A Life In Music: John Fell talks Festivals and previews Mostly Jazz, Funk and Soul

Three days of Funk, Jazz and Soul. Lots of new features this year too.

Three weeks from now, give or take, Moseley Park will jump to the Mostly Jazz Funk and Soul Festival - a three-day event that will bring you exactly that: Jazz, Funk, and Soul.  Some stellar acts are booked, and a whole host of up-and-coming and established local acts as well. I have listed some of the main names at the bottom of this post, and there are more in podcast (scroll down) but for full details, head over to the MoJazz website, which is pretty comprehensive. 

There's an awful lot that goes into organising an event like this. I sat down with Festival Manager John Fell, to talk about some of the challenges. It's fascinating stuff, and the stories that have emerged over the past two very difficult years are compelling: acts that refused to use the stage entrance... acts that came back the next day because they enjoyed themselves.... embracing the local dance scene, and much more.  

I got rather excited about some of the new things that MoJazz are introducing. For the first time, there is some serious engagement with some of Birmingham's best dance outfits, Leftfoot, for example, running their own stage and playing host to a number of local DJs. You'll see Sam Redmore and Swingamajig as well. 

On top of that, to my enormous pleasure, they have rather upgraded their food offer, with some of Birmingham's best names. Last year, I had a dahl and samosa combo from Zindiya, only round the corner from the festival site, which still sticks in the memory. I liked it so much a had it twice. Greedy me. But there are loads of choices - Chakana is new this year, along with Brum Mi. And pizza, cocktails, Ice Cream, Waffles, BoneHead... the list goes on. 

So I'll see you in a few weeks. In the meantime, here are just a few links to follow. 
https://mostlyjazz.co.uk/
https://www.thespecials.com/
https://www.cameonation.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatback_Band
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Charles

The Podcast

A footnote: the intro and outro flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music podcasts come from Jazz monsters Young Pilgrims. I asked them for permission to use their work in this podcast series; they said Yes, and this was the result.  

The Lives in Music Podcast series has been running for over three years now. These are interviews with local musicians, looking at how music has shaped them throughout their lives.  To see all the artists, here's a link to every episode.

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. I then expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts since then, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog.
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A Life in Music: Steve Ajao. Lenny Henry's a fan

A proper Renaissance Man, is Steve

A stalwart of the Birmingham music scene, Steve has been laying down greasy guitar blues and elegant cerebral Jazz sax in equal quantities, for generations. Oh, and he builds guitars, beautifully... and he's completely self-taught. And he's got the deepest voice in all Birmingham. His Blues trio can be found playing live in all the best joints in the Midlands and beyond. They are astonishingly relaxed and extremely tight - something that comes from decades of playing together. 

On top of this, Steve Ajao's facebook feed carries all sorts of other titbits, such as recipes for homemade Sauerkraut, gardening tips, and more. He's into loads of stuff :-) Gourmet, gardener, guitar restorer, blues shouter, cool saxman. I'm sure there's more.

Music 

The theme music for this series comes from Big Q Fish, a seriously uncompromising Birmingham band that I suggest you check out. The song is 'Boksburg Jive Toon', written by guitarist Brian Neil. There's plenty more to listen to if you follow the link. They're also on YouTube.

On top of this, you'll hear Steve play an improvisation on Steel Guitar in the podcast itself, as part of the interview.

Links

Steve Ajao's Blues Giants website
Steve Ajao's Blues Giants on Facebook
Steve's Club Bebop on Facebook: currently a weekly Wednesday residency at Fletchers Bar in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

And there's a ton of stuff to check out on YouTube, both Jazz and Blues.

Podcast Player

Other podcasts in Lives In Music

all with show notes and music links

1 - Ruby Turner 
3 - The Men who make Mellotrons 
4 - Mike Hatton 
5 - Horace Panter 
6 - Jasper Carrott
7 - Sam Slater
8 - John Patrick
9 - Gordon Giltrap
10 - Jim Simpson

Lives in Music celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. They may be famous; they may be people who have spent their lives working in the background for the love of it. They all have stories. Lives in Music is a Radio To Go production.



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All that Ruby Turner Is

Straighten up and fly right! Ruby's still in the game, and that makes me happy.

 Photo: Caroline Harriott at PurpleOrange

It's a nice afternoon – sunny and bright. King's Heath is managing to look quite pretty, which is no mean feat. I've fixed to have a catchup with Ruby Turner. Normally it would be at her place, but the builders are in. So the excellent Adam Regan has kindly given us the back bar of the Hare and Hounds to chat in. That makes six blog interviews so far at the Hare – Katherine Priddy, Goodnight Lenin, Miles Hunt and Erica Nockalls upstairs in the dressing rooms, Brian Travers and Terry and Gerry downstairs – and now, Ruby. There's a new album. Out on her own label again, 'All That I Am' packs a very wide range of punches.

Ruby and I go back a loooong way. When she was a wee slip of a girl, just starting out, she was surrounded by some of Birmingham's best musicians. We did sessions at the old BRMB, she gigged at the 70s Lark in The Park at Cannon Hill. It was grand. Ruby wound up representing commercial radio at the European Broadcasting Union Rock Festival, with me elected as tour manager. It was testing - half the band disappeared into a bar at Frankfurt station the moment we got in from the airport. They eventually showed up in Nuremberg, 140 miles down the road, slightly the worse for wear. Ruby went on to to tear the place up and down and sideways. Gratifyingly, Ruby and band completely blew Radio 1's entry away. We were on a tight budget; the BBC mob was definitely not. Score one for the indies. 

Decades down the line, Ruby is still at the top of her game. Now, when not touring with Jools Holland, she runs her own band. She picks the musicians, rehearses them, and keeps them in line. And with the possible exception of the great Steve Gibbons, she's had the longest recording and gigging career of any Birmingham musician that I've been lucky enough to work with.

These days, it's not a question of begging for pathetic airplay scraps at risk-averse local radio. Ruby takes it to the top, scoring a huge chunk of time on the top show on the UK's biggest station, guesting on Chris Evans' breakfast show on Radio 2. 

So... the new album. Lots of nice things being said about it. Lots of airplay on BIG shows on the big station – Chris Evans on Radio 2 is a cracking way to tell the world... But it's taken a while since your last. Why?

It took a very long time. There was so much going on. As you know, a lot of tours with Jools... then I had to find a new producer to work with. Cos you know I used to work with Bob Lamb – the last album, Moving On, was amazing. But Bob decided to quit and leave. That left me in limbo. He was a great friend and a wonderful producer. We had a great connection musically. But I understood why he had to call it a day – he just wasn't happy.

But look, Ruby, you now have vast professional experience and a brilliant reputation – you could have your pick of great people.

I guess I can. But I keep to a small circle of friends that I know. The truth is I work well with these people, and I always go back to them, where I always feel comfortable and I can be myself. I'm not saying I wouldn't venture out and work with new exciting producers. But unless you're a huge name and you've got a huge record company behind you, then nobody's really interested. So I work with what I've got,. That's the story of life – work with what you got.

You've got some killer musicians to work with, though

I am blessed, yes.

You're writing a lot more these days.

I guess it's confidence and life experiences. With any album, the process is – you get writing. Obviously you have a producer in mind, but in Bob's absence, I kept writing anyway. I'm learning. Learning to be myself and to trust myself. We all have our stories. I've gathered a few myself. I feel quite liberated and, dare I say it, quite grown up!

You kick off with a gospel track that nails it from the first lick.

I cut that as a prayer. 

Then there's an older track – your duet with Passenger. 

This is a much more ambitious album technically. You've even got show tunes. That's a bit of a mix.

Well, that's me. It's what I am. Way back I did a wonderful night of Gerschwin. It was like a moment of time. Great days. When I was putting the album together, that was my thinking. I was going to put Embraceable You on there. Then Time It Was came up.

Even though your faith pumps thought every bone in your body,you've still got a cheatin' and lyin' song there. Dark End Of The Street: the classic country song of adultery and deception

Humans. Human failing, It's all that we are. There's a track on there called Ask Me. There's a line that goes

I'll Tell You I Ain't No Saint

I Got My Faults And I'll Take Some Blame.

I wanted to do our failings, our spirituality, our longings...all those things that makes us human.

So what kind of reaction have you had?

Oh, great. I've had feedback from America, where I don't have a deal at the moment. Everything is happening so quickly. But because I'm working so hard with Jools Holland, I don't have quite enough time to look after all that. But - lots of airplay – Radio 2 have been very good to me. It means an awful lot.

Tell me about being a working muso. You've done this for over thirty years.

It's a battle. You have to be match-fit. I've got some down time before the next tour. So I'm doing badminton, and walking and swimming. Make sure you've got the lung power and the stamina. A fitness level that will take you through the day to day stuff – sitting in cars for hours, lugging your cases into hotel rooms.

Eating right?

Oh yes. You got to start the tour in a good place. You got to hit the stage running, at your peak, every gig. Some people use Jack Daniels. I don't. It's about taking care of yourself. Dairy can present problems. You got to keep yourself hydrated. And plenty of sleep. And walks, plenty of fresh air. I'm hanging in there.

And where's that kid who plays piano with you?

Reuben James? I got a text saying 'I've just landed in DC' ...that's Washington. So he's off and flying. He's had to put college on hold. I can say to Reuben: Well done, and good luck, mate'. Spoke to him mum a couple of days back. Bless her, she's so concerned. He came to me when he was eighteen. So talented. So I said - the first rule is to get a roof over your head. Invest that as soon as you can. Instead of renting and sleeping on other people's bean bags – get yourself a roof.

That's what you do at that age

If I look back on myself, it was the same. No holds barred Yeah, I'm having this. But as we get older, those walls get harder to climb.

Ruby and her band of desperadoes, Nuremberg, 1984. Spot the faces...

Know what? I'm so pleased that we can have talk like this after over thirty years. It's life-affirming.

I'll never forget Nuremberg! Have you seen that photo floating around on Facebook? With you looking terrified in the background, and me looking like Ma Rainey...

Know why I was scared? Stopping the renegades in your band sparking up on the train back to Frankfurt.... with German police walking up and down the corridors...

Ha!

Links
Ruby Turner website. Ruby would just love it if you bought her album here.

See more posts on music and musicians on Radio To Go

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Ruby Turner: keep your eyes on the prize.

I’m excited. Ruby’s got a hometown gig coming up. 

Ruby.  For people, not just midlanders, who know her and love her work, that’s all you need to say: Ruby. One word for one of the finest soul singers the UK has ever produced. She really is that good. 

For those who don’t know her, well, this is Ruby Turner, with a career that puts her all over Radio 2, on the bill at the Queen's Jubilee, as one of Jools Holland’s featured vocalists, on the bill at the 1999/2000 Millenium Dome launch, world tours, the lot. She's recorded with everybody, had hits worldwide, and for some time has very deliberately and calmly steered her own career with some hand-picked advisers.

So now we have a Ruby Turner band tour this autumn, with a hometown gig set for October 16th at the Crossing in Digbeth, Birmingham. I’m pleased. It’s been a long time…

Fathers and Sons: 60s veteran Don Fardon is back working, with DC Fontana

Old and in the way… or possessed of invaluable perspective? With Don Fardon and DC Fontana, it's, emphatically, the latter. 

Don Fardon interviewed. Pic by Mark Mortimer

It’s fair to say that most music ventures tend to draw on people of much the same age range. And the more image-conscious the venture, the more this pattern seems to apply. 

It’s often the fate of veteran musos to find themselves reverently placed on a pedestal, to be worshipped from afar rather than collaborated with. For example, much as 70s Brum metal monsters are venerated by 21st century rockers, I’m not at all sure the new kids would actually welcome any of the old boys onstage. And that’s a great shame, because every generation has creative goodies to pass on to the next. You could look at it the other way too: every new generation, no matter how much it thinks it's  blazingly original, actually feeds from, builds on, and recycles what’s gone before.

It’s not a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions, and when they work, it’s a pure delight. 

The excellent Friendly Fire Band, one of the keepers of Birmingham’s reggae flame, is only too happy to work with reggae veterans whenever they can. World, Blues, Jazz, Country and Folk, too, also all hold their veterans are held in high esteem. With Rock, Pop and Dance / Club / Urban variations, I think it’s a slightly different story; there, image and tribalism carries much more weight.  

So it was nice to learn that a band I really admire, DC Fontana, who have great (but not compulsive/obsessive) love for 60s pop, had forged a link with Don Fardon, who himself had had a fair go in the 60s as a solo artist and with his band The Sorrows. 

Don (based in Coventry) was hooked up with DC Fontana (based in Tamworth) by a promoter in London; it’s proved a fruitful connection. DC Fontana leader Mark Mortimer was thrilled at the prospect of working with a seminal 60s name; Don, for his part, was very happy to have another canter round the course. 

I met with Don and Mark as Don added vocals to an alternative version of the lead song on the next DC Fontana EP. In keeping with DCF’s nod to the 60s practice of recording multiple language versions of the same song, there’s talk of a Spanish version of the single. Hey, if the Beatles could cut German versions of their songs (Sie Liebt Dich, anyone?)…

The song in question is Pentagram Man; you can see the original YouTube clip down the page in this post. It’s about Aleister Crowley, the Leamington spa-born occultist. This is very 60s in itself: both Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath paid a lot of attention to Crowley. The single even has The Great Beast himself intoning at the start...


Pentagram man: DC Fontana with Don Fardon 

Mark, I hope this clip of Crowley is now in the public domain? I’d hate to think of him dropping by in person for his royalty share….

It's a recording taken from a wax cylinder dating right back to the early 1900s. So we are presuming it is in the public domain, and we’re safe to use it - as safe as can be expected when dealing with the Great Beast! We’re hoping to get the 6-track ep released by the end of September. We’re releasing on our own label, DC Tone, but it will also come out in vinyl on an Italian label called Teen Sound records. We release in all forms: CD, mp3 and vinyl. 

Tell me about hooking up with Don?

We’d been asked to do backup for Don; he had re-formed the Sorrows, and this was to cover his solo work as well. We’ve had this sort of thing offered to us before, but it’s never actually happened for one reason or another, so I wasn’t expecting too much. Ironically, I’ve always loved his music. ‘I’m Alive’ by Don, which came out in 1969, is one of my top ten records of all time. 

A couple of months later, we were approached by the same promoter; the gig was definitely on, could we look at contacting Don? 

We met and hit it off well. He’s a lovely guy, with a lot of stories to tell. We worked up a show where we open up with some of our material, and then Don comes on and we play his stuff; it’s looking very promising.   

So when is this show going on the road?

It’s started. We played in August at Euro Ye Ye in Gijón in Spain. It’s a great festival, held in the city square, in front of nine or ten thousand people. Great gig, big stage… we got to do an hour of DC Fontana and then 45 minutes with Don, and it went down an absolute storm. He’s an absolute pro. We’ve now been offered shows in Australia and Europe on the back of this. Don was a big-selling star in the 60s and 70s in those markets; there’s still a lot of fondness for him over there. 

DC Fontana live, August 2, 2012 in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

 Let me just rewind for a second here, Mark. You’re playing in front of ten thousand people in Spain….and you’re doing Australian tours. I know you do shows in France. That’s great, but how the hell does all that square with the gigs I’ve seen you play in Birmingham – several times now – in front of a small but dedicated audience who certainly like you a lot? There's a bit of a disconnect here…

It is a bit surreal – but I really enjoy that surrealism. I quite like the fact that we do so many different gigs, from the sublime to the ridiculous and back. We do gig a lot, because we need to fund our existence… which is a bit surreal in itself. A lot of bands are struggling to survive; we’re no exception. We deal with this by gigging a lot. We’re very old-school in that respect. But we are phasing out the smaller gigs now.

Like the one I saw you first at, in the Witton Arms behind Villa Park – the one with no stage at all?

Ironically, we’ve just been asked to play there again. They’re actually turning the beer-garden in the back into a bit a venue for bands. They’ve got quite ambitious plans. There is a gig happening on October 6th, outdoors, where they have Aslan coming over from Dublin – where they are huge – to play a fairly low-key gig. We’re supporting. It’s a bizarre combination again, but I like that – it opens us up to a new audience. The plan from the pub’s point of view is that it helps to put them on the map as a Birmingham music venue. 

It’s a welcome addition as far as I’m concerned. North Birmingham simply doesn’t have enough music venues. Turning to the EP again – are you producing a video?

We’re done three – to support a six-track EP.

DC Fontana are issuing series of videos from Pentragram Man EP. Here's number 1  

Wow. Did that cost a lot of money?

Well, we haven’t got a lot of money! We tried to box as cleverly as we can. We try to surround ourselves with people who are really creative, who are quite hungry as well. We want to work with directors and actors and performance artists who want make their name in the world, who’ll be happy to work with people like us on a collaborative basis. We do try to make out videos look a lot more expensive that they really are.

Well, that’s part of your goal, isn’t it?

Well hopefully. It’s not easy to pull off. We do spend thousands… but not tens of thousands like some people do. I used to work for a record label in Birmingham (Network Records, based at Stratford House in Camp Hill) and I can remember the sums of money we spent on bands like Altern8, the rave duo, KWS from Nottingham, who had a number 1 hit… Brum based house duo Mother, and people like Groove Corporation, who we now record with…  we spent an awful amount of money on videos. I can remember hanging out on set and seeing how it was done. I always felt that, as a lot of things were with the music industry back in those days, that everybody was ripping everybody else off, everybody was making a huge amount of money, when it could have been done with a much smaller budget. 

Meantime, back in the studio, Don Fardon was warming up nicely up as he worked up through a bunch of takes. We spent a lot of time talking about his early career, and especially about how the vast sums of money he made in the 60s …. never actually seemed to trickle down to him. Don’s got a lot of solid advice for anybody starting out, and this is going to be the subject of a separate post later in the year. But he’s a contented man. It wasn’t always that way

Don Fardon: The first agency agreement I signed with the Sorrows, we signed at a champagne reception for the farewell tour for the Drifters. We didn’t know until two years later that we were managed, and owned, by the Krays… The company was called Capable Management. My advice is: take advice before you sign anything. We didn’t, and we paid for it. 

Louise and Don Fardon on stage in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

Not a contract I’d want to break. Here we are in a studio in Balsall Heath, a funky part of Brum in all senses of the word, and you’ve just dropped vocals onto DC Fontana’s 60s psychedelic pop. And it’s 2012. How does it feel?

Pretty good. The big concert we did in July in Spain was such a wow. We all enjoyed it, and they said we’d love you to put vocals down on one of the main tracks of the new album; I said of course I would.  

But are you getting a royalty on this?

We haven’t even talked about it! 

But it's crystal clear that you're having a ball...

Absolutely. This is different. This is for friends! 

DC Fontana's second video from the new EP, shot in Birmingham's Custard Factory

Links
DC Fontana website
Don Fardon Wikipedia page

Birmingham Reggae production houses and the third generation. Friendly Fire, The Elephant House and more

They say Birmingham exports more reggae and sends more bands and sound systems out on tour than Jamaica. That's a hell of a statistic.

True or not, 21st century Birmingham reggae is still huge. It's still at the heart of music making in the city: a continuing hotbed for reggae, dancehall and old-school/new-school mash-ups. Sympathetic promoters and enthusiastic audiences abound. There are (at least) two production houses, both in Balsall Heath, pretty much a stones’ throw apart. There's way more to talk about than one blog post can cover. 

If you trace 70s and 80s Birmingham music, the emphasis eventually lands squarely on reggae and cross-cultural mixes. Much of this came from Handsworth and Balsall Heath: tough, inner city areas with overlapping cultures - always promising from a musical perspective. Handsworth had the edge, with Steel Pulse, Ruby Turner, Cornerstone, Beshara and Apache Indian, and many others. But Balsall Heath can lay a powerful claim, being home to most of UB40 for many years. 

With Andy Hamilton’s generation as a starting point, all of the above are second generation reggae/soul artists. British by birth, and from a bewildering range of backgrounds, all of them happily worked, and mostly still work, across a whole pile of musical genres. 

Robin Giorno’s Friendly Fire operation has been up and running for around ten years. He takes an old-school view, working with a core set of musicians  - Friendly Fire Music - who back up both local artists and visiting stars from the old country. Most of Robin’s work sees the light of day on his own label, and he also backs his music and label work up with regular JamJah Sound DJ sets, setting himself a ferocious schedule. If you check out the PST and  Reggae City Festival sites, he's there - with his band or as a DJ.

Friendly Fire Music with Lionart - Badness

Friendly Fire HQ is an unconventional but effective studio and production centre, spread across several rooms, and leveraging both old-school techniques and web-powered tools. It can be a one-stop shop, with a production chain marked out by a mic and shield rig and decks at one end, and a CD duplicating machine at the other.

Robin Giorno is French; he came to the UK at 18 to study electronic engineering. It’s a complicated story. 

"Studying in England is different. In England it’s much more along personal development lines, whereas in France it’s much more rigorous. If I’d stayed in France I’d have only met other engineers; in England I got fully involved in…. all sorts of areas." 

Including Reggae? 

"I started listening to Reggae a couple of years before I left France; all the old-school guys like Marley, Toots, Gladiators, all the roots 70s guys."

So were you aware of the second-generation Birmingham reggae tradition?

"I don’t think I was! But I wound up going to Summit Records in the Bullring… and all these songs I could only hear on the radio, on Friday nights from 10.30 till 11.30 …they were all there! I could get the whole album! So Winston, who runs Summit, he guided me a little bit."

"Now those Indie shops are disappearing, the guys like Winston who fulfilled that role – the benevolent guy behind the counter who turns you on to this or that sound – are getting rarer and rarer. We’re going to pay for that in the end."

Robin's exactly right there. Losing the bricks and mortar stores is a 21st century tragedy. Record shopping online works fine, but there's no soul or passion, and it's driven most old-school stores to the wall.. 

Robin had already cut his teeth on guitar as a teenager in France, into Kiss and Glam rock, but his first UK band is still the band he plays in now. It emerged from some looped experimental work, to which local rapper Paradox added a vocal track. That found its way to a local studio which gave Robin some free time to develop some ideas… and the band came into being.

Paradox with Friendly Fire Music - Web Of Deceit 

Check the Friendly Fire site for more - there's a lot more - as well as the gigs list at the bottom of the post.

Nip down the road from Friendly Fire, take a right at the crossroads, and then right again up the next alleyway, and you’ll find yourself at Elephant House, home of Overproof Sound System, who happily overlap with G-Corp and others. You’ll often find the same musicians working in both Friendly Fire and Elephant House; relationships are cordial and mutually supportive. Brian Nordhoff and Robert Cimarosti run Elephant House. If you want to read about their studio setup, there’s a post here. 

Nordhoff has been working in and around Reggae since the late 70s. 

"Cornerstone was one of the seminal Birmingham roots bands. They were one of the few reggae bands to get a Peel session... I started working with them, then I worked with a crew called African Star, I ended up producing because I was unimpressed with the live sound we were getting. One night I was standing by a desk, moaning, and someone said ‘Well, You do it then!’. So I jumped on, that led onto studio work, started getting more and more involved." 

Nordhoff was jumping back and forth between music areas. 

"The Elephant House started because we had a band called Electribe101, which we thought was dubby electronic stuff. But we were hailed as the forerunners of British House. So we had front pages on the NME and Top Of The Pops… which gave us enough money to build this place."

After major and repeated record company shenanigans (detailed here, and well worth a read if you're about to sign a record deal) the production team that grew out of Electribe 101 walked away to work independently, and have stayed independent ever since. 

"We were very fortunate, because we had built a bit of reputation. We were asked to produce a few of our heroes, like Dillinger, Big Youth, Ennio Morricone, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Sly and Robbie… and I got to mix UB40’s Labour Of Love."

 You’ve kept all that pretty quiet… 

"We’ve never been big fans of that side of things. We just want to make the music we want to make, and we can pay the rent, great."

Overproof Sound System Commander and Chief

So, like Robin Giorno, The Elephant House team spread themselves pretty far and wide, touring with Overproof Sound System, issuing material as G-Corp, and producing or mixing a surprisingly wide range of material - including Sly and Robbie, Dillinger, Big Youth, Luciano, Dubmatix, Adrian Sherwood / Dub syndicate, and a lot more.  

"I do find the way new musicians are using older music very inspiring. They aren’t restricted – they’re delving into all sorts of music. I think that’s fantastic. It’s much less tribal. The whole dubstep thing – somebody popped in earlier who’s connected through Jimmy Brown’s and Earl Falconer’s label – and we produced their Dub Specimen album. I thought it was fantastic. But I don’t know if anyone has heard it – it was a labour of love for them.. But I thought it was well worth the effort. It’s going to become a rare groove CD… "

When G Corp aren't busy touring Overproof, their studio is home to a wide range of bands (covered on this blog in a previous post).

Here's one of the latest productions, with Xova, who embody yet another facet of Birmingham's 3rd Reggae Generation; their management are currently working on a documentary covering the Birmingham reggae tradition.

 Knife Crime City - XOVA (G-Corp Album Edit)

Chatting with Brian about music in general and Birmingham in particular can take you all over the place. We eventually wound up taking about Country Music in Reggae, and in Old-school Soul.   

"I can reel off so many Country songs that were done in the Reggae format. There was a period in Reggae when it was so linked to Country. I spent the 70s in Handsworth, and everybody’s mum and dad were listening to Jim Reeves and all the big Country artists of the time. It’s always had a black/white connection.  Bob Marley and Black Uhuru was produced by Alex Sadkin, and that and Chris Blackwell crossed him over to the world."

‘Toots In Memphis’, Muscle Shoals, the Stax and Motown House bands… 

"We went over to the Cayman islands to produce an album, and what struck me was how all the cultures – Black Chinese, Asian, White - all speak either Jamaican Patois or with a Bajan or a Cayman accent. And everyone is actually seen as a Jamaican. It’s not what we see from here! The biggest reggae label in the world, VP, which is now run from Queens in New York, is run by the Chin brothers, who are Chinese Jamaicans! I grew up with Stax, Motown and Reggae, and that’s led us to where we are now."

It’s an odd but lovely thing to see the Stax-Volt house band concept being carried on in a highly individual reggae-oriented way by Robin Giorno, while Brian Nordhoff and Rob Cimarosti happily skate across a whole range of genres, while still centering on reggae, sound systems and dancehall. Just part of the grass roots in this town: the creative foundation from which all sorts of brilliant new work can grow. And while we listen to the current generation, be sure that there's a fourth generation getting ready. Some of them might be trying some moves out at Reggaebaby Lounge.

Links:
Friendly Fire website and JamJah Mondays
G-Corp website

Ruby Turner tears it up like never before

Full force Gospel! Ruby steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park. Always knew she would.

We’re 6 days into the New Year as I write. Above is a clip of the song I’ve been playing on repeat since it got its first Youtube outing on the 2nd. You should play it, too, right now. Play it loud.

It’s from the BBC Jools Holland New Year’s Eve special. This was the number that took the show up to midnight: Ruby Turner with the Jools Holland Rythm and Blues Orchestra laying down 'Get Away Jordan', and destroying the studio audience. 

No apologies whatsoever for taking this performance completely away from its New Year’s Eve 11.56pm broadcast context. This song deserves to be heard entirely on its own merits. Why? It's Ruby Turner, for decades one of the UK’s finest, taking it to church like I’ve never heard her before.

Take a good look at the video. Watch it a couple of times. There’s some great editing work. Lots of celebs to pick out. You can see Cyndi Lauper up there. And there’s Imelda May having a time for herself. And who’s that lady in black and silver, up on her feet doing the call and response? Well, I’ll tell you… that’s  Betty ‘Clean Up Woman’ Wright.

So, a masterful performance. Ruby took it up up though the gears from smooth and controlled to full-force hurricane. It brought the house down, and it gave me, and I am sure, thousands of others, huge pleasure to see Ruby hit that sweet spot, like we knew she always would.

We met up for a chat. I’d been waiting to see Ruby do something like this… for decades. Now she has, I wanted to know the how and why. Top of the agenda was Gospel. There was a lovely album, ‘I’m Travelling On’, that Ruby put together two years back at Bob Lamb’s old studios, now reborn as Highbury Studio in King’s Heath, Birmingham, which was Ruby’s first full-on step into Gospel. That led to experiments and developments with a very receptive and supportive Jools Holland, and the evolution of the full-on wailing big band treatment showcased on the video clip.


This has still taken its time to emerge, right? 

“It’s always been there… but Jools just gave me the platform.The thing with Gospel music, for me – I don’t know if it’s the same for Jools, it may well be – is that when it calls you, then you have to do it. It will find it’s way. It’s like water. Gospel music will find its channel.”

But you’ve always sung Gospel, Ruby… 

“I was singing it, but here I am in an industry that’s all about the commercial side, it’s all about the selling, it’s all about being popular. You and I know that Gospel music is an insular thing. People view it as a religious thing, and so barriers go up… But all you need to do it to listen to it, you don’t have to have any faith as such. On a spiritual or personal level, it can take you there… and you make of it what you wish.”

So does this represent a risk for you – and Jools? 

“If I can say so… Jools and I are singing from the same hymn sheet. He gets it, yes".

"But I guess, for many years, the (music) industry would get it too, but they wouldn’t take a chance on it… because it doesn’t sell. But (what I’m doing with Jools)… it works. It’s been working for ten years. We are still fascinated… we are excited by the music."

"We had to do work on a song. He was just on piano, and he asked me to sing a particular song, an old gospel song that he’d heard. He started to find his way round the piano, and of course I knew it, from church, back in the day in Handsworth. As I started singing, suddenly I  heard a tone – it’s almost like a ringing tone, that you can’t touch – and I had to stop. We just went… right…it’s deep. It’s too deep!”

And one thing led to another. What we saw on Hootenanny was a song they have been working on and touring with for the best part of a year. It’s road-tested, tuned to perfection. That’s why it hits like a sledgehammer. That’s why the audience in the BBC studio didn’t stand a chance. That’s how Ruby and Jools got to that place.

And there it is, yet again. Another example of musicians taking their own path because it feels right. Another reason to be proud of the creativity of our musicians. You know what I want to hear now? More. Deep soul, gospel, torch. It’s all there. I can’t wait.

Good God almighty :-)