Bio

Dave Reay Bio

Dave Reay started gigging seriously in the eighties with his wife, singer Gay Reay, in the acoustic jazz/folk duo, Galliard. They toured the folk club and festival scene nationally in the nineties, appeared on BBC Radio 2’s folk show amongst others, and recorded three albums, featuring modern jazz interpretations of traditional songs, jazz standards and more contemporary material. These are: Strange News (1995), Love and Pleasure (1998) and MoonWaterBlue (2006). Nowadays, the Galliard name is only used for acoustic gigs on the folk circuit, and the duo perform a jazz act with electric guitar as Dave and Gay Reay.

In the nineties Dave formed the jazz guitar duo Jazzle with Tony Baker on rhythm guitar and Gay as featured vocalist. The act combines acoustic and electric sets of modern, gypsy and Latin standards and some of Dave’s original compositions. They have recorded two albums, Jazzle (1996) and the all-instrumental Black Tights for Alice (2011).

In 2001, Dave joined Tony and his vocalist wife Jan in their folk-rock, blues and country band Junk and Disorderly on lead acoustic and electric guitar. Long time favourites at Broadstairs and Rochester folk festivals, they recorded the album Limited Sedition in 2010.

In 2002, Dave and Gay teamed up with singer/songwriter Ron Trueman-Border and others to form the band Perfect Strangers, more recently The Strangers, and have recorded three albums of Ron’s originals across a range of styles, pop, rock, folk, blues and country: Chase Me, Girls, I’m Chocolate (2003), Appropriately Wrecked) (2004) and Life Stories (2010).

In 2010, Dave began collaborating with Canadian singer/guitarist Jamie Moore in another jazz guitar duo which produced the album In a Chord in 2012. Shortly afterwards the act became a trio with the addition of drummer and percussionist John Willis, and with bassist Andee Price the Dave Reay and Jamie Moore Quartet played the Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho in the same year.
In 2013, Dave and John Willis were joined by bassist Neil Francis in forming the trio 3dom (Threedom), and a recording is planned for the near future.

In 2014, Dave was in at the formation of the band Gypskazz, led by saxophonist MelZebra which fuses gypsy jazz, ska, reggae, Balkan and Arabic elements with the emphasis on an uptempo party vibe. They recorded the album Gypskazz in 2014 and the follow-up, Time for Another, was released in 2018. Both feature compositions of Dave’s with lyrics supplied by the band’s singer, Bill Redfern.