I learnt a huge amount from that interview.
It’s already been mentioned above about his disappointment that Ruf records hadn’t supported him, hence the need to re-establish his momentum elsewhere.
What struck me was the degree of ambition in that he clearly got a buzz out of playing to the larger audiences on the Skynyrd tour and wants to get to those levels again.
There was also some interesting debate (which isn’t dissimilar to many of the discussions we have) about where he pitches himself, he was clear he is Blues-Rock rather than Blues and was rather disparaging about the “Blues Police”. I was also interested by his answer to where he feels the British Blues Rock scene is at the moment, I would have expecting him to say good bearing in mind all of the emerging talent but it was a qualified “OK” in that it isn’t breaking through the 150-200 event circuit level and the general public aren’t familiar with the term Blues Rock so it remains an underground scene. This also shows to me a degree of ambition that I haven’t seen evidenced in the year or so I have been following him.
The most telling part of the interview was the boyish enthusiasm (and I mean that in its most positive way) that he reacted to hearing Soul played on national radio, also picking that song as the one he was most proud of, again that says to me that as an artist he is looking to reach beyond the limited musical world of Blues Rock.
After all of the recent shenanigans I wasn’t going to post on the forum but felt I needed to do so to readdress the balance. I have learned more about “the man” in the last three days than I had learned in the previous year which says something in itself. All credit to Aynsley and his team for upping their game on my Space, the new blog and the interview. If you want followers you first have to lead and that can’t be done by the music alone.
Now back to my self imposed exile.
