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Al - Drums
(a.k.a. Mad Jack Mac)

Born in Nigeria, Al has always maintained that he was influenced at a very young age by the sound of African drumming rhythms.

"When I was 17, I just picked up a pair of sticks, sat behind a kit and started playing. It was like it had always been there."

Al joined Doghouse in August 2001. He had spent the previous ten years (his longest stint in a band…!) as the driving force behind renowned Merseyside rhythm’n’blues guitar player Pete ‘the Post’ Gilroy in the Bumper Blues Band. Al’s solid playing style was no secret to those who watched the “Bumpers”, as they have come to be known. They are still going strong and Al is still the driving force behind them.

"I have developed a lot as a player in the Bumpers. In a three-piece everybody has to pull their weight (which in Al’s case is not inconsiderable), and there is no room for not doing enough."

Al managed to achieve his first ‘life’s ambition’, to play live on stage at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool, when he was 23. His next is to play an ‘open air’ gig! We’re still working on that one…

Al’s first gig with Doghouse was the Anglesey Bike Show in September 2001, three weeks after he was asked to join the band. “It was a great first gig to play, but I only had three weeks to learn the set, and it was an important gig for the band. It’s still one of the best gigs we’ve ever done, and since then we have gone from strength to strength." Indeed, as they say, the rest is history...