The Flying Hats - The Return of

Every ATA project is marked by collaboration - some over a few weeks and some over decades. When drummer Sam Hobbs and bassist Neil Innes decided to make The Return of the Flying Hats they were building on twenty years of playing together; Innes’s years of nightclub residencies and love of Afro-American dance music, and Hobbs’s intensive exploration of the links between American soul and R&B, Jamaican rocksteady and roots, and the music of the wider Caribbean from Cuba to Trinidad and Brazil. Organist Bob Birch and guitarist Chris Dawkins were the other crucial elements - Birch started out as a jazz Hammond player in the bluesy McGriff/McDuff mould before discovering the more exotic colours of Art Neville and Jackie Mittoo, and Dawkins has been a session guitarist for the cream of British reggae and rock for a generation.