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Simon McBride (b. 9 April 1979, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a singer, songwriter, producer and virtuoso guitarist, who has played with a variety of other artists as well as recording and touring his own band, and teaching at BIMM in Dublin.

Early playing career
McBride started playing the guitar when he was ten. By age 15 and entirely self-taught he was good enough to enter Guitarist Magazine’s Young Guitarist of The Year, a performance competition staged that year at Wembley Conference Centre, which he won.

Less than a year later, a few months after his sixteenth birthday, McBride was recruited by the Belfast-based pioneering metal band Sweet Savage, which reformed in 1994 without their founding guitarist, Vivian Campbell (Dio, Def Leppard), who McBride replaced. He toured with the band and recorded two albums, Killing Time 1996 and Rune 1998.

After leaving Sweet Savage in 1998, he joined fellow Irishman Andrew Strong, who made his name in the 1991 cult film The Commitments and went on to a successful singing career. Playing with Strong was in stark contrast to Sweet Savage, comprising mostly of soul, R&B and some pop songs. The change of musical style was a useful learning experience and closer in style to the rock and blues artists that had inspired McBride to start playing the guitar. He spent six years touring with Strong before leaving to pursue the idea of a solo career.

His own musical identity
In 2008 McBride released his debut album, Rich Man Falling on Nugene Records, a boutique label with a specialisation in guitarists and blues-based artists. This much-praised album - Blues-rock par excellence Classic Rock (magazine).Hugely accomplish Mojo (magazine) - showcased not only McBride’s guitar prowess but also revealed a fine singing voice. Covers of Be My Friend originally by Free (band) and the Jimi Hendrix song Power of Soul were a clear nod to his influences.

His 2010 sophomore release Since Then (Nugene Records) broke the popular jinx about follow-up albums (A diamond, this boy’s going place HIFI+. A new star on the horizon Guitar Techniques) and gained him numerous nominations in the British Blues Awards.

By this time he had opened shows in the UK and Ireland for Jeff Beck, Joe Bonamassa and US slide maestro Derek Trucks. In autumn 2010 he toured the UK supporting one of his early guitar heroes, Joe Satriani, and in front of several thousand people each night gained many new admirers. In 2011 he played major festivals including Glastonbury Festival, and some smaller but no less significant gatherings including a special guest spot at Don Airey’s Soul & Blues Festival.

During a tour of the UK in 2011 each show was recorded. This resulted in McBride’s third CD release Nine Lives (Nugene Records), so called because there are nine in-concert tracks Compelling evidence that McBride is now among the best players in Blues-rock anywhere in the world Guitarist magazine). The album also contains four solo acoustic tracks, one of which is an acoustic rendition of the title track of his 2008 release Rich Man Falling. A video of this track, cut to 1930s film footage, soon racked up YouTube views. These acoustic tracks demonstrated just how accomplished a guitarist – and singer – is McBride.

Endorsements and teaching
As a teenage guitarist McBride caught the ear of the world’s leading independent guitar builder Paul Reed Smith, and to this day McBride is a PRS Guitars-endorsed artist, a role that has taken him to music events around Europe and to The PRS Experience, an event held annually at the PRS Guitars factory in Maryland USA, where McBride has played alongside such names as Santana and Buddy Guy. He is also endorsed by Hughes & Kettner amplifiers and Rotosound Strings.

He is a visiting tutor at the Dublin school of BIMM (Brighton Institute of Modern Music) and has also been a guest tutor at the International Guitar Foundation summer school and at BIMM in Bristol.