I’ve been listening a lot to this young man recently and while blues are his thang, he plays in a lot of different styles – a very talented guitarist.
And all the while I was listening on the excellent Spotify (tons of his stuff on there) I was thinking that there is something very familiar about his music, something that just feels right to me, its very old fashioned, sits well in my head, doesn’t leave me thinking “mass produced shite from huge music corporation”.
And then last night I read an interview that he did in Guitarist magazine (its in Wiki, I’m not sad enough to buy that rubbish with my own money) and he said this …
“You know, my heroes were the English guys – Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Eric Clapton. There’s so many – there’s Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher – another Irishman who played the same things, but don’t tell him that. But those guys were my guys – Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page. There’s a certain sophistication to their approach to the blues that I really like, more so than the American blues that I was listening to”.
“When I heard Kossoff playing “Mr. Big” and when I heard Clapton playing “Crossroads” and when I heard Rory Gallagher playing “Cradle Rock“, I was like, ‘This is way cooler’…. “British blues are my thing. When I heard Rod Stewart and the Jeff Beck Group singing “Let Me Love You”, it changed my life. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Those are my influences”.
And now I know why his music is so familiar.
