Interview by Bob Gordon
What’s the best thing about playing festivals?
Meeting new people, making new connections with audiences and other artists. The vibe of playing to listening audiences that love music and the magic of all that awesome music in a big melting pot of expression!
Do you have a Blues at Bridgetown experience that you’d like to share, either performing or as an audience member?
This is my first one so I’m excited to be playing alongside so many great artists.
Where do you feel you fit in musically along the blues and roots scale?
Ooh.. I’m ‘bluesy’ in some of my songs and ‘folky’ in others. Then there’s the mix of some songs with beatbox and layers of voices that has a soul/hip hop vibe. I’ve been told I have a husky bluesy voice so there’s that…
What have been the highlights of your music career thus far?
Playing some great festivals in Germany including Tucher Blues & Jazz Festival, and having a sea of new faces swaying along to my songs. Melodica Festival Aarhus, Denmark, I met so many great musicians from around Europe there and am still in touch with some to this day.
Working with different producers on different albums has always been a highlight as everyone you work with hears your music differently and so brings their producer ears and sounds to your songs. Kristoffer Askness in Oslo, Norway – the album we did, Northern Lights, was a great experience. He brought more of a roots rock band vibe to album.
With KAISERBASE in Berlin we got together many times over the years and wrote music and lyrics together, or I’d come into the studio and Robo would have already created a really interesting vibing track and I’d jump on and write some lyrics and melody and together we’d have something really great and different to anything I’d done before.
Jaimi Faulkner in Duisburg Germany and the album Hope brought more of a blues roots feel to the album so it was coming back to my roots. He also played a lot of the instruments and added his smooth soul blues vocals and guitar.
Playing all over Europe in intimate venues and festivals has been such a joy, I was based in Berlin for a good eight years which allowed me to travel and experience a lot.
What have you been mainly focussing on in 2024 and how is it coming along?
2024 has been the year of another tour to Europe which I loved and I miss so much I want to go back again, and also working on an album that I wrote with a Berlin electronic dance producer. It’s a really different album to all the others with roots acoustic influences and also a few dance electro tracks… it’s a real melding of our styles together.
What are your plans and hopes for 2025?
To release this new album The Berlin Sessions and to create a studio at home to experiment more creatively with sounds and maybe incorporate sound healing music into my repertoire.
What can folks expect from your performances at Blues at Bridgetown?
Intimate performance and storytelling. A journey through my years of travelling as a solo musician around Europe.