Aidan smitten by team spirit of blues music

The term ‘working musician’ definitely applies to Aidan Curran. On the day of this interview, the blues guitarist has just come from a day teaching at the Access Music Project School of Rock and has an hour to spare before travelling to Adare, County Limerick, where he is playing a gig.

The School of Rock is a week long programme where teenage students take classes in guitar, bass, percussion and vocals. Aidan gets a buzz from being involved.

“They’re in on Monday and they’re playing a live performance on Friday. We had a guy this week who hadn’t played a guitar chord, ever,” Aidan says. “In one way, you feel great to be part of it and on the other you’re thinking ‘I might be losing some gigs’! They just soak it up so quickly – ‘let’s do this, let’s try that’.

Did the Dublin-born guitarist have any memorable teachers himself when he started out playing?

“For my 14th birthday I got a guitar, absolute cheese grater strings, terrible action,” Aidan recalls. “At first I hadn’t a clue, and then there was a teacher in school. He wasn’t a music teacher; I think he was a geography teacher. And then he said ‘this is that a G is, this is what a D is’.

“Then I was pretty much self-taught from there. Listening to stuff like Rory Gallagher, Clapton and Led Zeppelin. Just hugging the speakers, trying to figure out what had been done. That’s how I spent a lot of my teens.”