Over the years, Overwater bass guitars have featured alongside Madonna, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, and George Michael and on some of the most important records in history - from Live Aid to Tina Turner albums. Switch on your TV and there's a good chance you will hear an Overwater being played. But how did it get to this point?

It all began in a converted chicken house in Hampshire.

Chris’s family were farmers, but his own career aspirations were evidently of a different nature: “I made my first bass guitar when I was seventeen, because I wanted one for myself. It was one of those situations with three seventeen-year-old guitarists: you’re the worst guitarist so you’re going to be the bass player!

“I had made a couple of guitars at school as woodwork projects but they were unplayable and so my dad said “I think we’d better get some plans” - my dad being quite practical about these things. And I think we got a set of plans throughPractical Electronicsor something. It was very simple..but it worked and I actually went and played it!”

A sideline in guitar repairs at college progressed into his own repair shop near Durham while studying social sciences at Durham University.  Andy Preston had his own established repair service in the north of England and, after Chris sub-contracted some work from him, they decided go into partnership in 1978 with premises in Newcastle and a cellar in Denmark St - a creative hub of London full of publishing houses and recording studios.

It was there, doing repairs for session musicians and the likes of Status Quo and Chrissie Hynde, that he found his practical grounding. He says: “I was just fixing stuff on the hoof - 'I’ve got a session this afternoon can you sort this out' - and that was the sort of thing.”

Zemaitis

Although largely self-taught, Chris did have a mentor of sorts in the form of none other than Tony Zemaitis. Zemaitis became famous for making high-end specialist guitars for the biggest names in music, including the Stones and Eric Clapton. His signature metal shield and pearl inlay designs came to be instantly recognisable the world over.

“I used to go round and he’d say 'Oh, you’ve just missed George Harrison!'

“Tony taught me some practical lessons. He would say 'you’ll never make any real money out of it' and 'you won’t go on holiday' and 'your wife will leave you'. And all of these things happened but it just took me 30 years to realise it!

“But it also made me feel that it’s doable - that was what I learnt from Tony, that you could earn a living doing it.”

Being around people like Tony and the session musicians in the heart of London’s West End gave Chris an understanding of what was required at the highest level and, perhaps more importantly, a feeling of belonging to that world.

Along with repairs, Chris and Andy had begun selling second-hand guitars. Then one day Andy said to a customer “Chris can make you one of those!” One of his earliest customers would be Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers.

“Then a Flying V for the Tygers of Pan Tang and another Flying V for the guy who was about to be in Def Leppard - and that was all during Chris and Andy’s period,” says Chris. 

Was he nervous about making his first guitars? 

“No, I was 27. You’re not nervous when you’re 27. You think you can conquer the world. But endless amounts of time and effort. A lot of midnight oil. Then you think you know everything. It’s only later you realise you don’t.” 

Were there any disasters? 

“Oh yeah, of course, you have disasters, lots of disasters! I mean there were times I had to redo things. It’s a gradual learning curve - little steps. But you make mistakes, you know. I’ve had to say that’s firewood. I’ve had to give customers their money back, but the important thing is you learn from it and move on.”

The Birth of Overwater

These early models were called Chris and Andy’s Customs (about 30% were guitars and 70% basses). It only became Overwater later when the business was doing so well it needed more space to fulfil the mounting orderlist. That was when Chris moved proceedings from Newcastle to a town called Alston in Cumbria.

“Foolishly, in hindsight, I went and signed a five-year lease on this factory unit in the middle of nowhere, in the highest market town in England, where it started snowing in September and went on till June! It was just before the worst winter in living memory since 1946! And we had 18ft snow drifts.” 

They decided they had to sell through other shops so they couldn’t call it ‘Chris and Andy’s’ anymore and so re-named it after a place near the factory called Overwater near Alston (and not, as often assumed, Overwater lake in the Lake District). 

“We just needed a name so we called it the Overwater Guitar Company and it is quite a good name...nowhere near any water - apart from a little river! And that’s how it started.”

After three years, Chris decided he did not want to be involved with the shops and the repair side anymore and so they split the business. Andy would keep the Denmark St operation and Chris kept Overwater, continuing as partners in Newcastle for another two years before selling it. 

In 1983, Chris managed to escape the Alston lease and moved to a place called Haltwhistle [Northumberland] in a little factory unit where Overwater would stay until 1995 before moving to their present home in Carlisle.

Lessons

So what are the key lessons Chris took from his years honing the art?

“What I learnt more than anything about doing this stuff was: one - sail in your own canoe, working out what works for you, not trying to be someone else, which is something that’s very easy to do; second - you can only work things out one at a time. If you are too radical then you don’t know what you’ve done. 

“If you use different materials, and different construction techniques and different electronics, you don’t know what’s affecting what. Whereas if you make one change at a time, or solve one problem at a time then you learn from that and you do another one."

Crucially, the key to Chris’s development seems to be his willingness to learn. “Finding out from other people how it affects them, it’s constant feedback. It’s also people who can feed creativity, but also feed curiosity that will make you start to think why or how.”