In my late-teens a guy gave me an electric guitar. He heard me play a few songs and said, I've got three guitars, two kids, a wife and a full-time job. One of ‘em has to go. Honestly, I was unclear what he was talking about until the next day when he arrived at my parent's house with a guitar case in hand. I've got a very special guitar I could hear you playing, he said, only thing is it needs a little work. He opened the case on a beautiful but battered tobacco-yellow-brown semi-hollow Epiphone 335. It needed frets, binding, strings and a complete set-up, but it was a diamond in the rough, so to speak. I know that now. I didn't then. I was 17-years old with a head full of blue-sky dreams. I wanted to be a rock ‘n roller. Like Keith Richards, Eric Clapton or this young turk called Bruce Springsteen. To my young mind the guitar I’d been gifted didn't look anything like what they played. I needed something cooler. That's how I came to trade it for a see-through plexiglass electric that looked just the part. Only problem is it sounded like clattering metal. I couldn't make it sing, so I relegated it to its rectangular case with the red-plush lining. Eventually, I practically paid someone to take it off my hands. Let that be the end of it, I thought. Which it kind of mostly has been until this past Saturday. While mooching around the guitar shops on Denmark Street in London, where I look from time-to-time for one of those vintage Epiphone 335s, I came upon an exact version of the dreaded plexiglass guitar. Face-to-face with me in the shop window, the sins of my past, as it were, staring back at me. A 1972 Dan Armstrong electric guitar, the same model for which I had foolishly traded the vintage and prestigious aforementioned diamond in the rough. It was like a cold slap in the face to see the same model that I practically gave away all those years ago. Same model. Same year. Same everything. Asking price in 2026: £37,999.00. Shoulda kept it, I guess.
(photo Jo Hurwitz Williams)
BROOKS' SOLO TOUR
February 2026
6th Cambridge Folk Club, Cambridge
7th Cafe No. 9, Sheffield, South Yorkshire (ONLY 4 TX LEFT)
8th Old School Hall, Armathwaite, Carlisle, Cumbria
10th Fougou Music, Livermead Cliff Hotel, Torbay, Devon
13th Roots Music Club, Brewery Tap, Doncaster
14th Canopy Theatre, Beccles, Suffolk
19th Concert, Edinburgh Scotland
20th The Book Tree, Pickering, North Yorkshire
22nd Lazy Sonnie Afternoon, Son en Breugel The Netherlands
23rd Midnight Special Blues, The Cabin, Camberley, Surrey
27th Folk At The Fox, Bulmer Tye, Sudbury (SOLD OUT)
Get your BROOKS' ACOUSTIC CD or DOWNLOAD
(design by Leslie Lee)
BROOKS AND AARON ON TOUR!
Celebrating their 4th recording, Working In Wood, Brooks and Aaron are back on the road in 2026. First up,
March 2026
1st Town Hall, Axbridge, Somerset
4th Spalding Folk Club, Spalding, South Holland, Lincolnshire
5th Cafe No. 9, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
6th Lindfield Arts, Lindfield, Sussex
7th The Back Room, Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire
8th Folk On The Moor, Wooter, Devon
10th Leith Folk Club, Edinburgh, Scotland
13th Glenbuchat Live, Glenbuchat, Scotland
14th Edinvillie Community Hall, Edinvillie, Aberlour, Moray, Scotland
18th Willows Folk Club, Wrea Green, Preston, Lancashire
20th St Mary's Church, Brought Ferry, Scotland
21st The Institute, Laxey, Isle Of Man
GET YOUR WORKING IN WOOD CD or DOWNLOAD
(photo by Theo Looijmans)
NEW SONGS NEW VIDEOS
Exclusive sessions from a closed multi-camera set at The Green Note, London.
Can't Get Over You video
Teach Me video
Lookout Mountain video
Shawneetown video
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