Roy Weard - A Musical History Part IV
DOGWATCHing
Dogwatch had been playing around the East End of London for a year or so and I had been to see many of their gigs. Their singer, Paul Balance, left to form a new band (the Warm Jets with two ex Cockney Rebel members). I took his place and, over the next two years, we forged a strong unit. We played many of the medium sized venues with regular spots at the famous Bridge House in Canning Town and The Ruskin Arms as well as many other venues. The line up of Dogwatch at this time was Roger Glynn, : guitars, vocals / John Trelawney : violin, trumpet, flugelhorn, Euphonium, vocals / Lynda Shepherd : keyboards / Nick Sack : drums / Pete Murdoch : Bass, vocals and Roy Weard : vocals. This line up did well and its following began to grow. Pete Murdoch had been running a small PA company and did a lot of pub and club shows with Dire Straits. They began to achieve some success at the time so he quit the band to go on tour with them and we took on Tony Morley (from Wooden Lion) to replace him on bass. Dogwatch bought the PA from Pete Murdoch and I began to go out and do shows for other bands as sound engineer. Tony and I took up from where we left off and our song writing partnership added a lot of material to Dogwatch. After my name change Tony became known as Mr. Juan D'Erful.
After a successful showcase at the Music Machine in Camden we were signed to Bridge House Records and made a live album 'Penfriend'. Shortly after this we were almost signed on to Polydor Records but the shake up when they were bought out by Phonogram left us out on a limb. Nick Sack and Lynda Shepherd left and were replaced by John Mortimer on drums and Linda Kelsey on keyboards. Roger Glynn also left the band later and was replaced by Dave Lear on guitar. This line up made the single 'Cutouts' (a Weard and Juan D'Erful composition). We carried on from there until Linda left the band. We were at this point down to a five piece and there were growing disagreements about who we should enlist to bring the band up to a six piece again. In the end we split up. This was something of a traumatic event for me because Dogwatch had been a large part of my life for a long time. Both my son and my daughter, born during the Dogwatch era, bore their middle names as a result of John Trelawney, my eldest daughter has the middle name of Xanthe and my son is Timothy Trelawney Wood.
I was talking to Terry Murphy from the Bridge House in 2009 and he mentioned the possibility of releasing the Dogwatch album on CD. I gave him some of the studio tracks we recorded in that time and it is now available from Bridge House Records.with many bonus tracks.(see Discography.) You can also download a few tracks here