece of music. But the kick that you get from playing something that you have never played before is pretty wonderful especially when it's in front of an audience.

“I remember talking with Bob Johnson who was in Steeleye. He took a clinical psychology course and it was interesting. He was saying that when you are playing music in front of people you could think it was all about ego but actually it's not. If you're in front of people, you can do things that you couldn't do if there wasn’t anybody there. I love playing without a safety net. I love not knowing what I'm going to do and I just love exploring and playing with texture.”

The current tour is what they are calling an album preview tour. There will be an album from the tour afterwards: “The equipment that you use is studio quality when you're recording gigs. I have no idea when the album will be but we'll listen to all the gigs that we play and we will pick the best versions of all the songs that we will do and we'll bring it out as an album however long that takes!”

Joining Peter will be guitarist Roger Flack and hand percussionist Sacha Trochet.