A long time fixture on the British and European club, concert, TV, radio & festival circuit, as a solo performer, band leader and session musician, and having toured in Canada and the USA, Mike Whellans is once again making his mark in the UK - topped off by going down a storm at the 2005 Glastonbury Festival Born in the Borders at the end of WW2, Mike began his musical life in the late 1950s/early 1960s playing his fathers drum kit, and by the age of 14 was playing in local dance bands. In 1969 he decided to turn professional and very soon released a first solo album.
Aly & Mike, Tivoli, 1970's In the early 1970s, Mike was a member of the traditional Scots-Irish band, Boys of the Lough, and worked in a duo with fellow-Boy Aly Bain for about three years, playing amazingly clean and crisp flat-pick guitar behind Aly's fiddle; a very dynamic duo! In the 1980's and 90's, Mike then moved to live in Denmark and toured all over Scandinavia and in Germany and the Low Countries, as well as working back in the UK with those madcap Scottish musos, The Vindscreen Vipers Skiffle Group (Tich Frier, Bill Nolan, Malky McCormack and the late Danny Kyle). Now, Mike's living back in the Scottish Borders again and working as Scotland's only (as far as we know) one-man blues band - and there aren't that many in the UK either - with his guitars, mouth-harps, vocals and drum-kit - and of course his show-stopping, "mouth percussion"; a real tour de force.
Mike is an astounding guitar picker, equally at home on 6, 12 string or electric guitars, and is an amazing mouth-harp player too. And the other things he can do with his mouth? Well, you've just got to see and hear his vocal percussion to be convinced. Added to this; he sings, is a drummer of no slight talent, writes songs, seems to have boundless energy, and you've got a great entertainment in prospect with the most dynamic one-man blues band any side of the Forth delta. Instruments played: Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Mouth Harp, Drums, Percussion, Mouth Percussion
