Whinchat
Whinchat (Chris and Mary Kemp, Fairlie Ryan and Bernie Catterall) played together from 1970 to 1973. Based at Scraptoft College Leicester, UK, and with numerous local radio broadcasts and support-band gigs, we were, for a short while, successful and well-known in and around the region. As college finished, so, inevitably, we all went our separate ways.
The four of us met up again at a college reunion in Leicester in 2002 and - inevitably - ended up singing together. It was so much like old times, and so easy to recreate the original songs, that we just had to go on to do more.
This site exists so that we can share new recordings with other people. Maybe those who were there and remember the live gigs, or, more probably, for those who never saw us live but have got to hear about the music one way or another over the years. Or even for those - led by our own kids (all now adults by the way) - who are just curious to see if four ‘oldies’ can still hack it!
With new digital recording capability, we’ve extended our range from the original ‘four voices plus guitar or piano’ format to the fully-orchestrated, or more guitar, drums and bass material we would have loved to have been able to do back then.
So………….hi to everybody who knew us then and a warm welcome to those who are new to Whinchat.
From all four of us – Chris, Mary, Fairlie and Bernie – thanks, and we hope you like the music.
Nb. All the albums and additional materials are made available here as free downloads. All songs copyrighted by Whinchat (i.e., written by Chris or Bernie or both) are covered by ‘Creative Commons’ licences that allow free and unrestricted use of the songs for private, personal use, but prohibit their use for public or commercial purposes without prior consent. Where we’ve used other people’s material, it's all been done legally through the PRS systems.