Session Diary Finding Your Voice

Alongside his TV work, session guitarist Adam Goldsmith has found a streamlined setup for some ronnie scott’s gigs.

Sandwiched in between last month’s stint in the house band on ITV’s The Nightly Show and next month’s couple of weeks filming in another house band for a new BBC series Pitch Battle, I’ve been playing the early set at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho. I know this column is entitled ‘Session Diary’, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I talk about this experience, the gear I’ve been using and some of the major differences between this kind of work and the two TV house band gigs book ending it.

My band at Ronnie’s consisted of Sam Burgess on bass, who’s the house bass player at Ronnie’s and a good friend, Simon Allen on sax, Tom Cawley on piano (we’ve been playing together on and off since our days in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra), and Gary Husband on drums. Gary’s well known for being both Allan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin’s drummer, so no pressure there, then! Luckily, he’s also a lovely man as well as a phenomenal drummer, so I soon forgot about that and just enjoyed playing with him.