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Tony Lambert, a former keyboard and accordion player with Galway band the Saw Doctors, has died in Thailand.
Lambert, who was originally from Wales, moved to Thailand in the mid-1990s shortly after he won more than €850,000 in the 1993 National Lottery. It is understood he had a heart condition.
Lead guitarist with the band Leo Moran played tribute to his former bandmate as "a truly magnificent man of music" who was a " virtuoso musician" on many instruments.
“He could play with great feel and hit so many right notes, as few or as many as were appropriate, and he also had the expertise to squeeze every classic electric and mechanical trick out of the Hammond organ and its accompanying twirling Leslie speaker,” said Moran. “His presence added warm, deep and dynamic textures to the songs of The Saw Doctors.
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“In 1993 he won the Irish Lotto and not long after moved to Thailand, never again having to wait for a late-arriving minibus to shake him on bad roads to some end of the country or other.”
Before winning the Lotto, Lambert lived in a converted bus parked in an old farmyard in Claregalway.
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