Blackbud: They're Electric

For those not in the know, the ever modest and polite Blackbud are a blues band from Wiltshire, who’ve already played well over two hundred gigs this year in their quest to be somewhere at least close to those monoliths of the sixties that we either adored at the time, or grew to love after. Refreshingly, they’ve had nothing but self made success, with A&R reps first spotting them during their two hour, mammoth local pub sets where there was a selection of covers, everything from Jimi Hendrix to Bob Marley via Steve Ray Vaughn. More recently, the band have also had the privilege of supporting the likes of the Kaiser Chiefs…

With such an array of musical delights in their cannon, it seems all signs pointing towards success and longevity. Taking things at their own pace, they are very coherent, obviously with a plan to make the big time, but have a damned nice time getting there. So in a relaxed King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in good old Glasgow, Gigwise catches up with the barely out of their teens threesome - Joe, Sam and Adam – to get the low-down on it all…

Having no job, they enter the choppy waters of rock ‘n’ roll, this doesn’t put them off though, Adam: “We don’t have to work a full time job so we’re lucky in that respect, unlike other artists” and having gigged during exams, they seem quite used to it. This might seem like madness but, “with art you have to throw yourselves totally into it, you can’t make a half hearted attempt at something”. How true.

Still the hard graft hasn’t put them off having an array of amazing experiences in the past year , the undoubted pinnacle of which was Glastonbury. However, as they come from less than an hour away and being regulars at the coveted festival, they felt it all the more special than other bands may claim. “To get the chance to play was pretty wicked”, explains Sam “the first time we played we’d won a competition but then, we got invited back to play the Other Stage, so we were shitting ourselves”.

Being invited to the Other Stage shows their potential to be in the mainstream, but this isn’t the only goal. Joe: “we want to explore music more than say The Subways, our music should be around for along time yet”. Still, there is no animosity towards the band that have been commercially more successful, even though they’ve both played the same stages at Glastonbury and were both spotted at the same talent competition last year. They simply put it down to being a “different thing, we’ve not had our big commercial push”.

Moving on from their live persona, they quickly move on to their eagerly-anticipated forthcoming album, tentatively due to hit the shelves in March. All the signs are pointing towards a record that will be a fusion of their fizzing rock ‘n’ roll excitement along with, classical, soul, jazz, and some acoustic influences. Very interesting. Keen to emphasise that they aren’t just another Led Zeppelin ‘wanna-be’ band, Sam puts us straight: “Zeppelin went for the raw, everything down in twenty four hours kind of sound capturing the live element of their work, despite having elements of that kind of album we’ve gone for a slightly more measured approach”. This won’t be their first release though. They’ve already got two EP's under their belt - 'Livewire' and the fortcoming 'Heartbeat' - the latter produced by the prestigious Youth, whose worked on Embrace’s last album amongst other things.

Understandably, after being head hunted at Glastonbury unsigned things went pretty fast for the band at the beginning of their career. Fortunately, now going at their own steady rate, they’ve had  time to hone and perfect their biting and original sound, which truly puts them head and shoulders above a host of bands knocking around at the moment. They aren’t worried about being compared to rock gods either, which makes them even more special. True, like most bands they’ve got a heavy task ahead to make break into the nations’ psyche, but as many people who’ve bore witness to their live shows may tell you, they may just have what it takes be one of the bands of next year - after they are a band that’s been okayed by non-other than Jimmy Page which is surely not a bad thing.