Peter Hewitt is a musician, filmmaker and academic who was brought up in Derby but now lives in South Gloucestershire after spells in Bournemouth, Hong Kong and over 25 years in London.
He was the sound engineer for ERG (Euan Lowson’s post-Pallas band) and learnt his studio-craft as an intern at the Lodge studio in Suffolk under the tutelage of Robert John Godfrey and Stephen Stewart, sitting in on the recording sessions for The Enid’s 1984 album “The Spell”. He was also a member of their road crew during the UK tour that followed its release.
After taking up residence in London he became a founding member of “Country-punk” band Nashville Uprising, for whom he drummed off and on for over 20 years.
Peter began The Drinking Club project in the early 2000s, channelling a passion for early neo-prog, although the idea was regularly abandoned over the ensuing years, as he moved onto other creative endeavours.
During the pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020, with plans to (finally) complete an ERG album having been put on hold, Peter returned to The Drinking Club material after putting a shout out on a UK prog rock Facebook page for a singer to help complete the tracks and finally release the songs. There were also tentative plans to write new material, perhaps even enough for a second album, should a suitable vocalist respond to Peter’s request for someone who could hold a tune, write suitably genre-straddling lyrics and had an appreciation of the likes of Peter Nicholls, Geoff Mann and their mid-80s NWOBPR contemporaries.
Somewhat serendipitously someone who at least fitted the bill on paper happened to read Peter’s post. Kevin Borras, a self-confessed huge fan of the likes of IQ, Twelfth Night, Marillion and pre-Abacab Genesis, may well have been the only vocalist to reply, but after a few years away from the music scene (bar 18 months as the Gord Downie in the UK’s only Tragically Hip tribute band) he saw it as too good an opportunity to ignore – and that was before Peter had even shared any of his dusted-off songs. And here we are. A four-track EP, The Flight of the Carthorse EP One: Taking Off is available on Bandcamp, with two more EPs to come, featuring Peter’s unheard prog rock masterpieces and a smattering of jointly written new songs.
Peter plays all the instruments on the recordings, unfortunately his singing voice is rubbish… and, as luck would have it, Kevin can’t play any instruments. What’s truly unique about The Drinking Club is that its two members have never met. Nor spoken. How progressive is that?