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WIB Interview: Todd Sharpville (Pt. 1)

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Bad Shit Is Good For You

An interview with Todd Sharpville (Pt.1)

Words: Vincent Abbate  /  PHOTOS: Chris Giff, Jennifer Noble 

Within the blues world, we talk until we’re blue in the face about axe-shredding guitarists and leather-lunged singers. We admire the proud keepers of the flame and purveyors of tradition. Recently it seems we’ve become enamored with glamour and coolness as embodied by some of the genre’s younger, more marketable stars. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.

But if you ask me (no one has!), what the blues needs most of all is personalities. In other words: artists willing to stand onstage and be real. Musicians who are not afraid to reveal themselves as flawed, fallible human beings.

Take veteran British bluesman Todd Sharpville. At his recent performance in Bonn, Germany – a 90-minute show captured on video – one of the first things he says as he greets his audience from behind a piano is: “This is a song for everyone who’s failed. We’re all fucking human. We all fail at some point or another.” He then proceeds to sing the opening number, “The Blue Standard,” in a voice laden with sorrow and hurt. Yet there’s an undeniable glimmer of hope in his delivery, too.

Just like his outstanding 2022 release Medication Time (an album inspired by his brief stint in a mental institution earlier this century), his recent date with German television revealed Sharpville as a master at conveying moods and emotions. Taking the stage at a mid-sized venue called Harmonie, he and the members of his six-piece band were not out to show the world how talented they are at string-bending and paradiddling. Rather, they had come to make a series of statements about the human condition. Gripping moments from that performance – soon to be released on CD & DVD – include the aforementioned “The Blue Standard,” the stirring “Love Knows No Bounds,” the tortured and harrowing “Medication Time” and the heartbreakingly personal “Won’t Say Goodbye” – cathartic explorations of imperfection, shared humanity, mental illness and grief.

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WIB Interview: Jon Amor

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In and Out of the Blues

An interview with Jon Amor

Words: Vincent Abbate

(Author’s note: Exactly one year ago tomorrow, on November 28th 2018, British musician Jon Amor released the brilliant and eclectic Colour In The Sky – an essential album that is perhaps his finest collection of songs to date. In the interview we conducted a few weeks later, Jon provided deep insight into his songwriting. He also opened up about the personal challenges he was facing while making the record. But a bout of procrastination and the unforeseen circumstances of a tumultuous winter caused me to shelve the article. Colour In The Sky deserves better than that! And perhaps some of you missed it. So today, with my apologies to Jon, I give you our interview.)

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Since this blog and its companion book series are called Who Is Blues, I’ll pose the dreaded question: Is Jon Amor blues?

Sure he is. As guitarist and singer, he’s been in some of the best blues bands to come out of Great Britain during the past three decades. Amor is a founding member of The Hoax, who enjoyed a run of critically acclaimed albums in the 1990s and whose raw, edgy sound was last heard in 2014 on their full-length B.B. King tribute Recession Blues. He also tours off-and-on with a pair of blues “supergroup” projects, DVL and The Boom Band. Moreover, with two excellent (and highly recommended) releases from his own Jon Amor Blues Group between 2011 and 2012, he demonstrated – like few others have – that electric blues can be rooted in decades-old traditions without carrying the stench of mothballs.

By constrast, on his occasional solo releases he works comfortably both alongside and well outside the blues genre. Those records are where this talented gent tests the limits of his songwriting muscle. As a lifelong devotee of the blues, Amor bemoans the lack of well-rounded artists on today’s scene, and rightfully so. “Too often, lyric and melody are treated as if they are just filling time between guitar solos,” he observes in the Q&A that follows.

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