Alderney born blues guitarist, Robert J. Hunter, brought his gruff and powerful music to Jersey's Halkett Hoedown, and it's needless to say that the liveliness and energy followed him off stage...
You’ve literally just gotten off the boat and had to play a show, no rest for the wicked?
We had to fly from Gatwick to Guernsey this morning and played a fair at about 3 o’clock and then got straight on the boat, off the boat and then came and played here. It’s been a manic day but it’s been good.
How long are you on the island for?
Until tomorrow morning! And then back to Guernsey for another show, so I’ve literally come over just for this gig. We’ve been to Jersey a few times before and each time we slowly see a bit more than we did last time.
What’s your favourite thing about Jersey so far?
I don’t know, we went to the zoo which was great fun! It’s weird because we come from London where it’s expected to be such a good music scene and it really is but then you come to an island like this and the music seems so welcoming, everyone’s so involved with each other. We always get a good reception over here so we like that community feel about the place.
What first got you into blues and rock music?
My dad always listened to The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Rory Gallagher, and John Martin, things like that. That’s all I ever really listened to myself and just started playing guitar and that’s all I ever really played and fell into it by default with not being able to do anything else.
What is it you love the most about your genre?
It’s one of those things where people see it as such a simple genre of music to play but it’s all about the feeling and it’s about the space between the notes which you don’t really get in any other genres in music and that’s what I really like about it.
Your first album ‘Songs For The Weary’ received a lot of blues chart success, but your single ‘Demons’ reached number 1 on the iTunes blues chart, how did that feel?
It was a weird one because we didn’t really expect anything from it, just thought we’d best check it just to see how many thousands down we are so it was quite surreal to just have that over night.
During your writing process where do you find inspiration from?
I don’t know it’s a weird one, if I sit down and aim to write a song it’s very rare that I come out with anything but all my songs are biographical so it’s all about self experiences. But my inspiration can just pop up at any time and suddenly I’ll write a burst of ten songs and then will have a lull of a month where I don’t even touch a book. My inspiration tends to be autobiographical.
Where has been your favourite event/venue to play?
We played Groove de Lecq a couple of weeks ago and we had an amazing time as we do every time we come to Jersey. We’ve been to Guernsey too, all the festivals there are great. We did the Great Rhythm and Blues Fest in Colne yesterday and that was a festival we’d been trying to get onto for quite a long time so to have that opportunity was pretty big up there.
Why a solo artist and not a band?
Originally I started gigging solo just me and an acoustic guitar and I still do a bit of that now, but I’d already built up a bit of a fan base and a discography under my own name so when I got together with these guys it just made sense instead of losing that.
Blues and rock is not as popular as it used to be, have you found it at all difficult to break through in certain areas?
We have at times, yes. It’s dying in some ways but thriving in other ways too. There’s a lot of interesting young blues bands coming onto the scene at the moment. It’s hard to break into it because the average 16 – 30 year old isn’t really into that kind of music but I think they would be if they heard it and gave it a chance but it’s starting to get better I think. A lot of people are into it these days than let’s say five years ago.
What advice would you give to up and coming blues bands?
I think the best advice I could give is to always be lukewarm and never be hot; you’ve got to go at it at a slug and just not give up at what you’re doing and never expect to have overnight success. You’ve got to put in the hard work and if you’ve done three gigs and you’re not where you want to be then don’t treat that as a waste of time. By the time you’ve done 200 shows you’d be progressing. Take it slow and appreciate each gig for what it is.
Check out Robert's new album Before the Dawn and you can listen to his back catalogue here.
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