DUSTING off old hobbies and reconnecting with friends over video calls have been two of the features of 2020 with all of our extra time at home.

Those two things certainly came together for a retired Warrington music teacher who got his band back together after 25 years.

Gareth Evans, who taught at Locking Stumps Primary, Woolston Primary, St James CE Primary in Latchford, spent the lockdown creating the album, Again, with his friends Gareth Cross and Steve Spencer on the digital music platform, Band Lab.

The trio had kept in touch but had not made any music together since the 90s.

The highlight for the band – Engines Made From Soup – back in the day was performing at Liverpool's iconic Cavern Club.

Lymm resident Gareth said: "For the first two and a half years of my retirement I spent happy times with my wife Jane travelling around Britain, visiting friends and family and walking in the lovely countryside in and around Lymm.

Warrington Guardian:

"We have been constantly busy and have loved every minute of our retirement. We even renovated our house from top to bottom – and then came Covid 19."

When the disruption settled, Gareth found a silver lining was having the opportunity to reconnect with his bandmates on opposite ends of the UK.

The 55-year-old added: "Like the rest of us in the UK and beyond a lot of the things that we loved to do had to go on the back burner for a while.

"However, during a text conversation with my best mate Gareth from school, we agreed to have a Zoom meeting with our old bandmate Steve.

"Because Gareth lives in London and Steve lives in Scotland we have not done any work together for 25 years.

"During our conversation, Steve mentioned a social music platform that would enable us to write some music and collaborate with each other remotely.

"We soon got the hang of the app and spent the next six months producing an album.

"It worked really well. One of us would come up with a basic song or idea and then we shared it. The other two would then add ideas until the song was complete.

Warrington Guardian:

"There were very few disagreements but even when there were it was all good natured. To be honest we often worked like that back in the day so it wasn't a million miles away from what we did before."

In fact, it was as if no time had passed at all.

Gareth, who is a songwriter, keyboardist and backing vocalist for the band, said: "The chemistry was as if we had never stopped. I have been in contact with Gareth since we were 11 and often go down to see him and his family in London. We hadn't spoken to Steve for some years but we clicked straight back into it immediately.

"It has been great fun and we are really proud of what we’ve produced. I certainly hope that the album would inspire anybody to have a go at something like this.

"I think people have been very creative during the pandemic and the arts have definitely brought a lot of joy in these terrible times. It's a shame that they have been so badly hit in recent times as I feel they are essential to people's wellbeing.