About Living Proof
LIVING PROOF was formed in Northamptonshire in the latter part of 2023, when three members of the defunct blues band Rough Justice got back together to play acoustic music. They write the majority of their repertoire, which reflects their interest in the world around them, relationships real and imagined, and their love of rock, blues, swing, and country music, blended with plentiful alcohol and a healthy dose of mild silliness.
Gerald Claridge
(vocals, guitar, fretless bass)
Gerald Claridge is the oldest member of the band by a good six months. He is a stubbornly proud left-hander, and is currently on a quest to remember chords he knew fifty years ago.
Some of his ensembles have included: Oddsocks, The Celebrated Ratliffe Stout Band, The Phippsville Comets, Asha, and Tickled Pink.
As a songwriter, he’s mostly optimistic: apart from songs about Brexit and Donald Trump. His first solo album, Staggering, was only available on cassette. The songs were catchy - in modern-day parlance, we’d say they’d give you an “earworm,” but sadly, in those days it was a “tape worm,” which wasn’t nearly as pleasant.
Gerald is an experienced barn-dance caller, but his own dancing skills have more in common with those of a zombie with delirium tremens. He enjoys being a member of Living Proof, a boy band with an aggregate age well over two hundred years.
Gerald enjoys bourbon with Coke and experimenting with different lengths and shapes of his prodigious beard.
Kevin McNally
(vocals, dobro, guitar)
Kevin McNally is the youngest and shortest member of the band; he challenges this appearance by exhibiting premature baldness and the wearing of Cuban heels.
He prepared for the sedentary stage show by playing for the preceding 8 years with ‘The Old Grey Dogs’, a similarly seated bluegrass band.
His journey to this current musical mayhem began in the early ’70s as a singer in a Peterborough rock and pop band ‘Pipedream’. He spent the 90’s playing gigs and festivals with his Blues bands Stumble and later Red Dog.
Two of the c.d’s that he recorded in those years are doing sterling service as coasters all across Europe and the USA, and the royalties accrued from them were enough to buy half of mild one Christmas!
He has played rock and pop, jazz and blues, country and bluegrass across three continents, so welcomes the chance to sit down in good company to play the music we love.
He is a ferroequinologist, and his future with the band is in doubt after he was spotted drinking sparkling water.
Simon Loake
(Guitars, Bass, Mandolin, Harmonica)
Simon is quite large.
He played his first paid gig in 1964, as lead guitarist in a “beat group” called The Strangers. He was very young, and considerably shorter and lighter than he is now. He has been doing it ever since.
As a band member, accompanist and session musician, his journey has taken him through pop, rock, folk, disco, blues, gypsy and trad jazz, and psychedelic ambient music. It has taken him to many European countries. It has also taken him through Guinness, real ale, cider, wine, whisky, Earl Grey tea, far too much port, and, we suspect, other things he’s not prepared to talk about.
He has been a freelance presenter and producer with the BBC, a festival sound engineer, record producer, concert promoter, and just about anything connected with music that would prevent him having to do a proper job!
When not with Living Proof, he plays a selection of strange stringed instruments in the pan-European band Lebedek, undertakes occasional solo gigs and has recently released two solo albums.
He is frightened of spiders, his favourite colour is black, and his favourite drink is large.