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Tim Strange

Musical Biography
From the first moment a 10-year-old Tim Strange heard  'Ruby Red' on the flipside of 'Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley' , he knew he was destined for a life of groove. He got his first job in a band a few years later when two guitarist friends needed a drummer to complete their trio. "I think it was my name they liked rather than my technical skills" boasts Tim. They became The Strangers and the young Tim invested his pocket money in a snare drum that he hid under his bed. "When my friends called for me to go to rehearsals, I used to lower it out of my bedroom window in a plastic bag." Tim says his embarrassment stemmed from not wanting to hear those cliché parental warnings of "It'll never last". Forty years later and more bands under his belt than a sumo wrestler, Tim (now fondly known as Teh Bhagge) is still trying to fit his drum-kit out of the window.
When a marriage and two kids put his musical career on hold in the early '70s, Tim turned to driving the 267 bus route passing Twickenham College where a young Robert Hokum was drinking away his grant and skipping business studies lectures in favour of promoting bands as College Social Secretary."The man who was to teach me more about rhythm than anyone else had very probably been on my bus." Muses Tim.
Facing a route-master mid-life crisis, Tim returned to drumming aged 40 and immediately found himself in front of a crowd of 3000 with Brian Knight, a founding member of the Rolling Stones. "It was probably the most frightening moment of my life" remembers Tim. His next move came when he hooked up with Dr JJ's Blues Band  for whom Robert  sometimes depped. Robert, aka Blues Master Bob, was looking for a drummer for some small 'purist blues' gigs who wasn't too loud and didn't want to hog the limelight. T-Bag settled in nicely but secretly aspired to play with Hokum's main band, The Guv'nors. 'I asked Robert if I could play a gig and he said, "Get yourself a cowbell and you can be a percussionist". I turned up with bongos and a loud shirt and the rest is history.
Tim's early influences of Gene Krupa, the first drum star of the big band era, and Al Jackson a simple Seventies soul drummer can be heard in his own controlled and introverted technique. Tim feels that now he is with The Guv'nors he has finally come home. Tim also plays drums for the The Robert Hokum Blues Band.