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THERE is no doubt that Rod Clements has had an amazing career in music.
In addition to playing bass, fiddle, mandolin, dobro and electric slide guitar for Lindisfarne (he also wrote the band's first hit song, Meet Me On The Corner, among others), he played bass on the classic Ralph McTell song Streets of London and has worked extensively with folk guitar legend Bert Jansch and other notable figures.

On Sunday, September 6, he will be playing at the Peel Centenary Centre as part of GuitarFest – with support from Grammy-award winning world music guitarist Amrit Sond – and he will also be giving a slide workshop at Peter Norris Music, Douglas, the day before from 3pm to 4.30pm.

While he was a full time bass player for Lindisfarne he has been playing regular six string guitar and slide guitar throughout his career.

He explained: 'Fortunately I kept the guitar side going all through those years and I always had an attraction to slide guitar because of its origins in the blues. I was particularly drawn to folk blues and country blues music and the electric slide as played by Elmore James and Ry Cooder and people like that as well.

'It was an instrument I developed in tandem with bass playing and I played slide on some of the early Lindisfarne records and on some of the later ones too.'

His contribution to Ralph McTell's most famous song has an interesting story behind it.

'I had actually been invited by Ralph to play bass on a Bert Jansch session and it was the first of many recordings Bert and I made with Ralph producing it. We did a version of In The Bleak Midwinter which was Bert's Christmas single.

'After we had recorded that song Ralph said "we have got a bit of time left over, if you wouldn't mind could we do one of mine" and that was Streets of London which we did in the last half an hour of that session and it went to number one that Christmas.'

I told Rod that Streets Of London is one of those songs that many a budding guitarist wants to learn to play.

'It is archetypal in a way – if you can learn that you have learnt quite a lot,' he said.

Rod said he was first turned onto the blues as a genre by the Rolling Stones.

'One thing you should always bear in mind about the Rolling Stones is they always credited their sources, they always told people where they got the music from, they always said "this was a song from Muddy Waters or Elmore James or whoever". If you liked their music you could trace the music back from what they told you,' he said.

'Some of those records you could buy relatively easy if you went to your local record shop and looked through the blues and folk racks and that is something you can't do now, it's very difficult, you have to seek out specialist record shops.

'There was some stuff that you couldn't get hold of at all, some records had an almost mythical status like the Robert Johnson album for example. Only a few copies made their way here on import or had been privately brought across.

'That was like the Holy Grail to hear that. Now you can walk into HMV or anywhere and buy it, which is great but I sometimes think that music had extra magic for me because there was a certain thrill of the chase involved in finding it.'

In terms of the longevity of that music and why generations of fans continue to buy it, he said: 'The early country blues was done as a very spontaneous reaction to the world around these guys and the emotions they felt and the lives they lived. It was a direct unselfconscious transmission of their lives into music and song.

'Another quality about the blues is that although it can express the entire range of emotion – there are happy blues as well as sad blues – the important thing as with any kind of songwriting is to share feelings and let people who are feeling down know they are not the only ones.

'You can always feel a bit enhanced by someone expressing the emotions so aptly.'

Of course learning that music was different then to now with the availability of many more tuition guides ranging from books to instructional DVDs these days.

'You had to try and work it out yourself,' explained Rod. 'If you got the chance you would go to see other exponents of it. There were blues bands like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac and stuff like that and you would read interviews with people and find out they played in open tunings. It was very much a DIY learning process.

'You would share what you had picked up and you would swap ideas and techniques. I often wonder what the difference is between having learned to do it that way and having learned through books and DVDs. I do feel we all have to find our own path in this.'

The IoM GuitarFest, organised by JonnoPromotions, runs from September 3 to 6. For the full line up of events see www.iomguitarfest.com

The gig at the Centenary Centre starts at 8pm and a full price ticket is £13. Ring 694555 or 600555 to book.

Tickets for the slide masterclass are £5 for adults and £3 for young people.

www.iomguitarfest.com

www.rodclements.com