UNSIGNED SPOTLIGHT
British singer/guitarist Clare Free is on a mission to modernise her beloved blues and present it to an eager new audience.
Words: Tim Slater
Admittedly, the blues might be easier to trace in an early Metallica LP than it is to pick out from the most recent work of Dizzy Rascal but whenever you are dealing with soul, country, funk and especially jazz the blues is never far away. Often, the mere mention of the word ‘blues’ conjures up uncomfortable thoughts of the local Stevie Ray Vaughan clone throttling the living daylights out of some hapless blues standard or Hendrix tune down at your friendly neighbourhood jam night but for more adventurous musicians the blues can offer a gateway to a powerhouse of creativity and inspiration. Clare Free is a young British musician who is driven to free British blues from its often unfairly maligned image as the haven of lazy middle aged three chord strummers. Fiercely determined and deeply passionate about the music she loves, Clare cut her gigging teeth in the blues ‘supergroup’ Misdemeanor alongside rising star Matt Schofield before eventually striking out on her own. A serious illness and motherhood saw her considerable energies diverted elsewhere for part of the last decade but Clare is currently on a roll, leading her own four-piece band and promoting her current EP How It Is. Clare recently enjoyed a welcome profile boost when some of her tracks featured on the prestigious Paul Jones show on BBC Radio 2 and she is also setting to work on a batch of new songs as well as juggling her dual roles running both her
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band and her family. g PM: After being part of a band for so long, was it daunting setting out on your own solo
career? g CF: “No. I had always been in the driving seat of bands, I was always the one that did the booking and the pushing around. I’ve always been a songwriter, so it felt like a very natural step. I’ve never really taken a back seat in any of the bands that I’ve been in. I’ve thought that I could do a
better job than everybody else anyway!” (laughs). g PM: Tell us how your musical interests began.
52 3pickup
he blues is the common name for remarkably adaptable strand of musical DNA that weaves throughout most forms of western popular music.
g CF: “I was very little. I began playing piano when I was about 12 but I took up the guitar when I was 17, basically out of jealousy of my younger brother who was a very good guitar player. I play saxophone and flute and a few other things but I took up saxophone because I wanted to learn how to improvise. My saxophone teacher was a classical teacher who didn’t really understand how to teach improvisation. I was allowed to take up
Clare Free: “The blues is a giant canvas that lets you draw new shapes…”
guitar on the condition that I paid for everything and paid for my own lessons because I wasn’t
allowed to get any better than my brother!” g PM: You played in Misdemeanour with Matt
Schofield? g CF: “I did play with Matt Schofield for a while and the rhythm section for that band (bassist Constance Redgrave and drummer Maurice McElroy) went on to be the rhythm section for (roots blues band) Spike Drivers. There were five of us in the band and we’ve all gone in diverse directions: Matt’s obviously gone on to greater things and if that band was still together that
would be an amazing band.” g PM: What are your thoughts regarding
expanding blues beyond its somewhat staid image? g CF: “I am very much on the edge of the blues because I am heading very much into funk and country. I don’t tend to use standard 12 chord structures in what I play, I particularly like to experiment with the type of choruses that you get in country music so I tend to pull some of those in which tends to make what I do sound slightly different. I am very much not what I like to call a ‘lumpty dumpty’ 12-bar player that you find
at blues jams! I think that there a lot of people who lack imagination with it, I think that if you’ve got a musical imagination you can do so much with the blues influence. I have to say that some people have very defined edges to what they like to call the blues genre but I prefer to see it all as a big canvas that lets you draw shapes in different areas. Blues is a much maligned category of music,
actually.” g PM: Who else would you say is doing their bit to drag blues-based music into the 21st
Century? g CF: “I like people like Aynsley Lister. I think that he is doing great things with the modern blues and Shannon Curfman over in America. She is another artist who is pushing it out. I can only speak for my own opinion but I think that the years between the 60s and the early 2000’s the blues hasn’t progressed that much, on the whole. It’s kind of done new things and then gone back to the lumpty dumpty stuff. It’s nice to push the edges a bit by bringing in new ideas from outside and kind of modernising it a bit.” PM
For more info, go to
www.clarefree.co.uk.
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