It’s been a while since you were last here in the UK?

It’s been a long time! It’s been too long, we don’t plan on it being taking that long again! Actually we’re making plans already on coming back next year. I think the last time was 2000 / 2001 so like maybe ten years ago: I’m not proud to say that!

You’ve got quite a few shows lined up in Europe, including several in Germany but just one here, is it harder getting UK gigs?

I’m not sure why we’re only doing the one here; I think it might be partly because it’s been a while since we were here last and I think they [his management] wanted to do just one and try to leave a good impression so that we could set the stage for us to come back and do more. Certainly when we come back here we plan on playing more than just one in London, and some other shows around the UK. Of course the first time I came to play in London that was with the Eagles, on the Hell Freezes Over tour: played Wembley Stadium three nights in a row. It was fantastic, so I think I came in right at the top of the ladder there!

You’re here to promote How I Go, your 7th album including a live album and the 10 Days Out documentary, and all of those have topped the blues chart at one point or another. It may be a difficult question to answer, but how would you account for that success?

Well, I don’t know, I just do what I love to do and play the music that I love to play and try and make the best album that I can at the time. One of the greatest things about this genre is that fans are lifelong fans and they’ll support the artists that they believe in for as long as they play music, so I really give all the credit to the fans because they’re there for us when we put the records out.

Do you think you’re capturing a new audience for blues music?

I think maybe yes. In the States we’ve had a tremendous amount of success and sold millions of albums: a lot of our audience over there are young people. I think especially in my earlier years it helped that I was young: when you’re young you maybe don’t look deeper than the surface, and on the surface they saw a young kid playing this kind of music. I think that made it more acceptable for them to give it a chance whereas if it had been an older person on the cover they may have just moved on immediately! So we have a lot of young fans both due to my age and my approach to the music, which I think still has a very youthful, energetic approach to it, even at 34 years old.

You’ve had several top 10 singles in the mainstream rock charts?

Yeah! I can’t remember whether it’s seven or ten rock top 10 singles now. My song “Blue On Black” was number one in the States for something like 17 consecutive weeks. It went down from the top for maybe a week, but then went back up so it was there for 27 weeks in total: that set a record at the time. That album, Trouble Is, is still the album that’s been at number one on the blues charts for the longest time. Radio support has been key to the success of this band and I think a part of that was that my dad was a radio DJ and programme director. I grew up listening to the radio a lot, hearing all these songs that got radio play and I think I’ve incorporated some of that into the music that I write. Not necessarily trying to write a mainstream song or a radio hit, just to write a song that sounded good to me.

As a result maybe of that success you’ve attracted comments from some critics about being ‘too slick’ or ‘not blues enough’, does that annoy you?

Yeah there was some of that, and there’s always going to be somebody who will criticize what you do, that comes with the territory. You can’t make everybody happy no matter what you do, so I just have to make myself and my fans happy. I think I had more of that earlier on in my career, but something that helped put that to rest was doing the documentary I did [10 Days Out]. Those people who criticized me didn’t try to find out anything about me as a person or as an artist, they were just looking at the ‘surface’.

The flip side of what you said earlier: if young people buy into you more if you’re not old, then others will dismiss you for being young?

Exactly! But once we did that 10 Days Out project I think that my reverence for the blues and those authentic blues players, and my love, passion and appreciation for the genre and the people that came before me became apparent to them. I think at that point a lot of that kind of negative stuff was put to rest.

I understand your latest album wasn’t exactly rushed into: a year and a bit writing and a year or so actually recording. Was that a good way to approach it?

I actually enjoyed it because my life has changed so much now. Early on it was just one thing after another; I would write for a couple of months, go into the studio to record for a couple of months and then mix, finish the album and hit the road. We’d tour for a year and a half then go right back again to writing, recording and touring! Now my life has changed, and there are so may different aspects to my life, one of the most important being my family life. I’ve three kids, a wonderful wife and a very rich family life. So this longer approach was the best balance of both my personal and professional lives, I was able to all the different things that are important to me now. It might have taken a bit longer but it also allowed me to reflect on what we were doing each time: we’d go in and record for a couple of weeks then I would spend the next month or two living with that material, listening to it and analysing it. I got space to think ‘What could be better?’, ‘Does anything need to be better?’, instead of putting the record out in quick time and then thinking ‘Oh no, we could have done that differently!’ This allowed me to do that for the first time.

And was the end product done in a ‘live in the studio’ way or was it overdubs, cut and paste etc.?

Most of it is as live as humanly possible: that’s my approach. The live performance is the essence of what my band is all about, hopefully you’ll see that tonight! So when people listen to our records I don’t want it to sound contrived: I want it to sound like we’re just playing music together. Ultimately, because you’re doing new material and it’s so fresh, a lot of the time you are really learning the songs as you play them and new ideas come to you as you’re putting it down. There are going to be some changes as part of the creative process, but we like to do as little overdubbing as possible. In some cases I lived with some material we’d done for a couple of months and at first I’d think I was happy with it but then I’d change my mind and we’d go in and recut it, rather than just try and overdub and overdub until we forced it into submission: we just went in and totally recut it and got it the way it needed to be.

You do a lot of your songwriting in conjunction with other people, do you find that collaboration works?

For me it does, I’ve always found that when I write with somebody else they inspire something from me that wouldn’t have otherwise come out. It also helps where if I find I’m hitting a creative wall they won’t be: their presence can help progress continue. These guys I write with are really talented people. One of their biggest strengths is lyrics: we all three collectively write lyrics and vocal melodies but certainly early on in my career one of the biggest helps that collaboration brought was with vocal melodies because I wasn’t much of a singer at all. I only sang one song on my first album so vocal melodies weren’t something that came naturally to me at that point. Now I can do all of it to some degree but I still really enjoy working with other people: it’s the same kind of difference between playing solo or with all these great musicians behind me making the music better.

As you say a lot of the songs aren’t going to be sung by you, does that make writing harder?

Well at that point I don’t know if I’m going to sing a certain song, because I can sing most of them if I want to, but there are songs that I know that Noah is going to sound much better on than if I sang them, because our voices are totally different but, as you’ll hear a lot on the current record, the combination of the two is really great and complimentary. On my fourth record, the rock album The Place You’re In, I sang all the vocals, and my voice lends itself currently (although I’m working on it!) more to mainstream sounding songs, maybe I could have had a career as a pop singer! But the music I like to play is blues, and I want to sound like a 50 year old bluesman but my voice hasn’t reached that point – maybe it won’t ever, but that won’t keep me from singing. Noah is such a great singer, and he’s become a big part of my sound: he’s been in the band for 14 years now. It’s like co-writing, I have the best of both worlds. I don’t have to worry about getting sick or losing my voice because I have Noah’s voice to rely on. Also when he sings I get to completely concentrate on playing the guitar which is really what I love to do. If I ever do want to sing I have songs in my catalogue that I can sing the lead vocal on, so it really is the ideal scenario for me. Sometimes from the get-go I know a song will be one that Noah’s going to sing, just from the style but with others I’m not as sure, so we’ll go into the studio and both sing it: on some of the latest songs I originally sang lead vocal, and then Noah went back in to put the final vocal on instead.

There are a couple on the finished album that are you singing though?

Yes, “Cold” and “Who’s Gonna Catch You Now?” To me, it’s not about ego, it’s about making the best record possible: if that means I only sing lead vocal on two songs so be it.

You’ve got 3 quite unusual covers on the album, what made you chose those songs?

Generally when we do cover songs we go deeper into people’s back catalogues, we don’t just go for the most obvious pick. I hope that inspires my fans to go deeper into the back catalogues too and learn about them. If you look at the songs we’ve covered in the past, we did Hendrix’s “I Don’t Live Today”, Bob Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken”, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well”; all of them not the obvious choice for those artists. The Beatles’ “Yer Blues” was one I had wanted to do for years. I’d known the song for a long time but one day I heard it on the radio five or six years ago and it just struck me, it was like I was listening to them but hearing myself play it. I was hearing in my head then exactly what you hear on the record today, I knew the way it could sound. I thought it was a cool song, I love its primal nature, its rawness: Ringo’s drum parts are really spectacular, and the guitar playing with the really heavy bending of the low E string, all those things. We like to cover artists we respect, go deeper than the surface and find something unique where we can keep the spirit of the original but also bring our own sound to it. We did that with “Yer Blues”, and we did that with Albert King: he’s got “I’ll Play The Blues For You”, “Cross-cut Saw”, “The Hunter”, all these songs you might think of before “Oh, Pretty Woman”, but it’s such a sexy song, the groove is really nice and kind of greasy, and it gave us an opportunity to bring the horn section in. That’s my first time using a horn section on a record, and because we had it we also used it on a couple of other songs like “Dark Side Of Love”. The Bessie Smith song “Backwater Blues” was Jerry Harrison’s suggestion: I’m from Louisiana and my home state has been through a lot, what with hurricane Katrina and all the flooding of the Mississippi River and he thought the song was lyrically relevant to what had happened. The song was written about a natural disaster over 100 years ago but it’s just as relevant today. He wanted us to do it as kind of a tribute to all the suffering that there’s been there. I think it was cool: Riley, my keyboard player, is a monster on the piano intro and it’s a good shuffle. We did it very differently to the original but I think we still maintained the integrity of the song.

The album covers fairly wide spectrum of blues rock, from some pretty heavy stuff like “Come On Over”, through the melodic AOR of “Who’s Gonna Catch You Now” to quite a funky blues in “Dark Side Of Love”: is the variety a deliberate choice or just the way it turned out?

It’s all reflective of who I am as a musician, taking all these influences I’ve had all my life and figuring out how they all fit together. A lot of that, again, is influenced by being around radio growing up and seeing every live band that came through town. I heard every single that was released to radio, a lot of it rock, some of it country, and my dad played blues all the time around the house and in the car and all those things found their way into my subconscious and so into my music: really, all those genres are related, even country is originally just ‘blues with a twang’!

I’ve read that you want to be more selective in your soloing rather than go for the ‘look how fast I can play’ style, is that a natural progression for a guitarist?

I think that’s a personal thing. If you look at some of the fantastic guitarists, not necessarily blues players, but the likes of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or even Joe Bonamassa, those guys play lightning fast, and they don’t show any signs of slowing down: that’s fine, they are so good at it. I enjoy playing fast, but it’s personal preference. When I listen to Albert King and BB King and Muddy Waters, even Stevie Ray and Hendrix, I notice that the moments that make me clench myself in happiness and go “Yes!” are when they play something that isn’t lightning fast, it’s when they choose the right note or couple of notes at the right time and put their heart and soul into it and just nail it. Consistently those are the ‘Yes!’ moments and I thought, ‘That’s what I want people to feel listening to my music, if I react like that to what they’re doing maybe my fans will too.’ That’s not to say there aren’t any great flurries on this record; in “Yer Blues” there’s some pretty smoking fast playing at the end, so it’s not like I’m abandoning fast playing. You’ll hear some in tonight’s show, there are going to be some moments when there’s some speed there, but hopefully when I’m doing “Shame, Shame, Shame” every night, I’m not just tearing it up all the time! I do a lot of Albert King stuff and Albert was all about milking the note and just bending the shit out of the strings: that’s when you see folks in the crowd doing high fives and stuff, that’s how I want to affect people.

Are you using your ‘61 Strat on tour?

That’s my main guitar although I do have a couple of others, a ‘58 hard-tail and a ‘59 hard-tail that I use in the studio, and they’re all original guitars and sound incredible but for this tour I’ve just brought some of my own Fender Signature series guitars: I’m a little wary of the airlines. I don’t want my old guitars ending up with a broken neck, or as a lost piece of luggage!

The story of how you found your ‘61 Strat is amazing: you spotted it in a Hollywood store when you were 16, couldn’t afford it but then a whole year later when you came back it was still there?

I didn’t think it would still be there! That’s one of the reasons I was so devastated when I had to leave it there the first time: I was thinking this is the only one I’m going to have and I couldn’t buy it. I’m so glad I went back and so glad it was still there! Chris Layton was telling me that Stevie Ray’s main Strat used to belong to a well-known musician from Austin but that he just didn’t like it and sold it to the guitar store, and Stevie walked in, bought it and loved it, that was his main instrument from then on. Similarly the guys in the store where I got the ‘61 Strat told me that it had been sold to them by Ben Harper [Grammy award-winning US singer/songwriter] so it’s interesting how one guy just doesn’t have a connection to a particular instrument and another will find it and it’s like their life-long search is over!

And lucky for you that you could persuade your dad to stump up the cash to get it!

Yeah, it was my dad, my attorney and a guy from the record company who were with me: we were on our way to a venue to do a soundcheck and I said we’ve got to go back in here, and there it was! So they’re saying that it’s time to go, and I said, ‘I’m not leaving here without that guitar’. So I basically forced them into finding a way to make it happen, and they did: I got it!

So your dad has had a big impact on your music in more than one way! You mentioned he was a DJ, he was also involved in concert promotion I think?

He did occasional promotion, that’s how I met Stevie and those guys; he did a couple of Louisiana music festivals; he booked Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker to come to town and I went to that when I was three. Being in radio he was getting tickets and passes for all the shows that came to town, so I was getting to meet all these iconic musicians as a little kid. I had a unique insight and perspective into at least one facet of of the music industry and how the business works, so it all kind of unknowingly conditioned me for what was to come.

You mentioned earlier the 10 Days Out CD and DVD project, that must have been amazing to play with such legends, many of whom now must no longer be with us?

Yeah, I think nine of them have passed since: Pinetop Perkins, who passed recently, and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown. Six of them died before the project was even released. Some of these people, like Cootie Stark, Neal Pattman, Etta Baker and some of the others, tremendously talented blues artists, the rest of the world wasn’t really familiar with them. That was the point of the project: first of all to give a unique project to the blues fans, give back something to the community that had supported me all these years and to show my appreciation for the musicians that had come before me and made it possible for me to do what I do; also to find a handful of these artists that had never had mainstream success but deserved it due to their talent, to get them on a project with the likes of ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, BB King, and Muddy Waters’ and Howlin Wolf’s bands and associate them with that calibre of musician to hopefully raise awareness for those artists. Little did I know it was actually going to create a legacy for some of these people, as well as preserve the existing legacy for others, to continue to allow their music to be heard by new audiences.

You’ve been doing this as a pro’ now since you were 16?

Well I’ve been playing on stage since I was 13 so it’s going on about twenty years or so!

Is your attitude to playing music the same now as when you began?

Doing it to me is really the big pay off. I used to get off just listening and playing along, pretending I was on stage: now walking out on stage, hearing the applause and seeing the fans reaction to the music is great. People send me letters saying a particular song has captured a moment in their lives for them or helped them get through stuff. Someone posted on my Facebook page yesterday night, that their 41 year old daughter had been killed by her husband, and they’d just buried her that day: they played ‘While We Cry’ from my first record at the funeral procession and they said how much that meant to them. That’s a devastating story to hear, but to hear that my music is making that connection, that is a big thing.

Belated congratulations are in order for winning two awards in this year’s British Blues Awards! You were voted Best Female Vocalist and also took the Kevin Thorpe Song Writer award.

Thank you very much; yes one for mum and one for the grandmother, nice and even!

It’s the second year in a row you’ve won female vocalist?

Yes, I’m very happy about that, very thankful.

Your voice is more powerful, has more of an edge on Diamonds In The Dirt than on White Sugar, was that a conscious change?

I think the difference is that the time between White Sugar and Diamonds was spent in 18 months of hectic touring in the States, so I think without realising it that made a big difference to my voice and it became a bit stronger; or I hope so anyway!

And Diamonds has been up to number 8 on the Billboard Blues chart and has been critically well received, you must be happy with that

Absolutely, it’s great to see your name up there with people you’ve grown up listening to and being influenced by, so I was very pleased by that.

There’s a harder more rocky feel to a lot of the music on the latest album, less obviously blues pigeonhole material.

Yeah, that wasn’t really an intentional thing; it was quite a natural progression really for me. Again, during the time since White Sugar I’d moved to Detroit which is ‘Rock City’, and when we were touring a lot of that time we were playing with Joe Bonamassa, or Black Country Communion or Glenn Hughes; being from Birmingham and the Black Country area originally myself I grew up with Sabbath, Zeppelin and Trapeze, all that kind of stuff, so that kind of found me reverting back to some of my original influences in the rock vein.

I thought I heard snatches of things like Free, Deep Purple and even a little Wishbone Ash in there

Yeah, you know I love all that stuff.

Your award winning song, “Same As It Never Was”, has a more soully kind of vibe, quite Tedeschi Trucks Band-ish, if you’re familiar with their material.

Yes, I am, we’ve actually just played a show with them! As a songwriter and singer, more than as a guitar player, I like to keep things mixed I guess. I have a lot of different influences and they come out in the course of writing, and I find it a challenge to write some of that more soully stuff, and being a Bonnie Raitt fan has an influence on some of those tracks too. I like to keep it as diverse as I can I guess.

You mentioned your move to Detroit, how long have you been out there now?

I was in Detroit for two years but in the past six months I’ve moved to Texas. I migrated south as the weather was getting to me: we only get two months off a year so it was a decision of spending it in 108 degrees of heat or minus 108 degrees so I went for the warmer one!

So does that mean you’re no longer a Detroit Lions fan?

I will always be a Lions fan, and of the Tigers, Redwings… I just don’t wear my Detroit Lions jersey when I go to watch football in a bar in Texas.

You’ve obviously brought them luck; they’re having their best season in years.

That’s what I keep telling people, though they don’t seem to believe me; I say I’ve done them a favour leaving the state as they’ve been doing quite well since I moved!

I guess you moved from one ‘Motor City’ to another going from Birmingham to Detroit: what was the scene like in Birmingham when you were growing up?

You’re right; they’re both very industrial towns so that wasn’t that much of a change really.

Growing up in Birmingham and the Black Country it was a pretty good time to be getting into music. Obviously my original influences were in the blues and there was a club called The Robin, in Brierley Hill and my father used to take me over there when I was twelve, thirteen years old to see international touring bands. I saw everyone there: John Hammond, Andrew Junior Boy Jones, a lot of the authentic American blues, touring artists, so for me that was great. On the other side of things, I had my brother who was a big rock fan, he used to take me to the Flapper & Firkin and other rock venues in Birmingham so it was a pretty good live music scene all around there then. I haven’t been back in a couple of years but hopefully the clubs I used to enjoy going to are still open. (The Robin 2 is at Bilston in Wolverhampton)

You mention your influences from both rock and blues, what was it that drove you to being a guitarist?

To be honest it was a combination of the two, although I’d already been playing classical guitar at school. I auditioned and got into the Birmingham Youth Ensemble: the main thing I liked about that, to be honest, was the fact that the more I played in the BYE the less time I had to spend at school! So I knew I wanted to play guitar. I enjoyed it and I felt I had some degree of talent at it but it was a bit too disciplined for me and, with both my Dad and brother playing, I had to play electric guitar! My dad was into the blues, Gary Moore and the like and my brother was into Metallica and Zakk Wylde and all the shredders, so I just wanted to keep up with the both of them really!

Talking of electric guitars, I note you stay faithful to the Fender sound, are you never tempted to whack it through a load of pedals or use a Les Paul?

I’ve thought about it, I have to be honest. I guess I’m a stickler for tradition, I get comfortable with certain things: I’m not that good at change! But in terms of guitars I haven’t found anything that I like as much as the Telecaster or that suits me as much. For me, particularly with some of the Tele’s I’ve got being quite heavy with the Humbuckers, it’s a good cross between having a fatter Les Paul sound and being able to attack them like you can a Stratocaster. Also being a 5’ 6” female, Les Pauls are relatively heavy and I’d like to try to keep my posture as good as possible! I think that sometimes you have to admit that maybe you’re not physically built for certain instruments and I think the classic LP is one that I’m not suited to.

Do you think being a woman in a fairly male-dominated arena has been a help or a hindrance?

A bit of both, really. Initially I think that got the foot-in-the-door, got me attention more easily, although I’m not sure if it was the right kind of attention. It was like ‘Check out Joanne, she’s a GIRL!’ It’s great that people are saying people should check you out but at the same time it maybe means they’re already coming to you with a lesser impression of you. Which perhaps isn’t entirely a wrong thing, in that there are pretty few female guitarists out there, and those that have made it to greater success usually tend to be acoustic guitarists, so naturally people have preconceived ideas. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse. I don’t think about it too much now, you can worry about it or not so I just get on with things and try to keep up with the boys!

Your band on this tour isn’t the guys you’ve used on your albums?

No, the band on the records, Steve Potts and Dave Smith, are session guys that the producer Jim Gaines works with a lot and they’ve played with everyone from Luther Allison to Al Green, but I’m actually bringing over my touring band from Detroit for this tour, I’m excited about that, it should be good to see my ideal line-up.

You had a gap of seven years between your appearance on the scene and your first release, was it good to have that time to hone your craft rather than being pressured to record straight away?

I think so, I did consciously make the decision to take that time and I turned down a couple of offers as I felt I just wasn’t ready. I could play guitar a bit but I wasn’t a songwriter; I wanted to be able to make my own music and be self-sufficient really and I wanted to work on my vocals. By the time I hit twenty-one when we started working on White Sugar I could have waited a bit longer but it was a case of ‘Well, enough’s enough, it may not be perfect but I’m good enough now to do a debut album’. I think I waited just long enough. I’m pleased with the debut album. I don’t think it shows too much immaturity considering I was still only twenty-one. Fortunately as I started so young, at fifteen or sixteen, I did have the luxury of time a bit. I’m pleased I waited, and I think I waited long enough.

And you’ve now had two albums within the space of a year and a bit, and another one in the pipeline.

Yeah, I’ve just been writing; I took some time off in Texas to do three weeks’ to a month’s worth of writing and we’re going to start recording in January.

So is that a backlog of songs as a result of all those years waiting or are the songs coming thick and fast now?

It’s that they’re coming thick and fast now. It’s interesting that I didn’t really start writing until about a year before White Sugar, so I’m still pretty new at being a writer and I’m still changing a lot, trying different things, exploring different avenues and finding out what I like writing and what I’m capable of writing so that’s good fun. So I think that’s why they’re coming thick and fast now: it’s nice to keep working on it and keep evolving at this point.

Obviously it’s early days then but do you think the new album will be a change of direction or a continuation of where you left off with Diamonds In The Dirt?

I’d like it to be different: I’d like all the albums to be different! I’m sure people will have their favourites, whether it’s White Sugar or Diamonds. Maybe I’ll do an acoustic album in the future that will be other’s favourite. I think my main goal is to make them all different while still sounding like me and have them tie-in. I just want to be Joanne Shaw Taylor regardless of whether it’s a blues album or an acoustic album or a more soully album like we discussed with some of the Susan Tedeschi type tracks, so I’m excited to see what happens with this one.

Will it be the same band and producer as the first two?

I think we’ll actually be recording in Austin, Texas this time, with my touring band guys Paul and Layla now I’ve moved down there, but all the details are still up in the air.

And do you prefer the ‘live in the studio’ format when you record?

Yeah, I do. I spend a lot of time thinking about production when I’m writing, so by the time it comes to going into the studio I’m so tired of the songs that I just want to record them quickly, live, impromptu and energetically and be done with it to be honest!

Joanne is touring from November 15th – gig details here.

Platinum-selling singer Beth Hart was in London to promote Don’t Explain, her album of soul covers with Joe Bonamassa. She spoke to Moray Stuart of Blues In Britain about that, her career so far and her forthcoming UK shows in November. Photo by Al Stuart.

Was it a surprise when Joe Bonamassa called you to say, ‘Let’s go and do this’?

A huge surprise! I didn’t really care what it was we were going to do, I was just really excited to work with him. I was so flattered that he would call me to do that, and then to give me such leeway: I mean, truly, what a gentleman! I received such respect from him and Kevin Shirley [producer on Don't Explain] and the whole band. What amazing guys, there was so much respect it was like it was my band. I got to go in and do my thing and there was no dictating how it should go; no-one did that to anybody. It was like Kevin put us all together in a studio and said, ‘Go!’ We just played down each song maybe three, four times and he’d say, ‘OK, that’s done, let’s move on to the next one’ and it went as simple as that; it was so nice.

Were the songs for the album chosen jointly?

When we were deciding on the songs, Joe said, ‘Just make the list you want, because you’re going to sing this stuff’ which was great! He and Kevin gave me a list of songs that they had in mind too, some things that I’d never heard before that were just so good, some things that I didn’t much like. I felt uncomfortable saying so but eventually I had to say, ‘I don’t hear the song in this, I don’t get it’ and even then it was ‘No problem, do what you want to do!’

Sounds like working with Joe was a good experience?

It’s funny, even in a sound check he just taps the mic to see it’s on and says, ‘Let’s go’; he just wants to play, as you can see from his schedule! I think he just enjoys it and loves it so much that he can work himself like that, it’s incredible. My experience with him was that he doesn’t need to hold the spotlight at all. In fact we just did a show with him in L.A. the other night; we asked him to sit in for a couple and he ended up doing something like eight songs and he was a joy! He’s over in the corner and I’m trying to get him out into the centre of the stage to get some spotlight and he’s ‘I’m cool over here’ so he’s a sweetie!

I like the mix of styles on the album, from the bluesy Ray Charles number Sinner’s Prayer to the smooth jazz of Your Heart Is As Black As Night by Melody Gardot.

That is a great song! Do you know her story? It’s extraordinary: she had no musical background then she had a major car accident that damaged her throat so she could no longer speak. Part of her therapy to teach her to speak again was to teach her to sing first, and she discovered that she had this killer voice, and the ability to write and play! That was a song I’d never heard before; Kevin Shirley sent me it and when I heard it I instantly wanted to sing it; both she and the song are incredible. It reminds me of growing up, when my mother turned me on to a lot of jazz music; I thought, ‘My mom is going to love this, I’ve got to do this song!’

Was that the kind of music you grew up listening to?

I grew up with a lot of different music, totally different styles, and that’s one of them. It makes me think of early childhood, and my mother and her respect for the lyrics of songs. All the music of that period was so focussed on a great lyric; it seems to be at the forefront of the thinking behind those songs and you can really hear it in that music, just fantastic lyrics.

I’ve read that at one point you were very much into Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and other heavier bands, does that influence your style too?

Oh God, yeah, and Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, anything like that.

Is that the kind of thing you listen to when you’re ‘off-duty’?

Sometimes: I go through phases. I’ll have my James Taylor and Carole King phases and Patsy Cline, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash phases, and classical too: Rachmaninov and Beethoven, I’m a huge, huge fan of them (but I hate Mozart, I just can’t take that!). I listen to all kinds of things, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Etta James…. And also the music my mother turned me on to: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington especially, my mother adored her, and Billie Holiday.

You generally sing your own material, was it strange to do covers or refreshing or what?

A combination really. It was very intimidating knowing I was going to attempt things by Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Ray Charles, I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can do this’; on the other hand incredibly exciting! It was Aretha and Etta of whom my best friend in my teens said, ‘If you really want to learn how to sing this is what you listen to.’ He gave me a copy of Blues In The Night – The Early Show, a live recording of Etta James, so when Joe said, ‘Let’s do some soul covers’ I thought I had to do a couple of songs from that. Even though I’d been listening to it all my life, this time I listened to it from a different place; I thought if I’m ever going to pull this off I’ve got to find my own personal story attached to these songs, otherwise it’s going to end up being a bad copy. So doing that eased off on some of my fears. I still got hives though! I never broke out in hives before in my life, and driving home with Scott after the first day I couldn’t stop itching and I looked and there’s these big red marks: I thought, ‘God I’ve really got to get this together, this is ridiculous!’

Will all the material for the upcoming shows be from Don’t Explain, or will there be some of your own songs?

You know I’m so in love with this record I think it will be the bulk of the material; I never do that normally, but I’m so proud of it, and I hope people will dig onto it so hardcore that they want to hear the bulk of it. We’ve even hired a Hammond player! I’ve never hired anyone else outside of my band before so we’re really excited. That’ll be fresh; ‘fresh meat’ in the band!

You’ve said in the past you don’t write when things are going well, you only write when things aren’t going so great, is that still the case?

Yes, it is; there are those rare exceptions, if something particularly spectacular has happened or I’ve gone through an experience that will inspire me, but usually it’s darker! It’s kind of unfortunate because I would like to have records with a lyric that would skew a little more towards being happier sometimes; but I seem to be always talking about things that are pretty sad. Even when getting inspired by people having gone through tragic circumstances, coming through the other side and winning, I’m writing it from the perspective of the tragic circumstance. Sometimes I do wonder ‘Is this a bummer for people?’ I don’t know if that’ll ever change… Probably not!

Your most recent solo album My California doesn’t sound too downbeat? The tunes are full of California sunshine appropriately enough?

Yeah it’s very light! I’ve never done a record like that before, that was the one and only! That record is the only one I’ve done as a co-write with one person for the whole album (with the exception of one solo-written song). I have done co-writes before but it’s usually been about half and half. Rune Westberg, the producer and co-writer, had said he’d really like it if I did one record where I didn’t scream at him but just told him stories! Part of me was like, ‘You’re an asshole!’ But another part of me thought that it might be an interesting thing to try, a challenging experience, which it was! At the end of the day I’m really happy with the songs, but I don’t know if it’s ADHD but I get bored really quickly with something if it’s too linear, if it stays in one tone or colour too long, which I feel it kind of did on that record… But the songs! I had a really great time writing those songs with him.

Well you do get to scream at him a couple of times on Happiness…any day now.

And on Everybody’s Sober!

You’ve got a great vocal range, from ‘screaming’ down to a smoky whisper on things like the title track of Don’t Explain: Is it nice to get away from the ‘raucous rock chick’ and ‘Janis Joplinesque’ labels that get thrown your way a lot?

When we’re doing the rock and roll thing, actually doing it, it feels good to hit it hard vocally: I don’t know why that is but I know it’s like a release that happens and I feel like I’m getting a load off. Maybe psychologically I feel like I’m proving something, like I’m strong enough to combat what ever is in my head, but it is nice to just chill the frick out and bring it all the way down. That’s one of the things that we like as a band: the dynamic in a live show of riding that wave, and I know that keeps us from getting that dull feeling of just going through the motions; we don’t get that because we’ve got that wave to ride.

You were in Starsearch back in 1993, are you glad you did that?

Oh yes! It hurt my career at the time in terms of getting a record deal because it was considered a very uncool thing to do; unlike American Idol and things like that today, it was, ‘You don’t do that if you want a real career!’ you know? But I had the time of my life doing that show, it was so much fun: I was out in Florida for the first time in my life and I was there for like a month recording it, and I kept winning which boosted my confidence.

You won the overall Female singer category?

Yeah, and I got to do my own material as well as covers of Aretha and Janis; it was wonderful. I fell in love with doing television then too, I found that people in TV are very focussed, and pretty kind; I guess they don’t have the time to be assholes to people or have attitudes. It’s all ‘be cool, get the work done.’ I felt secure in that environment so it was fun!

Was it a result of Starsearch that the Beth Hart and The Ocean Of Souls record came about?

Oh man, what a nightmare that was, oh God! I was excited to be making the record but it was just horrible! I had a combination manager/producer/co-writer at the time; I’d met him when I was 15 and he had a little studio in LA, a great guy, fun guy, and we became best friends. It was him who I brought with me to Starsearch, he produced all the tracks. When we got back, he had some rich friends (he had a pretty famous actress girlfriend) so he got someone to fund us to make the record. I remember after we’d been in the studio recording I’d be on the phone with his girlfriend [mock crying voice] ‘He’s ruining the record, it’s hooooorrible’; plus I really couldn’t sing either, but I thought the production was so wrong, I was just miserable with it. So that was kind of a bummer beginning to the recording industry, you know?

Looking back at some of the Starsearch alumni, a lot of those people went on to become huge; Beyonce, Britney, Christina Aguilera, Alanis Morissette. Winners now seem to sink without a trace?

I think a lot of them were still just kids when they were doing that; that’s different. I think when you’re a kid and you do something like that, you can then grow into what you are as an adult and people don’t really care so much about it. The only adults whose careers weren’t hurt by that were the comics; Roseanne Barr and Sinbad, they were on and it seemed to do a lot of good for them. Alanis too was a bit older when she did that, she’d already had a real ‘pop’ career in Canada before she came over for Starsearch with Glen Ballard, and they spent a lot of their time making demos which they sent to Maverick records saying they were ready to do a record. Somebody at Maverick said, ‘This record’s already done’ and they put that out as Jagged Little Pill, which holds the record for biggest debut solo artist: unbelievable, with just demos! How smart though was the person at Maverick!

Do you feel the way talent shows now dominate the industry has a bad impact?

I think it’s great for the mainstream, launching talents that may or may not have long careers, whether or not people say, ‘Oh that’s not real music’ Who cares? It is what it is! It is a different business today in that it’s even harder to get something out there, the labels have taken such a hit financially. Previously they’d sign pop acts that would make so much money for the label that they could fund the acts that took two, three albums to grow and develop, but once they did they’d have twenty, twenty-five year careers: so you’d get this mix of the stuff that would suit the 12 year olds and take care of the label’s finances, and then you’d have all the stuff that would get the critical respect. That’s gone now. So to me, I think whatever it takes; if you’re doing this, and you love it, and you’re trying to get into it, if talent shows are an avenue you want to take, go for it! Get it out there!

When we spoke to Warren Haynes he lamented the bygone era of artists like Aretha and Etta, do you think a lot of music now lacks the immediacy of the approach to recording they had?

I think it’s a shame when someone takes six months to make a record and there’s a lot of cut-and-paste; you’re not going to get music that reflects real life, because real life isn’t cut-and-paste and perfect, thank God! Although I think some people can accomplish an album that is effective and emotional and sincere when you do take your time; you listen to some Mutt Lange records and those records are pretty brilliant, and his records can take like five years to make. Rick Rubin has been known to take a bit of time making a record too, so I think it can be done. It’s like anything, it depends on the hands that it’s in, and if it’s respectfully made. I think that you’ve got no shot if you don’t start with a great song: if you start with something that is really a moving piece then it’s kind of hard to mess it up. For me, analogue, playing live to tape, making it a real experience thats happening now and capturing it – you can’t beat that. I like it when I’m listening to a song and I can tell that in the guitar solo the guy has totally missed a note or the singer is a bit flat or sharp. I end up liking those bits better than any other part of the song, because it reflects my feelings and my life: it’s not perfect.

[Beth’s regular guitarist, Jon Nichols joins us in reception]

You’ll have your usual full band with you in November, [Jon on guitar, Tom Lilly bass and Todd Wolf drums]; as Jon is here I just wanted to ask how he was looking forward to ‘stepping into Joe’s shoes’ for the Don’t Explain tracks?

Well, obviously I don’t expect to reproduce Joe’s solos! So I’ll be learning the songs but I’ll be doing my own thing, I’m not sitting here saying I’m going to top Joe!

Beth, you were here in May for 5 shows, how did that go?

It went well; our best show was probably here in London but the other places we got to go to I’d never been to in my life so that was really cool.

I see you’ve added a third gig at The Brook in Southampton to the November shows already announced [at London’s Dingwalls and Derby’s Flowerpot]?

Yeah, we’re doing four in total; the other is at The Assembly [in Leamington Spa]. We do two shows then have two days off and then another two. We knew there were four possibilities but I wasn’t sure I could do them all as I was kind of wanting to chill out a little bit, but then last night I rethought it and said, ‘Hey, the more we can do the better.’

Do you find that UK promoters and venues are more reticent to put on acts like yourself than they are in Europe? You’re huge across Northern Europe, and have lots of dates lined up there, so I wondered if getting the shows here was harder work?

Well it certainly has taken a lot longer! The whole thing kind of started for me in Holland; it was wonderful because we got to work on a bigger scale, so we really chased it down. It was a smart approach my manager took too, because he said to break an area you can’t just come in once a year, unless you have a real radio-friendly type of music. He thought the only way was to really saturate the market and keep coming back, and keep coming back a lot! So we spent a lot of time first in Holland and then Denmark and Norway, so we’ve just been working, working, working. Germany has kind of opened up for us, although we haven’t broken the market there at all yet. And here in England we’re still trying to build as well, we’re kind of taking one country at a time! Don’t Explain seems to be opening up new audiences for me, partly I guess because of Joe Bonamassa ,and we’re getting good reaction to the single, so it’s looking good!

You don’t play a lot of US shows though these days? Is that a result of concentrating on Europe?

Well I had a really great thing going in the US many years ago, but I had a severe drug problem to the point where I couldn’t work, and I pissed off the labels. Word spreads around like wildfire and people of course don’t want to take a chance on you. It was probably a good thing too that that all happened, because I’m not sure I’d have made it if I’d kept going. So that really ended everything for me and I thought it was all over, so when the Holland thing happened it was like a whole second chance so I took it and just kept chasing it over here. But in the last two years I’ve said to David [Wolff, her manager] ‘Look I’ll bite the bullet and just go and do some spot-dates throughout the States and I’ll eat it on the finances side’; I can’t just ignore the States any more. Surprisingly enough whenever we have booked a show it has sold out, not 2,500 seaters or anything, but 500 – 800 seaters, so we’re ‘doing it’. Still, it is just spot dates, but a real tour of the US? I haven’t got to do that for years and years, and who knows? Maybe I will again, maybe I won’t.

Recorded by Blake Powell of Note Music.

What started your career as a radio presenter?

Twenty-five years at Radio 2, twenty-six if you count the three pilot programmes that I did in 1985. That was a holiday relief for Dave Gelly who was doing a jazz programme. Because I was subbing for Dave, who makes Bob Harris sound stentorian, (whispering) I put on this very gentle, whispery voice and that’s how I did my first three programmes. (laughter) It was only after working at Jazz FM with Peter Young that I developed (projecting) this stentorian (style).

Who was the producer on the Dave Gelly show?

Dave Shannon; Dave Shannon invented the programme (Paul Jones’ Hour of Rhythm & Blues). He produced it for a long, long time. Then he went off; he got offered, very keen on sport is Dave, and he got offered a strange television programme where did sport but they had music in between, which seemed like the perfect world to him. After a while he decided he didn’t really like it; he wasn’t terribly happy doing it so he came back to radio and he took up the programme again. I have had, I don’t now how many, certainly at least seven producers now.

When we were celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary, we decided a brief round up of some of the young generation would be a great idea. As you know, we had Oli Brown, 24 Pesos – hot stuff – Marcus Bonfanti, and Kyla Brox and Danny Blomley, nice round up of some of the hot talent going on.

Then Paul (Long the current producer) said, ‘What shall we have from the past?’ I said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea! The past is the past!’ So we started dredging the archives.

It wasn’t always fifty or fifty-two shows a year; sometimes they took me off for a quarter. I hated that, in the end I made what I thought was a very good case for it being on all the time. My chief point was, people would come up to me and say, ‘I used to love your programme, why did they take it off?’ The answer was, ‘They didn’t, they just rested it for thirteen weeks, which just gave you enough time to forget, where it had been, at what time on what day and so on and so forth. So now you don’t think I’m on and I am.’ So I was saying to them, ‘This is really not fair, if you can possibly give me every week at the same time, that would be wonderful!’ and they relented. I think that was Jim Moir. We’ve had quite a few Radio 2 controllers in my time.

We eventually, thanks to Paul Long with great help from the archive department of Radio 2, came up with a B B King interview and a John Mayall one, both of those from 1986, the first year the programme was on, and various other bits and pieces, including essentially, inevitably, compulsorily Joe Bonamassa and various other people.

A little while ago, I had a text from Richard Studholme, saying he had been watching one of the Happy Birthday Bob (Dylan) programmes, on TV and one of the people who came on and did a song was Rab Noakes. He said, ‘Rab, as far as I was concerned, completely stole the show. He was wonderful! I hadn’t seen him since he was producing your show when I did it with my band and Carey Bell.’ I thought, ‘Carey Bell would have been nice to drag up from the past!’ I texted back, ‘Great about Rab. When was that Carey Bell show? Richard, rather helpfully, texted back, ‘It was to mark the sixth anniversary of the death of Muddy Waters.’ As I was out on the road at the time, I had no idea when this was. (Laughing) It should be engraved in one’s memory, of course.

We benefit immensely from your shows and your knowledge and you rounding up all these great people for us to hear. What do you get out of it?

Somebody said about reading the Bible, ‘I don’t study it in order to benefit you; I study it in order to benefit myself and you may get the benefit.’ I study the blues because I need to. When I am talking to somebody, I recall some weird and wonderful creek they went up one summer, thirty years ago in their career. I might say, ‘Didn’t you once record with…?’ and they might say, ‘If only you hadn’t remembered that.’ (laughter).

I remember seeing Smokey Robinson and he asked the audience for requests; they called out songs that he couldn’t remember ever recording. He turned to the band and asked, ‘Can we do that?’ and they just started playing it. Irma Thomas has a lyrics book for just that purpose.

Marian Montgomery has a very posh folder; I think it was a plastic folder but it was covered in flock wallpaper. It looked very grand with a gold clasp.

It’s lovely when that happens. I’m touring with The Manfreds and I stumbled into my room at a hotel, a week or so ago, and (on TV) they were paying a tribute to Burt Bacharach. It was a rather nice Electric Prom concert, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and lots of fab musicians. There were three singers that he had with him, they were really, really good, and three guests. Jamie Cullum sang Make It Easy On Yourself. Beth Rowley did 24 Hours From Tulsa, possibly my least favourite Bacharach song, and then Adele came on and I thought she was terrific; she was best!

I was thinking about that and thinking, ‘When did we last sing Little Red Book? There was a film called What’s New Pussy Cat? And everybody remembers that Tom Jones sang the title song. Slightly fewer people remember that Dionne Warwick sang a song called I Cry Alone and almost nobody recalls that The Manfreds, on the sound track of that movie did a song of Burt’s and Hal David’s called My Little Red Book. I got to the sound check next day and I said, “What would anyone think about doing My Little Red Book tonight?’ There was a range of enthusiasms from ‘Not particularly.’ to ‘Oh yeah, why not?’ Anyway, we had a look at it at the sound check and that night we did it, the first time we’d sung it for a year. A friend of mine was in the audience, said, ‘Is it really a year since you’ve done it?’ I said, ‘It could be two years for all I remember.’ He said, ‘How do you remember the words.’ I said, ‘One thing is that Hal David is the greatest lyricist I can, off hand, think of in the last fifty years so once you start, that’s it. Another thing is, if it’s in here (my head) and the band is playing it properly, you remember.’

If they did a completely different intro you might not.

Actually, I saw Eric Clapton the other night; fabulous! There were a couple of things I didn’t recognise until he started singing, which was all the better really. There was a new arrangement of Crossroads, of all thinks. It vaguely resembled it but they didn’t quite play (sings the guitar intro) ‘dnn dnn dnnn, d dnn dnn dnn dnn’ but they had the two girl singers, one played the tambourine and the other the maracas and it gave it such a push. Steve Winwood was on the gig as well. Of course it took me back to when I recorded Crossroads with Steve, Eric and Jack Bruce and Ben Palmer and the drummer (Pete York) from Spencer Davis Group, 1966 for Elektra Records. It was Eric Clapton & The Powerhouse recordings. We did I Want to Know, Stepping Out, which I stepped out for and Crossroads. On that version, Steve sang it and Eric just played guitar. At the Albert Hall the other night, Eric sang it and played guitar and all Steve did was play the organ, wonderfully.

They both sounded very good. Steve was most amazing, because, as a kid he used to get those very high notes and he still does. They did, (sings the intro riff to Gimme Some Lovin’ and a snatch of lyrics, falsetto) ‘So glad we made it’; wonderful! I was knocked out with him in 1964 and I am still knocked out with him.

So, you are still a fan of the music Paul!

Not only that, but years ago, I would never have left on a television programme on Burt Bacharach, but now I really want to. I am more of a fan and more eclectic in my musical enthusiasms than I ever have been in my whole live.

When I was going through my pop stuff and, for that matter, my early theatrical career as well, I didn’t go to gigs much at all because I was working every night. So I missed an awful lot of gigs. People would go, ‘Oh you should have been at so and so’ and mention some legendary event. I saw a few. I did see Albert King, inevitably Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, who I thought were wonderful. There were those who had decided that Junior was too much into James Brown and Buddy was too much into Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, I think, so they generally decided that they were a waste of time as far as blues was concerned, not as far as I was concerned. I did see some people but most of the time my blues input was collecting.

I did come serious collecting in those years, thanks to (Paul) ‘Sailor’ Vernon, actually. I bought so much stuff from that guy, including 78s. Occasionally there would be, The Best of somebody or other and there would be two tracks missing and I had to chase after Paul Vernon and find that they were available, as long as I paid enough. He did postal auctions, so as long as you bid enough you would be sure of getting something.

Top Topham told me about doing this with an American postal auction, when he was a teenager. He said that most of the time he and his friends didn’t know what it was they were bidding for.

I knew what I was bidding for. The significant thing about a postal auction is you don’t know whom you are bidding against, so you don’t know if some mad millionaire has just offered twenty times what you offered for something and you haven’t a hope. What you’d do is take some advice from Paul, as you would from Christies or Sotheby’s or Bonham’s to find out what something was likely to fetch, as you do in the salerooms, and then you’d decide how much you wanted to bid and you might get it or you might not.

Were you involved in advising Leo Green about whom they should have for BluesFest London?

BluesFest London; it’s a jazz and blues festival. That’s really where Leo Green is coming from, although he plays convincing rock and roll on Jeff Beck’s latest outing. He’s paid his dues.

I did tell them they had to have Jon Cleary. I do think Jon is still massively under rated. Whenever I have had him on the programme, doing sessions and stuff, the mail is always wildly enthusiastic.

The thing about Jon is, he is more into New Orleans music than he is into blues. Sometimes, the two things go together, sometimes they don’t. It may be that people are not sure what particular bag he belongs in.

James Hunter was another person I recommended to them. I said you’ve got to have James Hunter.

I see you are listed as Paul Jones & Friends for the BluesFest (28th June). You also play regularly with The Blues Band, The Manfreds and as Jones & Kelly, with Dave Kelly. Does Paul Jones & Friends enable you to play different material?

I was able to fit that gig in because usually I don’t work Tuesdays.

Sometimes Paul Jones & Friends does some of The Blues Band stuff, some of The Manfreds stuff and some of the duo stuff and yes some other stuff I don’t get to do so much. In some respects, that sort of versatility can be a liability, in as much as people don’t quite know what you are. I think most people know I am a blues man.

When I do Ronnie Scott’s with Digby Fairweather, I do some blues, I do some standards and I even do the odd song from Guys and Dolls. Guy’s and Dolls was such a major time for me. Apart from it being a wonderful evening in the theatre, it’s a legend but it’s true, people really did queue through the night to get in, because they wanted to get the handful of tickets that were only on sale on the day and people came again and again.

I did. We queued up for tickets and went three or four times I think.

The other thing about that show was it is where I met my wife. We met in 1882, married in 84 and we are now in our twenty-seventh year of marriage.

Thinking of anniversaries, next year is the 50th anniversary of the Ealing Club.

Yes, it is also the anniversary of The Manfreds, slightly later because I think the Ealing Club started in March of 1962. The fateful call from Brian Jones, (inviting me) to be the singer of the group he was forming, came sometime in the spring or summer and for reasons of my own I said no. The next time somebody rang me up and said there was an R & B group forming and would I be interested in forming it, I said yes and that was The Manfreds. So, sometime late in 1962, that group formed.

My memory is hazy about the early sixties but, it does seem to me, you could hear a blues band nearly every night. In the early nineties, you could go to the 100 Club, more than once a week and hear blues. Steve Beggs put blues on every Sunday night. Apart from regularly getting Paul Lamb, Big Town Playboys and really good bands playing regularly in London, you also had Long John Hunter, Louisiana Red, and so on. There were so many bands.

Paul Jones’ Hour of Rhythm and Blues is on BBC Radio 2 on Monday evenings, at 7 p.m., on FM, DAB and on the internet at www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 and on Listen Again for a week after the show.

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Todd Sharpville is a key figure in the history of modern UK blues. With vocalist Earl Green he hosted the Monday night blues jam at The Weavers Arms in Stoke Newington, which was a hub for all aspiring young blues musicians and singers and a Mecca for visiting blues players. Todd’s career has taken him all over the world as a side man and a bandleader. Todd has a new album out, and he came in to Blues In Britain to talk to Fran Leslie. Photo: Al Stuart

Tell me about the making of the album, Porchlight.

My manager, Dave Jones of Cat House Music in Kansas City, took over Joe Lewis Walker’s management and signed Joe to a three-album deal with Stony Plain in Canada. Joe decided that the first two albums would be produced by Duke Robillard. Duke is a friend from many years ago, whom I had lost touch with. The last time I saw him he had just proposed to his current wife Lorrine, in the middle of supper. We had lost touch over the years.

I went over to guest on Joe’s album, the first of the three-album deal, A Witness To The Blues, and reconnected with Duke again. Duke had listened to a album that I had recorded in the five years, during the five years of my disappearance from the blues scene, which was my divorce album, Diary Of A Drowning Man.

It was really a singer-songwriter’s album not so much a blues record. It featured a duet with Sam Brown; I put a Gospel choir on the record. I recorded it in Denmark. It had cost a couple of hundred thousand pounds to make. Three record labels all went bankrupt before it could be released.

I now own the rights so at some time it will surface. It’s more of a mainstream record than a specialist thing.

Through that meeting, in Rhode Island, when I was guesting on Joe’s Witness To The Blues album, Duke heard Diary and had fallen in love with the record. He asked my manager Dave if I’d be interested in doing a blues album and, if I was, if he could produce it.

That was very nice. I’d long been a fan of Duke’s aside from our friendship, a massive fan of him and his history and his style of guitar playing. He and Jimmie Vaughan are the two white modern exponents of the style I have always appreciated, loved and enjoyed; the less is more, the American version of the Peter Green approach, playing to express instead of playing to impress.

So, one thing led to another and I found myself coming back to the blues in force and doing this album in Rhode Island with Duke.

We both guested on Joe’s third album for Stony Plain. It’s a live album recorded on the blues cruise, which we did this year. It will be released shortly. It was great fun and we have done some shows since.

Duke is very, very proud of what he did with my record. It’s a double album. I went through a month long period of writing songs, hurriedly for the record. I sent them all over to Duke, on the assumption that we would pick maybe ten or eleven songs. We ended up struggling to find songs that we were happy to let go so we ended up turning them into a double album. The recording process was interrupted by my father’s death, which accounts for the album title and I suppose the ethos of what the album is all about; certainly the emotional energy behind the recording of it

Porchlight? Explain please!

You will understand when you hear the lyrics. The title track, Porchlight is a reference to the light that loved ones leave on when it is time for us to come home. It’s about the purity of the relationship between parents and children; the nearest we get to divine love. That’s the notion behind the title track.

I had just finished writing the majority of the songs and then my dad died, so we had to postpone the recording sessions. When we picked them up, I flew back to Rhode Island to do the recording and subsequently had to go back to mix the record.

Which studio did you use?

Lake West, West Grange, Rhode Island where Duke had done one of the Fabulous Thunderbirds albums that he played on. It is close to where he lives. Jack (John Paul Galtier), his manager and engineer owns the studio. There has been many a great blues album (that has) come from that studio.

What was lovely, as well, was I had taken to fishing these last few years. Whilst they were setting up the mixes, they needed an hour between tracks; I picked up a cheap fishing rod from Wal-Mart and would just sit there with my manager on the pier on the lake, just a few yards away from the studio. It was a good place to be, after my dad’s death, surrounded by friends. Duke’s band was the backing band; they are all good mates.

How long did it take to record and mix?

Because it was a double album, we took a bit longer than one would normally take on a blues record. We took about a week and a half to cut the tracks, because the songs were all new to the band. I was using a lot of the time to arrange the band. Duke left us to our own devices for the first few days. I just wanted to get the arrangements figured out. I had written the tracks in the middle of nowhere in Wales and by the time I had finished writing I was pretty definitive about how I wanted the arrangements to be but explaining that to a band – I am not the most erudite in musical situations. That took a fair bit of time. Once the arrangements were done, it was pretty much banged out live.

I wrote most of the horn parts there. I la-la the horn parts to each horn player and the players write them down. We work like that. I used to read music when I was little but I have long forgotten how to do it. It is so much quicker to la-la and leave it to the technical people to write.

I use a piano to write with at home. I avoid keyboards you plug in. All my gear is old gear and I only use computers for email and Facebook. I have a Dictaphone that I carry about with me. If I am on a train, or whatever, I la-la into the Dictaphone and try to figure it out the next day. There are lots of songs that start that way.

Who did the mixing?

Me and Duke and Jack the engineer; he is an amazing man, wonderful engineer. He and Duke are very close. We bonded over the Joe Louis Walker sessions, originally. The whole process of my album, which you would expect to be very sombre because of my dad’s death, actually it was quite the opposite. There was lots of laughter throughout. It bonded me (with) Duke and Jack and Duke’s band. It was such fun; very hard work.

Mixing took about ten or twelve days in total. Don’t forget it is a double album. There were a few songs, which we dropped, which we might use later.

There are fifteen tracks in all. Duke guested on one song “Lousy Husband But A Real Good Dad”, where we got to have a wonderful little head-to-head, guitar jamming session. Joe Louis Walker, whom quite a lot of my fans know already, was my mentor as a kid, came and guested on it. He refers to his students as his ‘puppies’; some people don’t like to be referred to as puppies but I am very proud to be a JLW puppy. He came to the studio. Kim Wilson came to the studio; he was an absolute dream to work with. Duke of course was already there; he had no choice but to guest on my album, I had him in my clutches already. I had a great session with Joe on “When The Blues Come Calling”.

Kim Wilson played harmonica on four tracks. Two of those tracks needed backing harmonica, rather than solos; so I felt awkward having the man I believe to be the greatest living harmonica player, playing backing harmonica on two songs. There were no egos in the room. It was great having someone who is so capable.

The T-birds were on a tour at the time that took them relatively close to the studio. We organised the sessions at a time when we knew Kim was going to be about. The two songs that he solos on, “Can’t Stand The Crook” and “Misery”, I personally think are reminiscent of a feisty, young Kim Wilson; I think he played the ass off both songs. I always hoped that we would be able to do something together, so I was thrilled that he agreed to do it.

Who was in the band?

Jesse Williams played bass, who was Duke’s old bass player rather than Duke’s current bass player. He plays electric and upright bass. He’s an old friend whom I originally met on a Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. I was thrilled that he was going to be playing on it. One of the stalwarts of Duke’s past, Doug James played baritone sax and led the horn section for me; that was a must! I couldn’t do anything with Duke Robillard without Doug James being involved, whom I have always adored, musically and as a person. He’s a funny guy.

I made a new friend in the process, Duke’s current keyboard player. When we were doing the sessions with JLW, we had Bruce Katz on keyboards. I have always respected him. I became familiar with him through the stuff he did with Ronnie Earl. I assumed he would be playing on my record but Duke recommended his current keyboard player, Bruce Bears, who has a slightly less specialist field of vision than Bruce Katz. Bruce Katz is great straight-ahead blues. Bruce Bears has a really good angle aside from the blues, Gospel and so on. Bruce Bears and I bonded over the sessions. He’s incredibly good fun; he had me laughing through almost all of it. Then we had another old mate, Mark Teixeira*, on drums, who is such a solid drummer and such an easy going, laid back guy. He’s always got a smile on his face. It was exactly the right combination really to bring out the best of me for that particular moment in time.

I am looking forward to working with them as a band. We have gigged together as a band. It was very good fun.

Are any of them going to play with you promoting this album?

Duke is going to do some guesting with me on the road outside of his own schedule as will Joe, as will Kim, in order to help me promote the record. In terms of using the original album band that really would be dependent on schedule and also on cash. Although they are not the most expensive band in the world to work with, getting them all over from the US is an expense.

Are you going to tour with them in the US?

I am going to do a fair amount. The record label has me doing an interview tour across America at the beginning of next year, specifically to talk to the broad sheets, the local radio and all the local press. For the preliminary tour, I will be doing some double billing with Tommy Castro in the States. I will be playing with Tommy’s band; they are all close friends. It’s a small circle of friends and allies.

It will probably be later in the year, I imagine, when I will be doing some touring with the original band. I would like to; we are discussing it.

Between November and January, the record label is doing a ‘blues push’, to American blues media specifically. They are subcontracting to a blues radio plugger. They will be doing a mainstream (media) push from January on. They will be plugging the CD, doing previews and advertising, that side of thing. The beginning of the year is when I start doing my interview tour. Around that time is when I will actually start playing.

When is the UK album launch?

Charlotte Street, on 29th October and then the US is the 9th November (2010).

Todd Sharpville: Porchlight (Cat House Records)

www.toddsharpville.com
www.myspace.com/toddsharpville

*Mark Steven Teixeira – not the baseball player Mark Charles Teixeira

I missed Chick Willis’s gig at the Birmingham Jazz & Blues Festival at the because I had to wait for Chick at his hotel for a pre-interview chat, and his gig ran over. But the interview was fun. You all know him: the ‘Stoop Down’ man, Chuck’s cousin, cut a live album here with Big Joe Louis in 2008, never released; cut another with Big Bear, also never released – “damned if I know”, he told me. He got that lovely jam-night feel on ‘Stoop’ (1972) by packing the studio with tables, bar-room, furniture, mates, and lots of booze.

He claimed, reluctantly, at the persistent request of my wife, Deb, to be 67. Well, so am I. And you know how cool I look; but he looks (even) younger. Though he must be well into this 70s because he was demobbed from the military in 1954.

He told me he quit smoking “20 years ago, because of my new-born daughter”. Apparently, he was smoking when she was put in his arms and some fag-ash fell on her cheek. “I quit right then”. He’d already stopped drinking (“hard liquor, anyway”) in 1968, after a session with a woman which ended when he… whilst she… so his friends had to … sorry kids, you’re not old enough.

We got onto racism. Chick: Tales of segregation in southern hotels (“Damn, wasn’t just segregated, there was nowhere for us to stay on the road at all”). And Obama (“Great it could finally happen”). Me: how my white working-class racist upbringing succumbed overnight to the black faces on the sleeves of my heroes’ LPs.

“We saw the change coming when the stores and supermarkets started selling our food.” he recalled, “We used not to be able to get that stuff from the shops, had to grow it or go somewhere where they did”.

Wryly, he mentioned the Jim Crow rule of his time, and compared it to the recent Arkansas attempt to do the same thing to illegal Latinos. “It doesn’t change: if you come to USA, sure, you must be legal, that’s right; but they must stop making it impossible to get legal; getting legal should be easier.”

We also riffed about blues-lyrics. ‘Stoop’ made its bones on jukebox sales because the stores wouldn’t touch it on account of its salacious lyrics. “No worse than Hank Ballard’s ‘Annie’ series”, he grinned. On early blues: “Well you couldn’t run the freedom-railway – the escape-route to the north for escaping slaves – ‘less you disguised it. We didn’t yell to one another in the fields that soon as the boss turn his back, we over the fence. We sang it.” and he broke into a holler about “Mr Charlie go to the big house, then we move”.

The audience, sparse, because of a programme cock-up, which was also, presumably, why there were none of Chick’s posters or CDs prominently displayed, were enthralled, as was I, to be talking to a living bluesman. He was affable, urbane, he’d been there, done and seen so much, and remained his own man, uncompromising, blues to the bone.

- Bob Jones

Here’s an online exclusive – an archive interview with Joe from issue #83 in November 2008. Asking the questions – Trevor Hodgett.

American guitar slinger Joe Bonamassa is rightly acclaimed for his virtuosity – but what makes him really exceptional is the creativity, inventiveness and imagination with which he plays.

Bonamassa is modest however about his improvisational talents. “Sometimes I don’t think about anything and it just kind of comes out,” he smiles. “And sometimes I’m thinking about what I want to have for lunch the next day or about random personal events! There’s no rhyme or reason but I think the best nights are where I don’t think about anything, where it’s like a stream of consciousness and you just flow through it and get the emotion of it all.”

Bonamassa believes he is continuing to develop as a player. “In the sense that I think I play less and I think my sound has gotten better and I think my phrasing and some of my playing is a little more original and identifiable.”

Not only a great guitarist, Bonamassa is also an effective singer as is evident on his recent album Sloe Gin. “I think singing has really changed my career,” he reflects. “I don’t think I’d be as successful as I am today without singing. It’s just one of those things that makes you a better musician because it makes you think in different terms as a player – you play different stuff, you play less or you play more depending on the vocal because you’re the one singing. If you’re not the one doing it, it’s a different perspective.”

One of Bonamassa’s great influences has been the legendary, stunningly eclectic Danny Gatton. Well, get this: in 1990 I was in New York and I was sitting in Tramps’ club being blown away by a performance by Gatton – who then announced that he was going to bring on a thirteen year old kid to jam with him. ‘On, no!’ we groaned. ‘We’re here to pay homage to Gatton, not to hear some brat.’ Well, the brat was Bonamassa and he totally electrified the audience. “You were there?” gasps Bonamassa. “Wow. Danny was really important to me because he was the one who said, ‘Listen, kid, you’re pretty good at blues but you don’t know anything about jazz, you don’t know anything about country, you don’t know anything about rockabilly,’ so he was the one who for want of a better phrase turned my life from mono to stereo.”

Note: evidence of Joe’s youthful prowess can be found on YouTube here – Ed.

“And I learned a lot of double stops and a lot on the technical side. I learned how to use my fingers and I still use a lot of the stuff that he taught me.”

Bonamassa happily admits that in his youth he was inspired more by British blues bands than by the American originators of the music. “I just thought the British blues was hipper,” he explains. “I thought it was more rock-oriented, it was heavier, it had the Les Pauls and the Marshalls and you’d see pictures of these young kids singing the blues and that really related to me. It had that swagger to it that I didn’t really get initially when I listened to the originals, the American greats, who I subsequently understood. But I was listening to the English stuff and Irish guys like Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher way before I was into Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and that kind of stuff.”

Bonamassa admits to a particular fondness for Rory Gallagher: “You know what: I grew up in a blue collar town in upstate New York and when I saw pictures of Rory – well, I owned those flannel shirts! And when I listen to his music I hear a guy doing it for the right reasons in the sense that he had no pretence. He just was a guitar player and a performer and he loved blues and he loved rock and he loved to entertain people and he did it for the purest reasons. There was no put-together show: it was just like he walked up there dressed like everybody else in the audience and just killed it and walked off and would have a beer with anybody and talk to anybody. Those are the things I could relate to – well, at fifteen, not having a beer – but in the sense that I grew up with people around me looking and acting like that so that’s why I love Rory Gallagher.”

Another British guitarist that Bonamassa admired was Free’s Paul Kossoff.. “He was a huge influence on me,” he acknowledges. “His playing was extraordinarily simple but unbelievably to the point. It was like a series of lightning bolts. It was pinpoint – he said exactly what he wanted to say which was great.

“I also really dug the playing of Martin Barre of Jethro Tull and even the early stuff of Tull with Mick Abrahams I really dug. All those bands that were English and blues-based I was into.”

One American legend who did influence Bonamassa was BB King. “I’ve known him for eighteen years and he’s definitely one of the most down-to-earth people I know,” he asserts. “If he wasn’t BB King he’d just be a cool guy to hang out with. I’ve noticed that the bigger the people are the more they’re like that. There are exceptions but the ones who have the most confidence in what they’re doing feel like, ‘I’m good at what I do and I know it so why do I have to be larger than life?’ He comes over like a normal guy who just happens to be the best blues singer of all time.”

Another legend with whom Bonamassa has played is John Lee Hooker. “That was really wild,” he chuckles, “because I didn’t know that John didn’t play in any other key except for E, D and A – and I was ready to play in G and A minor, so I had to change my riffs pretty fast. So that was a pretty wild experience.”

Inevitably Bonamassa has felt the ire of blues purists unsympathetic to his blues rock style. “It doesn’t bother me,” he insists. “It’s like, my grandfather is 81 and he’s been driving a car for sixty years and I guarantee you his car now does not look like the 1939 Plymouth that he drove then. The concept of the car is the same, it’s the same horseless carriage, but the car does not look the same. It has evolved. And it’s the same thing with the blues so I don’t understand why people vehemently oppose letting blues evolve from where it was in 1929 to where it is now in 2008. That’s eighty years of evolution. I still love traditional blues but I also understand that the music has to evolve in order to achieve something.”

One early blues song that Bonamassa has recorded is Charlie Patton’s High Water Everywhere. “I do these seminars arguing that blues is just as relevant today as it was eighty years ago,” he explains, “so I needed something to prove that. So when we had that big hurricane up in New Orleans and the floods and everything that [song] proved my point that blues is just as relevant today as it was eighty years ago. That was my whole reason for recording it. Plus, it’s a cool song!”

Bonamassa maintains a ferocious international touring schedule. “I’m used to working every day – but it’s not getting any easier,” he concedes. “But I’m very honoured that the music has spread out and I’m very honoured that the music has touched people in a certain way so that it’s given me the opportunity to play, this year, in Mumbai in India, in Belfast, in Moscow, in Tokyo … All my work has paid off because I have a fan base all over the world and I think that’s really great.”

Joe’s web site.

Check Joe out at Amazon UK and Amazon US

Fran: How did you two start to play together?

Marcus: It started when I moved back down to London. I was living in Liverpool for about six years and I moved into a house with Paddy. We’d met a couple of times at social events and gigs but we ended up living in the same house together for about six, seven months.
I depped a gig for Paddy’s guitarist in Paddy’s own band. From there, we got involved in the Earl Thomas project.
Paddy: I met Marcus initially through mutual friends. There were eight of us in the same house. It was after college and university, the first house that everyone lived in London; it was a great vibe, eight musicians.
Marcus: Brilliant! Not a lot of sleeping got done.
Paddy: Constant music and good times really.

Fran: Was that Paddy Milner and The Big Sounds then?

Paddy: Yeah, it was put together after the first album was released, a while ago. In fact we lived with some of the other guys from The Big Sounds: Scott Wiber on bass and Randall Breneman on guitar, handy for rehearsals.
We had worked together on a few other non-blues projects as well.
Marcus: And we’ve done quite a few sessions together and stuff. We did a bit of work together with Sandi Thom. We were in a transition, as I was leaving Paddy was joining. So we had a few gigs together. Then we did some stuff with Tim Daniel, a support tour with Take That and stuff.
We spent a lot of time in splitter vans together. You can’t help but be good mates with people if you spend twelve hours in a splitter van with them.

Fran: Or you end up hating them!

Paddy: One thing we are both lucky to have (is) everyone we work with, especially in The Big Sounds, they are all amazing people. There’re never any big problems. If there are any problems, they get resolved. It’s never come to blows.
Marcus: Or even a raised voice.

Fran: They are a fun bunch of people. Do some of The Big Sounds play on Marcus’ album? Obviously you do, Paddy, and Scott (Wiber) the bass player.

Marcus: Yeah and Alex (Reeves) the drummer; basically it’s very incestuous. My stuff, as your stuff is now (on Paddy’s album in progress), is stripped down and kind of simple, instrumentation wise. You’ve got baritone sax as well.
Paddy: Both our new albums don’t have the big instrumentation like I’ve done before and the stuff we’ve done with Earl Thomas. Marcus’ band is a three piece with Alex Reeves and Scott Wiber, who also play with me and in The Big Sounds with Earl Thomas as well.
Marcus: When you find a group of musicians who are that competent at what they do in an incredible way, like the people we work with, sometimes you look at the stage and think, ‘Wow there’re some amazing players in this band!’. (They are) some of the best players I have ever met. Like Paddy says as well, such lovely people. You find this group of people and you constantly want to work with them because you know what you are going to get out of them. It is just fantastic playing and intuitive thinking towards your stuff. Alex Reeves is a real thinker, isn’t he?
Paddy: Yeah! Everyone in the band, they are very musical about what they do. Despite the fact that they have all got amazing chops and are great players, they work towards the whole and do what is best for the music.
Marcus: Yeah, no one sees it as a showcase or anything; it’s a band.
Paddy: They are all into lots of music as well as blues. I think that is something that our music reflects as well. Although we are rooted in the blues and have always loved it and played it, there’s a lot of other stuff as well and we always try to involve it all.

Fran: Jazz musicians think a blues is a twelve-bar format, whereas I think that blues is about the feeling. There is nothing that you play that is devoid of an emotional feel. Everything you do is a blues in that sense, whatever the rhythm.

Marcus: I feel the same way. As long as it is coming from the soul, with some sort of emotion behind it, you’re not playing with your head but with your heart, that’s the blues.
Paddy: It annoys me at a jazz gig when people say, ‘We’re going to do such and such a tune. It’s OK, nothing complicated, it’s just a blues!’ It’s not just a blues.
Marcus: A lot of the stuff you like best is the stuff that isn’t twelve-bar, like the old Muddy Waters stuff and Robert Johnson. There’s no twelve-bar about it!
Paddy: It’s just so free and everyone flies…

Fran: Marcus, how did you become a permanent member of the Big Sounds?

Marcus: I just turned up and they never asked me to leave. (Laughter)
Paddy: That was when we first started working with Earl Thomas, or he first started working with us. It was 2007, when I first met Earl in America. Then he came across and did a one off gig with our friend Todd Sharpville. Scott Wiber the bass player was on that gig as well. Earl got talking to Scott and found that he played with me. Earl needed a band; he was booked for Burnley Blues Festival, as Earl Thomas, and for the Paul Jones’ (show on Radio 2) broadcast. He gave me and Scott a call to put the thing together and it just made sense to get the whole band together. We had a warm up thing together at Dover Street (Wine Bar). Originally Randall Breneman, who always plays with me in the big band, couldn’t do it. We asked Marcus to dep for him but, at the last minute, Randall could do the gig but rather than tell Marcus to have an early night, we said, ‘Why not? Just come and join in as well!’ and it worked really, really well. Randall and Marcus, they’ve known each other a long time.
Marcus: We went to university together. Usually, if he couldn’t do a gig, I would be the dep for it, so we never really got to work together on anything. So it was great that we had a project like this.

Fran: Did everything start happening after that?

Paddy: Yes, through the recording for Paul Jones, Earl loved our vibe, we loved what he brought to the band. When we did the recording for the BBC, we thought, ‘This sounds great! Why don’t we record a few more songs and put it out as an album?’ Then we thought, ‘No, keep the BBC things for another time and just let’s just do a new album.’
Marcus: Yeah; it was great fun recording that!
Paddy: It was awesome fun. We all brought songs to the table, so it rapidly became rather than Earl with a backing band, much more of a collaborative thing. Randall brought three songs, I’ve got a couple on there, Earl brought some, everyone brought their own arrangement ideas.
Marcus: It was very quick, within about four days, two days rehearsing, two days recording, we had an album.

Fran: Some of the songs are so emotional; your Right To Your Soul, Paddy and Earl’s It’s Better To Have Loved and Lost. It’s a dream band. In Earl Thomas, you’ve got this gorgeous bloke who can really sing and is an incredible front man and not just a backing band but an array of talents, all of you out there, not so much starring but the whole combination is incredibly good. Earl’s lucky to have you. Your band is a lot of individual characters, who are all creating the whole.

Paddy: A lot of people say similar things, that it is something very special, something they haven’t seen for a long time.
Marcus: We always say when we go on tour it’s just like going on holiday with your mates really. We all go together, have a great time, play some great music, then, at the end of it, you get paid! (Laughter) The money seems like a bonus at the end; brilliant!

Fran: So the Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds album came out in 2009.

Paddy: Yes, although it never actually had a proper release. Essentially it’s been something we have been selling at gigs; selling quite a few actually. That’s where the strength of it is.

Fran: This is a really good example of what you do live.

Marcus: I think we really replicate that quite well, with that extra excitement that you get from a live gig. When I listen to that, I still feel it’s an exciting record. It was done live, all nine of us in the studio together playing our arses off.
Paddy: There were quite a few literally spontaneous arrangements, quite a few first take of things we’d only talked through on the day in the studio.

Fran: That’s the way to make a blues album. You could just sit in a bar and make one.

Marcus: That’s how the old Alan Lomax recordings were made. They would record a guy wherever they could find somewhere quiet enough to do it. They’d just stick a mic in front of him and it’s some of the most beautiful music that’s ever been recorded.

Fran: Someone was telling me that Freddie King would walk into the studio and put his amp down next to the vocal mic; when the producer protested that they would get leakage, Freddie said, ‘Yeah!’ That’s what it sounds like live.

Paddy: We do a version of “Pack It Up”, a Freddie King song. We did a blues festival this summer, in Spain in Antequera (near Malaga) and we played it. At the end of the night, this guy came up and it turned out to be (record producer) Mike Vernon. He said, ‘It’s good to hear “Pack It Up”. I produced that track with Freddie King!’
Marcus: I’m glad I knew that afterwards, not before. (laughter)

Fran: Did you have an A&R Man or producer for your album, Marcus?

Marcus: My label was very good. They just seemed to leave me to get on with it. They seem to be supportive of what I do.

Fran: I really like your voice or voices. On the first track, you sound like a tuneful Tom Waits and on a couple of songs, Don’t Wanna Come Home and What Good Am I To You, you sound like Eric Bibb.

Marcus: I love Tom Waits, thank you! Someone once said to me (that) I was Tom Waits and Van Morrison’s love child! (Laughing!) I think he meant I have a gravely voice.
I do like Eric Bibb. I have been to see him live a couple of times. Eric Bibb sounds really folky to me, lot of the time. That version of “Angel” the Jimi Hendrix song he does on Painting Signs album, I saw him do it live. It was just him and a piano, no guitar on it and it was just one of those things that moves you to tears, just beautiful.

Fran: Your harmonica playing on God Only Knows makes it like Stone Fox Chase.

Marcus: Yeah, I am a very functional harmonica player. I’m not very good but I get a good rhythm out of it.

Fran: It has that raw quality to it that is spot on.

Paddy: Yeah! It’s all about the vibe. I think that track has a great vibe, great lyrics!
Marcus: …and a good groove to it.

Fran: There is a great variety of material on the album, an eclectic mix. Why did you choose these songs?

Marcus: I wrote them all after finishing the first record. It just reflects where I was going. I was doing a lot of travelling, playing around the place and a lot of solo gigs. When I look down the list, I can pinpoint one and say ‘That’s what that was about. I must have written that song about such and such an event,’ but only after the fact; I never know while I am writing them. Like Paddy said, we both listen to a hell of a lot of music. Obviously, we always listen to blues but other stuff that we are into stretches right out. We want to put those influences into the music we play, to make it something that is ours.

Fran: So it’s an anthology of your songs rather than a concept album.

Marcus: I suppose the concept is I just want it to sound like me.

Fran: Well, your singing with three different voices is unique to you. Did you do singing when you were at LIPA? (Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts)

Marcus: Singing was one of the reasons I left LIPA. I didn’t have any money and I had a band but we didn’t have any vocal tunes so we couldn’t get any gigs; we just played instrumental stuff. It was all well and good but no one really wanted to hear it. I decided to sing out of necessity so we could get some gigs and earn some money and eat food.

Fran: Did your family sing?

Marcus: My dad was a singer in church. He does like great singers. He would play me John Lennon, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, Geno Washington and people like that. He would tell me that these are good singers. This is what you want to do if you want to do music.

Fran: Lots of people, who have had guitar lessons, never have singing lessons. They imagine that you only have lessons if there is something wrong with your voice. Singing in the wrong way can damage your vocal cords.

Marcus: A lot of people don’t realise that singing lessons are not to try and change your voice; it’s to make sure you can carry on singing like you do, forever.
When I got to LIPA, it was great for my personal development because I had only been playing guitar for a couple of years. To see the talent that was there, and there are some really talented people, at our college, when you go there you’re surrounded by all these people who are incredible in so many different ways, it really does make you up your game. You look around and go, ‘OK, these guys are my contemporaries and are way better than me. I’ve got to work hard here!
It’s the way you approach it; you could go ‘Right, make me a star!’ or you could go to any college really and go, ‘OK what can I learn from the people who are around me?’ That’s something we have always taken to musical situations any way. Working with The Big Sounds, the amount I’ve learnt, in the two years I have been with them, far outweighs anything I have learnt there, in Liverpool.

Fran: Paddy, when you were at uni, was there any emphasis on performance?

Paddy: I went to Kings College, in London. It was very different from LIPA, much more academic course, based on western classical music. I was into loads of different music, very contemporary as well, so looking at lots of concepts in music, philosophy and theory and politics and how it fits into musical life. There was performance, which was taught at the Royal Academy of Music, so you had lessons there. I chose to take jazz lessons there, develop that side of my playing. More than anything, it made me listen to all sorts of weird and wonderful music, some really odd things and open my ears to loads of stuff that I would never have come across before. I can’t say that a lot of that has gone into the albums I make, or the songs that I write, but it has made me aware of this other world of music.
I have been giging since the age of thirteen. It’s something I have always done and something I was always going to continue to do. It was a bit difficult sometimes, like when I was on tour with Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges or Eddie Martin, Todd Sharpville and played with Big Joe Turner for a bit. I’d often go away for a couple of weeks and have to come up with excuses for the tutors. Being the classical professors that they were, they just did not approve of me missing college to play blues. Had I been on tour with an orchestra, it may have been different.

Fran: You turned out all right; I am sure you are a credit to them.

Marcus: Damn right, you can play the arse off any classical piece as well! (Laughter!)
There is nothing that says you have to stay the full three years. If you go there and think, ‘I’ve learnt a lot from this place. I’ve got what I need,’ and I’ve met Scott Wiber and Randall Breneman, who I still work with to this day. So it was always important but I didn’t need a degree. My mum needed the degree. My parents came to my graduation. I played at it but I didn’t graduate. They hired my band.
I reckon we both knew what we wanted to do, pretty early on. As soon as I touched the guitar, I was like, ‘That’s it now!’

Fran: How’s your next album coming on, Paddy? Is it still a work in progress?

Paddy: Well, it’s being mixed at the moment. It’s all recorded. The core idea is built round piano, percussion and voice. A lot of the piano parts that I write have a very busy right hand, coming from the old boogie tradition. I have often found electric bass conflicts a bit with the left hand, so I wanted to do something that has the punchiness of the drum kit but has bottom end. It was really fun, it was Alex Reeves, again, part of the family, who played not so much a drum kit but percussive drums. He had a really old a 1920s bass drum, which was tuned really low down so it’s got this bottom end that sits nicely under the left hand of the piano. It’s just a slightly different sound, rather quirky, not the traditional sound. There are a few tracks where perhaps it needed to bit more bottom end, so I added some tuba to it. A good friend of mine, Reuben Crowther, who I was at school with, he’s a great tuba player and he’s played in lots of New Orleans funk bands with tuba and bass.
Marcus: It’s brilliant with the tuba; a lovely, lovely little touch.
Paddy: I guess it’s a bit of a nod to the old New Orleans sound. There is definitely a New Orleans influence on quite a lot of tracks, a rolling piano sound. It’s quite an eclectic mix; a few covers, Muddy Waters’ “Louisiana Blues”, I just love the song. Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen”, which I have taken apart and put back together in what I hope is a complimentary way but has its own sound. Doing covers, you either have to be bringing something new to it or be as faithful as possible; I hope I’ve brought something new that works. There’re horns on a few tracks and a cello. That will be out sometime in 2010.
Marcus: I have heard the rough mixes and it’s a real treat.

Fran: What else are you doing?

Paddy: I’m a regular member of the Ronnie Scott’s Blues Experience, with Tony Remy, which started a monthly Monday residency at the club in 2009. We’ve had some great nights, always sold out, with special guests including Jack Bruce, Earl Thomas, Matt Schofield, Earl Green, Eddie Martin, Todd Sharpville. Marcus will be guesting with us in 2010 and there’s talk of some blues legends sitting in with the band over the next few months, so it should be an exciting year for the blues at Ronnie’s.
Also Marcus and I are looking to doing some more work together, just the two of us.
Marcus: We tried it out at The Ramsbottom Festival. That was good fun.
Paddy: A lot of fun! We come from the same direction but, I guess, express it in slightly different ways.
Marcus: It works well with piano and guitar and we both do a bit of percussion and vocals. It was a really good sound that we got.

Fran: It always is, every which way!

Marcus Bonfanti: What Good Am I To You? (P3MCD025 2009)
Marcus Bonfanti: Hard Times (Guitar Label 2009)
www.marcusbonfanti.com
www.theguitarlabel.com

Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds: Earl Thomas with Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds (IX) (ETPMBS01)
Paddy Milner: Old, New, Borrowed, Blue (a working title) will be out in 2010
www.paddymilner.com
www.bigsoundsmusic.com
www.earlthomasmusic.com