Sultans of Swingers is a tribute band of Dire Straits, from Wiltshire, England. Richard Benham one of the band members has shared with us interesting stories for our blog and readers.
Today, we just want to share their live cover version of the song “Romeo and Juliet.” This band really loves playing the music of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler.
This year they have also made a special song dedicated to Mark Knopfler, called “Master of the Strings.”
“Master of the Strings” was written by the wife of Richard, Tracy. Later on the song was recorded at Richard’s home studio called Utopia.
Also, in March this year when the world was in the pandemic situation because of Covid-19, the band made its own version of the song “So Far Away.” You can click here to watch and listen to “So Far Away – COVID 19” by Sultans of Swingers.
The video below is a live video from the band’s last gig at The Bell by the green Devizes in October of 2019. For this video Richard has said:
“This video was recorded at a live gig at The Bell by the green in Devizes, Wiltshire. A big thanks to Jeremy Riggs who did a great job for recording us. ‘Sultans of Swing’ is my second favorite song. I love singing it and can often hear our audience singing along with me. I have been working on this song for years and have found my own way of playing it. That seems natural to me.”
A long story short from Richard about ‘Sultans of Swing’ and his connection to Dire Straits
“After hearing Sultans of Swing on the radio back in 1978, I was absolutely blow away. I had to get a guitar. I save and eventually took out a loan and purchased the very first Fender Squire JV Series. All I wanted to do was play that time. I saved up and purchased the record and a guitarist magazine called Words, hoping that it would contain the chords of Sultans of Swing. Soon I had it and I’ve never stopped learning ever since. I have spent years following Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler and I’ve always tried to get the sound that Mark has.”
“A few years ago I managed to purchase a Mark Knopfler signature Strat, and finally got a Knopfler sound. My ambition was always to put a Dire Straits band together and eventually The Sultans of Swingers was born. We thought it would be great to have a song of our own about Dire Straits. So, I asked my wife Tracy to write one, she is a brilliant writer. She soon had the idea of putting the song titles into a song. A few days later she gave me the words so I went into my studio with Reuben our bass player and we put some chords together and started playing our song. I soon got to work and recorded it. Our ambition was to make it sound like a Dire Straits song. Hopefully we have managed this,” he finished.
Facebook Comments