Guitar, will travel

Neal in his speedy get around due to a bad back.

Neal, like all people, have a gift or talent to share and has brought a bit of sunshine to others through Music. Neal grew up travelling the world with his Dad in the army so got use to being flexible and adapting.

His love for music came early and an opportunity to play the banjo at boarding school came up so he took it on. One of his friends though said, “You’d never get the girls playing banjo”, to which Neal thought, “oh, I’d better learn guitar then!”.

He never said if the change worked with the girls?

His teacher gave him some chords to learn for the next few months but Neal get the hang of them within days of practicing…. As Neal shared, “ Practice is where you suddenly realise that I’m ok at this and i’d enjoy the new licks or segments of songs that I could copy”.

Over the years in the 70’s, 80’s , Neal has toured with his mates across the country and enjoyed gigging but actually it was seeing people enjoy the music and sharing the passion was the motivation.

Since then Neal has been through varies ordeals but has always found the love of music to be his therapy and outlet for others too.

A chance meeting with a community worker during Covid season enabled Neal to do a little gig at a local pub and started to get the passion back having struggled a bit with the isolation and rules of Covid.

Neal has shown kindness in Gloucester where he lives through supporting others and raising funds for various charities through performing his songs and covers and involving others to believe in their skills/ talents and gifts.

As Neal shares,

“Go for it, show it, let people see your talent, just see what happens and things will open up”.

What hobbies, talents, gifts are you hiding at the moment?. As Neal has shown, other people really benefit from your passions and actually connecting through these shared interests often builds up the Hope that we all need at this time.