Busted Fender Blues Band

The reasons forTims exit were never fully explained, the band knew they may pay a heavy price.  The loss of many fans was to follow, as many people came to see Tim play guitar. He was, and still is, a phenomenal guitarist and his leaving left a big hole in the band.

A well known blues guitarist  and an avid supporter of the blues Andy Broad was asked to fill the gap.

Andy’s guitar style was very different from Tim Dunn’s; it was much more laid back, but Andy Mills loved that style of playing and felt that it was in line with the kind of directional  shift the band were going to have to make. Still, there was that big hole to fill left by Tim Dunn, so the band had to up their game a little so as not to lose the power of the songs they still wanted to perform. Mick Arloe began playing a lot more guitar to really drive the rhythm and added more harmonica to fill spaces. Kevin Brazier came much more to the forefront, taking on more piano solos.Their style changed slightly to a swingier blues as played by some of the US bands and they began to write more of this material. .

In 1996 Kevin Brazier turned up for rehearsal one night and declared his intention to leave the band, Kevin went on to play with Tim Dunn in Silicon Strings until 1999.This came as a great shock and almost spelt the end of the band there and then, as Mick Arloe was as reluctant as ever to carry on without Kevin. However, they reached the decision to recruit a brass section to replace the piano,

Mick thought of it as a challenge and decided to stick it out. They hired one of Portsmouth’s greatest trumpet players, Ron Williams, to hand-pick fellow brass players to accompany him with Busted Fender. Richard Walker was chosen and with just the two of them Busted Fender carried on with yet another dimension to their music. When Ron went to work on the cruises, Jock McKenzie stood in. But it wasn’t to last long now as Mick’s heart was just not into carrying on, and in 1997 Mick Arloe announced his retirement from the band. This proved to be one change too many and Busted Fender performed their last gig in August of that year at the Contented Pig in Portsmouth.

Sadly despite some false starts the classic Busted Fender line up featuring Tim Dunn was never to play again .However the amount Tim Dunn cared for the band was evident when he worked on and remastering the four album back catalogue for CD in 2001,entirely financing the project himself. As a result these cd's can still be purchased today.

Ron Williams sadly passed away a few years ago. He will be sorely missed.

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