The guitarist and singer Steve Ajao, a Birmingham native, was interviewed by Juanita McGowen for Blues In Britain, to celebrate his debut album Pure Evil. It has been a long time coming, considering his talent and the high regard in which he is held by his peers and his audiences.

We have two e-letters this month. One is from energetic guitar virtuoso Steve Morrison from South London, often to be seen at Brooks Blues Bar. The other is from Stan Cockeram, leader of Riverside Blues Band, who also hosts several blues jam in the Bournemouth area.

Tim Porter, who puts on regular gigs at The Cherington Arms, in Warwickshire, has written a Blues Venue piece. This also includes other events he programmes and promotes, in particular the Banbury Blues and Roots Festival, on Saturday 3rd March.

We also have the usual reviews of live events, plus a preview of the New Orleans JazzFest, which is coming up this month. The Festivals for this year are already making a good showing in Blues News.

The March issue will feature The 50th Anniversary of the British Blues Boom. The site of the Ealing Club will be marked by a commemorative blue plaque on Saturday 17th March, fifty years after Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies started the first club date there.

Fran Leslie

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London soul and funk collective The Coalminers are building a fine reputation on the capital’s live music scene. Their six piece line up, oft augmented by brass and percussion, delivers an unparalleled swampy New Orleans funk groove. Drummer Pat Levett tipped me off about a free album giveaway, and it’s a doozy! Exchange your email address over at The Coalminers web site for Who’s Ready! – ten tracks of fine and funky goodness including originals Dad, You Better Start Drinking (penned by vocalist Ben Somers) and Soft Shoe (by the aforementioned Mr. Levett) featuring some nifty accordion from Dan Teper.

Grab it quickly, while it’s hot.

Upcoming Shows:

Thursday 9th Feb – Charlie Wright’s, Pitfield Street, Hoxton, London N1
Thursday 23rd Feb – The Blues Kitchen, Camden High Street, London NW1

For more, see their web site.

- by Keith Shackleton

Alan Glen has played with too many bands to mention and pops up all over the UK blues scene. Alan plays harmonica, guitar and sings on at least fifty separate albums. He was only talking about three of them when he came to Blues In Britain, namely The Barcodes: Be Cool The Very Best of the Barcodes, Little Axe: If You Want Loyalty Buy A Dog and Nine Below Zero: Live In Europe 1992. He is also one of the main players, with John O’Leary, in a series of tribute concerts, which highlight the music of Junior Wells and Cyril Davies.

We have an e-letter from yet another young UK guitarist and singer Nat Martin. His band’s debut album is called Don’t Lose Your Cool and has ten original tracks. Nat lists Albert Collins as a major influence.

We have reports of The King Biscuit Festival, The Torquay Festival and The Carlisle Festival. King Biscuit was probably the last gig Hubert Sumlin played before he died aged eighty.

Coming up in 2012 is the anniversary of the start of the British Blues Boom. If you have any memories or photographs and memorabilia from that time, please let us know. Issue 123, for March 2012, will be celebrating it On 17th March 2012, a plaque will be unveiled on the building, which housed The Ealing Club, in the basement, back in 1962.

Fran Leslie

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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.

London based guitarist, singer and songwriter, Guy Tortora hails from Pasadena CA. He came over to Blues In Britain too, to talk about the making of his new album, Prodigal Songs, with a little help from his friends.

Scott Duncan contributes an article on the fabled band The Producers. Founder members Dave Saunders, the bass player, and Harry Skinner, the guitarist and singer, have decided to revive the group, drafting in Ray Drury on keyboards and Biff Smith on drums. Their album, London Live, has contributions from Andy Fairweather Low, Paul Lamb and Ben Waters.

Keyboard player and singer Dale Storr has sent in an e-letter. After twenty years of playing New Orleans style music, he has gone through a period of transition, from bandleader to soloist and has now emerged in a duo with Kim Mayhew, the saxophonist, to whom he is engaged.

Yet again, most of the festival reviews have been pushed to one side to fit in the major articles. As the live events dwindle in the post Christmas period, we hope to catch up with them then. In the meantime, to all our contributors and supporters, have a happy Christmas and, if there is live blues near you, go and support it.

Fran Leslie

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Thames Festival, London SE1 – 11/09/2011

The 15th Thames Festival saw some blues early on the Sunday. Marcus Bonfanti, just back from Bestival on the Isle of Wight, opened the Barclaycard Stage at noon with I Will Not Play Your Game, the opening cut from his second and latest album, What Good Am I To You. After a 12 bar chorus of voice and guitar (electric wooden resonator), Scott Wiber (bass) and Alex Reeves (drums) kicked in. A sudden stop and then Devil Girl, another Bonfanti original from said album. Honest Boy saw Marcus switch to his Les Paul and deliver a scintillating slide break (play audio below). Then it was back to his debut album, Hard Times, for a dramatic slow blues, Now I’m Gone (Is Your Life Better) and back to the resonator for the closing Give Me Your Cash.

Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald was up next, the London-based American vocalist and guitarist accompanied by Alan Glen, on harmonica, and Kevin Gibbs and Sarenella Bell on background vocals. Skip James’ Hard Times Killing Floor opened in fine style. Nowhere Left To Hide was a new one to me with a programmed Latin beat behind the guitar solo. Gibbs took the lead vocal on Chains before Finger On The Trigger finished things up nicely.

Then it was over to the Lady Luck Jive Stage where Blue Harlem had the dancers busy on the coach park floor with Percy Mayfield’s I Dare You Baby and Louis Jordan’s Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby before vocalist Sophie Shaw took a break for tenor saxophonist Al Nicholls to lead the five-piece band through Night Train. Leiber and Stoller’s Hound Dog was sung with the original lyrics over a rumba beat; Roy Milton’s Reelin’ and Rockin’ did just that and Hallelujah! I Love Him So closed their set.

Imperial Wharf Jazz Festival, London SW6 – 15 & 17/09/2011

There was less blues at the 7th Imperial Wharf Jazz Festival than in some previous years. The Sonny Black Trio – Arnie Cottrell, guitar, mandolin and vocals, Chris Belshaw. electric bass, and the leader on steel resonator and wooden bodied guitars and vocals – delivered relaxed versions of Leadbelly’s On A Monday and Bourgeois Blues, Crazy ’bout An Automobile and Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman. Their set was best described as Blues and Beyond and the ‘beyond’ section we were treated to fine takes of The Delmore Brothers Freight Train Blues, Wayfaring Stranger (dedicated to the Swansea valley miners), some instrumentals – a rag, a waltz and readings of I Heard It Through The Grapevine and No Woman No Cry.

Australian vocalist Nina Ferro closed her set in fine style with the New Orleans styled Dream Weaver.

The Liane Carroll Trio – Roger Carey on electric bass, Mark Fletcher on drums, and the leader on vocals and piano – were impressive on Billie Holiday’s Fine And Mellow, Mose Allison’s Your Mind Is On Vacation along with selections from the Great American Songbook and a few from the pen of Donald Fagen.

Soweto Kinch delivered his unique mix of contemporary jazz and hip hop closing with the audience participation number Stroke The Hippo.

The early part of Carleen Anderson’s set was marred by sound problems but Deniece Williams’ Free and The Young Disciples’ Apparently Nothing (on which Anderson sang lead on the record) went down well as expected. The set, and the Thursday evening, ended with a rousing gospel workout on When The Light Shines.

Jon Taylor

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.

UK blues veteran, John Mayall now lives in California but he is a regular visitor. On his tour in October and November he has the Oli Brown Band opening the show. John talked about what he is doing and a bit of UK blues history. His one time guitarist, Walter Trout is also touring on a double header tour with Popa Chubby. I called Walter, who also lives in California, to ask what he is up to.

Beth Hart has made an album of soul standards with Joe Bonamassa, Don’t Explain, which may account for why some of her UK gigs have sold out in advance of her tour forthcoming. Another date, at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in February 2012, has been announced. Moray Stuart interviewed her for Blues In Britain, when she was in London recently.

Rising star Marcus Bonfanti will also be touring with his band in November. We met up at my local pub. Marcus told me that he is recording a six-track CDEP, which will only be available at his gigs. A Marcus Bonfanti gig, be he with his own band, Paddy Milner & The Big Sounds, St Jude or P P Arnold, is not to be missed!

Also on the home front, Gary Boner, singer and guitarist from Roadhouse, has sent us an e-letter. The band, which features three girl singers, has a new album out called Dark Angel. The band has been running for twenty-one years now.

We could have run interviews with other artists such as Paul Lamb and Joanne Shaw Taylor, who are also touring, but time and space prevent it. The festival reviews, of which there are many, are also piling up. Thank you everyone who has contributed words and photos! Keep them coming, as we will publish them when space allows.

Fran Leslie

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