Prog Rock Music Camp with Steve Rothery & Dave Foster – Day 3 (08/29/26) – Learning “Runaway”/listening party for “The Roaring Waves”

Day 3 started out much like the first 2, but this day was devoted to learning one of my personal favorite Marillion songs, “Runaway,” from their album Brave. However, we also got an exclusive sort of listening party for the new album collaboration between Steve Rothery and Steve Hackett, whose release date coincided with the camp. In between songs, Rothery talked us through the creative and recording process behind each track, including details about the gear he used. The album itself was a fun listen. It’s all instrumental, and I think I’m familiar enough with the styles of Hackett and Rothery to be able to tell when each was doing lead. I was hoping to find the CD at one of the nearby record stores, but I was unsuccessful.

Anyway, we split up like we did with “Sugar Mice.” Those of us comfortable with taking on lead guitar and playing on stage later stayed downstairs with Steve while others went upstairs with Dave. I, once again, opted to stay downstairs, disciplining myself to at least be open to trying the lead parts. As we listened to the studio recording of “Runaway,” Steve himself admitted that his memory on how to play the solo was a bit fuzzy, so this turned into a lesson for all of us! We went over the general picking pattern and chord progression for the song, which I got down pretty quickly since, I’ll admit, I’d made progress on learning the song by ear back at home. But I hadn’t gone near the solo. Steve remained lenient in approaching the solo, teaching us the general progression of it while encouraging us to break free and improvise. As I mentioned in my last post, my Traveler guitar could only accomplish so much. I had this great idea to do a dive bomb while holding a triad shape for C#minor, if I remember correctly, but had to think of something else when it came my time to solo.

When it came time to put everything together and take turns performing the song, Steve decided to have a few more musicians come on stage than the day before, in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to run through the song at least 10 times. That made all of us laugh. I don’t remember what the grand total was for “Runaway.” Our group keeps in touch on WhatsApp, so I’ll see if anyone knows. I got through the picking pattern fine, but stumbled during the solo. I really need to go over some scales or something because I kept hitting wrong notes. I think I managed to pull off a halfway decent guitar solo, but it was still clumsy. Still, it was all in good fun, and everyone had a great time.