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Biography 1989 -2004
| Redwood formed in 1989 in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham. The original line-up include Al Cowan on vocals and Rob Blackham on keyboard. Angus (Al's brother) joined soon after as he was giving his brother lifts to the practice and 'had a rudimentary knowledge of guitar'. Players came and went, with Rob swapping to guitar and Jaqui Widdowson being bought in to play keyboards. The bass player at the time was Paul 'one note beastie' Bennett with Dave Brown on the drums. Venues played included The Station (Sutton Coldfield), and the Coach & Horses (Balsall Heath). |  |
Promo Photo 1989 - (left to right) Al, Angus, Jaci, Rob. |
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This line-up lasted for several years till a big shake up which resulted in Redwood being a two piece for a short while (Al & Angus, and a win in the Guildford Uni annual Band Competition). By now the band had all relocated to Guildford. Things got back to normal and drummers were auditioned and gigged. James Walker joined us for a year and played on early demo 'Mary Jane' but left left to pursue a career at the BBC. Eventually the accident prone but solid Chris Hughes was poached from another band. Redwood was now complete and ready to take on the world. | |
| Promo Photo -
1990 Note 1 - Friend Clare in background coz we had no drummer! Note 2 - Big Hair was in at the time... |
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| James still had several commitments to fulfill with the band, one of these being a national band competition held at the old Powerhouse Club in London. It was at this gig that a drunken Chris, after being plied with free whisky all night and while moshing at the front, was seen to pick up Al's monitor from the stage and stagger off to the bar. We knew then that we had made the right decision to get him to drum with us! We came 2nd and the prize was a free days recording at Marcus Studios (London) which is where we met producer Tim Hunt who helped us to produce our self financed album 'Head' using studio downtime. He also introduced us to Barry Campbell who ended up managing us for the remainder of the bands career. | |||
 - Photo for 'Head' Album, Shelley Arms (A22, East Hellingley), 1994 (left to right): Al Cowan-Vocals,Bass, Angus Cowan-Guitar, Chris Hughes-Drums, Rob Blackham-Guitar - |
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| The band started gigging around the
south coast and at various Universities with the very first issue of the newsletter BLURB
being created in October 1993 (13 more were to follow). Slots at the Phoenix festival for
three years running followed with interest from various labels (Polydor, EMI) resulting in
lots of free studio time, the tracks recorded eventually becoming the Asylum EP (1995).
Finally, after a bit of negotiating and release of the single 'Gone', a track we had
recorded earlier in the year, we were signed to Almo Sounds in November 1996. We partied
till Christmas before getting down to some real work producing a 24 track demo by
March'96. On hearing the demo Almo decided we were ready to do an album. - |
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| Guildford Festival 1995, Second Stage - |
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| Within a week we had decided on a producer, Mark Wallis, whose previous credits included The La's, U2, Wildhearts, and many others. We spent two weeks pre-production at Backline studios before moving to Black Barn studios (Ripley) for two weeks to record the album, another week mixing in London and then mastering and the album was complete (total cost approx £40,000) | |||
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| Four more singles were released with
touring to support them before the album was finally released in November 1997 to critical
acclaim. Another single 'Anything Goes' (re-recorded by Pete Smith) was released
March '98 closely followed by our biggest tour yet with the band Thunder. Unfortunately
even as we were touring the record company were running into difficulty and we parted
company late '98, with Almo Sounds going under shortly after. Through discussions with our management we decided to change the name of the band to Lazydog. Chris and Angus adopted a behind the scenes stance but and we carried on writing and recording eventually releasing the Redwood LP in September 2000. By now the band had stopped touring and it wasn't long before the band drifted apart to work on solo projects. The last full band gig was at Guildford Festival 2000 on the second stage. Alistair and Angus have played two acoustic gigs as Redwood, Guildford Festival 2003 (third stage) and Surrey University, May 2004. |
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