After 50 years with a guitar, Bill Bruce faces his first solo Fringe show
- bill8344
- Jul 5
- 2 min read
Two weeks before the 2026 Shaftesbury Fringe Festival, our guitarist Bill Bruce was interviewed by Keri Jones for the local radio station This is Alfred…
For several weeks, people walking along Park Walk on a Friday morning have found Bill Bruce playing guitar beneath the shelter overlooking Blackmore Vale.
It might have seemed like an informal performance for passers-by. In fact, it was preparation for his first solo concerts at Shaftesbury Fringe.
Bill has played guitar for more than fifty years, but says experience was no reason to stop learning. “I’ve been playing for 50-odd years and there’s stuff I can’t do, so I sent myself back to school.”
Before committing the programme to the Fringe, Bill travelled to Cornwall and played the whole show for guitarist Chris Woods, inviting an expert critique of the performance as a whole.
The advice that stayed with him was not about the notes. “He said, ‘Leave that one out. It’s great and it’s going to be great. But your face doesn’t look like you’re enjoying it.’”
For Bill, the past year has been about confidence as much as technique. Locally, he jokes that many people know him as “Louis’s dad”- that's his pet, who acts as a therapy dog at the Westminster Memorial Hospital. But this performance matters because, as he puts it, “I want to be remembered for something, being good at something.”
Bill’s first solo Fringe performance is at 6pm on Friday 17th July in the Nuns’ Passage. He’ll perform the same acoustic guitar set, 'Classical Gas' again at the Grosvenor on Sunday morning (19th) at 11. He is also appearing across the weekend with The Old Romantics, Noel Bowman’s Yellow Bus and ONYX.
“There’s posters up. So, I must be ready.”
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