gary hopkins

Gary Hopkins began his musical career driving his parents mad by tapping on the formica kitchen worktops at their Birmingham home after joining the local Boy's Brigade marching band as a drummer. A year later he had his first drum kit, a three piece Broadway. His interest in music blossomed at school and a band was formed. The drum kit grew as did his talent over the coming years, performing in a variety of pop and rock bands -including NWOBHM Vixen and Tour De Force. Gary Hopkins also took up the piano, was classically trained for a while by Tony Cross of the Birmingham Conservatoire, and then ventured onto the guitar, with a burning passion for the 12 string variety. But it was after several years of singing backing vocals he once and for all decided to lead from the front confident in his new-found songwriting ability.

The career of Gary Hopkins, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, includes performing on local and national BBC radio, live on national Portuguese television, touring all over the world, playing in some of the greatest venues like the Birmingham NEC, De Boerderij and Poppodium in Holland, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona. He has also toured with Rush tribute band YYZ, the ELO Experience, Logicaltramp, Dio Trilogy as drummer, plus a UK theatre tour as lead singer with The 70s Number Ones Show.

In Logicaltramp Gary has shared the stage with Supertramp sax player John Heliwell. Gary takes on the role of the late Rick Davies as singer/ keyboardist, but also performs the keyboard and 12 string guitar role of Roger Hodgson.

Gary has also shared billing with some celebrated singer-songwriters including Eric Martin (of Mr Big), Go West, Curved Air, Three Men and Black which featured Pauline Black and Nick Welsh of Selector, Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers and Roddy Radiation of The Specials. He has also supported former Sony recording artist Martyn Joseph and Shelly Poole of Alicia's Attic. Furthermore, he has been on the same bill as Paul Young, Sam Brown, Kenny Jones and Bev Bevan.

He has released seven albums, all available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Youtube and Deezer, plus three official music videos on Youtube. All these have been released through his own label,  Chaos & Vegas Records, and distributed by Sony's The Orchard.

Finally, Gary Hopkins has also been a journalist who has written for two of the biggest newspapers in the country and contributed to music magazine and internet titles like Future Music and Music Mart.