John Bridgland - Guitar and Mandolin Player
John Bridgland is a good friend of mine from Adelaide, Australia. We have been playing music together for more than 25 years. John played guitar and mandolin on the CD "Black Mountain Harmonica". Below is a video of us playing Whiskey Before Breakfast, one of the tunes from my Black Mountain Harmonica CD.
John has many beautiful acoustic guitars and mandolins. The picture above shows some of them. The black guitar was made in 1937, by Gibson, a famous American guitar company. Old guitars often sound better than new ones. John's Gibson guitar sounds very good indeed, and is the one used in the first video. The photo below shows the head of this guitar.
The light coloured guitar in the picture above was made by Brian De Gruchy, a well known Australian guitar maker. Here is a video of John playing this guitar, with Tony on harmonica.
John also plays the mandolin, as you can see in the photo above. The mandolin is smaller than the guitar, and has 8 strings, as shown in the photos below.
John's mandolin was made by John Liddy, another well known Australian instrument maker. Here is a video of John playing this mandolin, with Tony on harmonica. The tune is called "St Annes Reel".