Dave Lewis (Northern Irish musician)

Band career

At 16, Lewis joined his first band the Method^[2] managed by George Mechan. Method were a 5 piece soul band who were becoming popular in Dublin and fans around that time included Phil Lynott from the band Skid Row. A guitarist named Gary Moore (who was 16 at the time) stood in for Dave for a few weeks while he was in hospital and subsequently joined Skid Row.^[3]

The Method changed their name to Andwella's Dream after moving to London in 1968.^[4] They were signed to a new management and recording company Reflection Records, headed by Andrew Cameron Miller. In 1969 the band released their first album Love and Poetry (CBS) with all the songs penned by Dave Lewis before his 18th birthday. The album did not achieve wide recognition but is featured in the Record Collector's Book: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records. After changing the name again to simply Andwella the band released two more albums; World's End (1970) and People's People (1971). Lewis wrote all the songs on the Andwella albums with the exception of the "World's End Theme Part 1", which was written and arranged by Bobby Scott of "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" and "Taste of Honey" fame. During this period Lewis also made a private pressing of 500 copies of a promotional album in 1970 entitled The Songs of David Lewis^[1] which was never intended for general release, it was simply a vehicle to showcase his songs.

Solo career

After Andwella split up Lewis pursued a solo career as a singer-songwriter. In May 1975 he supported Don McLean at a concert in London's Hyde Park in front of an audience of 85,000.^[5] That same year, he also toured with Fairport Convention playing to packed audiences all over the UK. During 1975 Dave also wrote a hit song for Demis Roussos; "Happy To Be on an Island in the Sun", the song shot to No.1 all over Europe and went platinum.^[6]

Also in the 1970s Lewis released two solo albums – From Time to Time (Polydor 1976)^[7] co-produced by Chris Rainbow who also did back-up vocals, and engineered by Steve Lillywhite, and A Collection of Short Dreams (Polydor 1978).^[8] Around this time Lewis formed the Dave Lewis Band, first with the line up of Felix Krish (bass), Dave Rose (keyboards) and Preston Heyman (drums), the line-up later changed to Rob Townsend (drums), Charlie McCracken (bass) and Derek Beauchemin (keyboards).

In the 1980s Lewis took a sabbatical from performing and touring and went travelling, on his return to London he reinvented himself as a singer-pianist after winning a competition^[9] run by the London Evening Standard to find a resident entertainer for new West End restaurant and cocktail bar Smollenskys Balloon. He went on to play for over 14 years at Smollensky's Balloon and Smollensky's on the Strand.

In recent years Lewis has performed at venues all over the world including Ireland, Spain, the Caribbean and Japan where he has a long-standing fan base dating back to his days with Andwella. In 2004 Lewis performed at two Japanese concerts hosted by Vinyl Japan at the Club 251 in Tokyo with a specially created band "Tokyo Andwella"(headed by musician Koji Wakui). The band spent weeks preparing and they performed to packed audiences.

In 2005 ones of Lewis's songs "Whole Lotta Something Goin On" (played by saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft) was sampled on a No. 1 US Rap hit "Feel It in the Air" by Beanie Sigel (Rocafella Records). Later that same year a chance meeting with Van Morrison led to Dave performing on Morrison's 2005 album Magic Time. Lewis also opened a show for Morrison in Belfast at the Ulster Hall that same year.

Lewis continues to write songs^[10] and can currently be seen performing at venues in London.