Miles Gilderdale’s Biography @ JazzNet247 Radio Europe
Miles Gilderdale is a Guitarist / Songwriter who has been a professional musician for almost 40 years. You will have heard him, probably without realising it, playing in TV reality shows about Croc Hunters, Vets in the Rockies or in TV adverts - his music is literally everywhere!
Miles’ primary musical love is Rhythm and Blues and his first band Zoot and the Roots took to the stage in 1978 featuring this much-in-demand musical genre.
Soon afterwards the band added a small horn section to the original trio which drew recognition from non other than Paul Weller (of The Jam and Style Council fame) in the form of a personalised hand-written letter of encouragement which coincided with an outstanding review in the cult UK music magazine Melody Maker, from that point onwards the band were metaphorically 'on their way'.
By the mid ‘80s one of the UK’s finest sax-players Snake Davis had joined the band and Top UK radio presenter Mark Radcliffe decided to give them a dedicated half-hour Radio One Special. This led to another TV special on the TX45 Show and numerous other television appearances.
Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin was a regular attendee to see the band live when they played at JB’s in Dudley (a legendary Birmingham,UK venue), and he personally planted the seed for Miles and his band to be Ben E King’s backing band at the world reknowned London Palladium which was perfect timing as he was at No. 1 in the UK Charts with Stand by Me. Ron Wood (Rolling Stones) & Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) also joined in the fun at this gig as well.
Two successful tours followed opening for US soul legend Curtis Mayfield and an offer from non other than James Brown himself to undertake a 6-week European tour (he himself got to No.4 on the Billboard Charts at that time with his ground breaking Living in America set written by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight). However this offer was rather foolishly turned down by an agent of theirs who shall remain nameless.
After literally hundreds and hundreds of gigs playing the UK and the European scene with Zoot and the Roots the band split up to undertake other projects, and in the mid ‘90s Miles joined a very well-established band who played a VERY different musical style i.e. Acoustic Alchemy. Miles was to front the band with co-writer Greg Carmichael, and although the band are not not so well-known in the United Kingdom, they are an extremely well established cult act in the USA and pretty much everywhere else worldwide.
Miles has spent the past 20 years or so playing with Acoustic Alchemy touring the USA, China, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, Latvia to name just a few.
During this time the band have had three Grammy nominations and received the prestigious 'Gibson Guitars' Jazz Guitarist Of The Year award in 2002.
Miles’s latest solo release is entitled 'Remind Me' which ironically takes him full circle back to his Soul and Funk roots. It is also very much a reaction to the misery of the worldwide Covid pandemic and it inspired him to pen the track as he recalled the uplifting and distinctive styles of Chic and Earth, Wind and Fire from the 70's and 80's.
