Blackbud - A biography
Blackbud have… played over 200 gigs...been given the nod of approval by Jimmy Page… toured the UK and Europe and supported the likes of Keane, The Bees, Hope Of The States and Kaiser Chiefs….been taken under the wings of Youth and Michael Eavis…been picked up by Fierce Panda…had a song in a Hollywood film….and only recently said goodbye to their teens…
This young West Country trio have a sound as prodigious as their self-made achievements. Bold, epic, soulful, emotional, intense, uplifting: Blackbud do all of these, then top it off with the soaring voice of Joe Taylor. Musically, their collective backgrounds in college bands has forged a solid but imaginative foundation upon which Taylor (guitars), Adam Newton (bass) and Sam Nadel (drums) are building big-sky rock music.
On ‘Heartbeat’, the tumultuous lead track on their first full release EP, Taylor sings “tell me what you reach for when the stars are out of sight”. Blackbud aren’t following anyone else’s idea of what they should be striving for. Fiercely independent, they’re just stretching up to their own ambitions.
Taylor, Nadel and Newton met at school in Wiltshire. ‘It was very music-oriented,’ says Nadel. ‘We did workshops in different kinds of world music,’ says Sam. ‘The first time we played together was at college, playing jazz. That experience rubbed off on us – as soon as we met properly and started playing, we played blues, jazz and funk because that’s what we knew. That helped us stand out when we first started doing gigs.’
Deciding to form a band in December 2002, their work ethic was immediately apparent. They secured a residency in a local pub. ‘They let us do two-hour gigs’ says Taylor, ‘mostly covers, Hendrix, Bob Marley and Stevie Ray Vaughn, learning to play with each other through playing the greats over and over again. Newton: ‘That was the first in the long line of corners of pubs.’
Over the following 18 months, Blackbud gigged and gigged. Even when they were struggling with exam pressure their rock’n’roll zeal saw them still playing up to three gigs a week, all over the West Country and across the UK. Songs began pouring out of Taylor, and they recorded three demo CDs.
By summer 2004, and following capacity crowds at Glastonbury Festival appearances on the New and Avalon stages, word of mouth on Blackbud and their fanbase reached the ears of London record labels. Taylor: ‘We didn’t approach anyone. At that point we had no intention of looking for a record deal – we hadn’t sent any demos to record companies. People came to us”. And indeed they did…literally. It was important the band felt, that any interested parties visit them on their home turf, an experience, recalls Nadel, that proved somewhat surreal as a steady stream of record executives ‘sped along little country lanes to my house to see us play in my shed”.
After a tour of Spain with Hope Of The States (booked on the spot after a Spanish promotor heard their demo) Blackbud eventually decided to release a one-off single with Fierce Panda, as bands from Coldplay to Keane via Idlewild had done before them. ‘Livewire EP’, recorded at Rockfield in Wales, was a taster of what was to come: the title track was a sinuous, funk-flavoured tune dreamt up by Taylor
after he’d come back from a Middle Eastern holiday.
‘I wanted to write something that had a groove to it,’ says this naturally explosive guitarist, ‘and this rhythm and melody just appeared, fitting together. It all tends to come all in one go, the music and the words in one stream of poetry.’
In terms of their long-term aspirations, Blackbud opted to sign with Independiente, a label with a proven track record for recognising a band’s long term potential and thus giving Blackbud the time to grow and develop.
Blackbud squirreled themselves away in Olympic Studios in south-west London with Youth, the legendary producer who, most recently, was at the helm for the comeback album of 2004, Embrace’s Out Of Nothing. Says Nadel: ‘…for a very laidback guy he gets a lot done – he’s a hard taskmaster and very inspiring.’
The first three songs the band recorded with Youth comprise their first full release, The Heartbeat EP. Lead track ‘Heartbeat’ is an intense, boiling song with a huge, squealing climax. ‘Steal Away’ could be a bridging song between
Radiohead’s The Bends and OK Computer. ‘Corner Of The World’ is a measured, intense ballad. ‘They’re all emotional songs,’ says Taylor, still young enough to feel diffident about describing the personal detail and shape of his own music, ‘powerful and heavy, or delicately crafted.’
After a summer of festivals and despite the fruitful creative partnership with Youth, Blackbud made the decision to switch to triple Grammy-winning producer/engineer/ musician David Bottrill for their debut album. They see him as reflecting their love of diversity with an impressive range of styles and credits including Muse, Tool, Silverchair, Hobotalk and Peter Gabriel. Sam Nadel says, ‘we chose David because of the warmth and subtlety of his production. He is really ‘hands-on’ and we loved the energy within every track he works on’.
‘Hearing Jimi Hendrix started me wanting to play,’ says Taylor, a naturally gifted guitarist able to conjure staggering sounds from his instrument. ‘I started off having classical lessons then I learnt on my own. Then a new teacher taught me how to pay Nirvana. That got me into playing guitar for *songs* rather than style. But I still study classical and flamenco. We draw from a lot of styles of music.’
Taylor is also emerging as a classic frontman in the Jeff Buckley mould – a bit eerily, not only does his intuitive guitar style and soaring vocals recall the tragic younger Buckley, but Taylor looks a bit like him too. Taylor waves away the aesthetic comparison, but says, ‘he was a great musician, and as a band we look towards great musicians with great spirit in their music to get inspiration’. As Nadel points out, “We’re just as inspired by playing Django Rheinhardt in our soundchecks or listening to some Herbie Hancock Trio from 1973 on our tour bus…’
Blackbud – young, road-tested veterans that they are - have only just begun, but they have their sights set on the horizon. Considering the bluesy pyrotechnics of The Heartbeat EP’s lead track in particular, it’s easy to understand why Jimmy Page was impressed with the band. At the invitation of their mutual booking agent, he came to see a recent gig at London’s Borderline. ‘Luckily we didn’t know he was there till afterwards,’ says Nadel”. ‘And the gig started off really shit,’ adds Newton, ‘but it got better.’ ‘We only played a half hour set cause we’ve been trying to keep it snappy recently,’ says Taylor. ‘And afterwards, Jimmy Page came up and was talking about how Led Zeppelin used to play for two and half hours, and how he could tell we’d been dying to do that too…’
This, concludes Joe Taylor, ‘is what we want to do eventually. Just play and play, explore where we can go with the music…’
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