The Notting Hillbillies

After the mega-platinum success of Dire Straits' 1984 Brothers In Arms LP, the group's frontman, guitarist extraordinaire Mark Knopfler, opted to temporarily shift gears by forming The Notting Hillbillies, a one-off country side project. Among the band's first recruits was Steve Phillips, a fellow guitar player whom Knopfler had first met in Yorkshire in 1968 when both men interviewed a local country and blues musician (also named, curiously enough, Steve Phillips). Soon, the two aspiring journalists formed the two-man Duolian String Pickers and continued performing together until Knopfler entered college in 1970; after graduating three years later, he moved to London to start Dire Straits.



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