' A Guitar is a Beautiful Thing '

Welcome to 'A Small Town Kid's Guitar Saloon', a place where I'll be sharing stories from the road, my arsenal of instruments, both dogs and star performers, as well as my go-to studio and recording gear.

A guitar is a beautiful thing, a treat to the ears, eyes and on the older ones, a nostalgic smell that takes you back to childhood when you caught a whiff of your grandpa's book collection from a bygone era.

A little backstory- I was born into a creative family with my father Kevin Hinds being a musician (signed to EMI and Gallo in the 70's during the turbulent years of South Africa's history) and my mother Diane Erasmus, a well known South African landscape artist. I'm so fortunate to share my musical heritage with my brother, Aden-  together we perform and create music as the acoustically driven singer-songwriter harmony group - The Hinds Brothers. 

Some memorabilia from my dad's music career

Growing up in the small town of Ramsgate, set between the Indian Ocean and the Sub-tropical forests and hills of Kwazulu-Natal, we grew up with a loving, brotherly and significantly, a musical connection, much enhanced by our father's records, song-writing and work in his small home recording studio. The beauty and tranquility of these surrounds were to become an emblematic factor in our creative evolution.

A distant echo of the Hinds Brothers musical evolution may be found in the career of our father who teamed up with his own brother Colin in the 1960's. Although this early incarnation lasted only a few years there were remnants of their brief collaboration in the form of live recordings made by Dave Marks of 3rd Ear Music, both in his lounge and at the South Africa Folk Festival. On an LP entitled "Cross Section" they were featured alongside Jonathan Clegg (Johnny Clegg), Mike Dickman and the Kitchen Bros.

In the 1970's our dad went on to record 5 seven singles for C.B.S. and EMI Records and continued performing as a solo artist, in venues and around the country and then with his band "Leatherbone", a 3 piece harmony group in the mode of Crosby Stills and Nash. (My brother and I still have alot of these old recordings and as part of our archive project we'll be looking to release our dad's work eventually).

Now back to sniffing those soundholes, my dad played a Levin at the start of his music career, we're not too sure what happened to that baby, but he eventually went on to playing an Ovation in the 70's and to this day he still plays an Ovation, a beautiful instrument which both my brother and myself learnt to play on. I always remember looking at that Ovation in awe and my dad blew my young mind when he picked it up and said, "name any song and I'll play it", he was my superhero, second to my dad was Elvis Presley, I remember we had a bunch of casettes, I must've been about 5 years old and my brother played Jailhouse Rock and I was instantly an Elvis fan, my dad and brother were more Beatles guys, coming of age I would grow to appreciate the Beatles, but to the 'five-year-old-me' they had nothing on Elvis.

I won't write too long an intro here, as I'm sure with each new post, the stories will come to me.