Q&A
Q&AT
here have been times when the
vicissitudes of life have led
Sonny West away from music,
whether he was restoring vintage
motorbikes or running a French
restaurant, but it’s always lured him back
sooner or later. He landed his first
professional spot as a teenager, playing
guitar in the Elvis Forever musical, which
led to him gigging with Scotty Moore,
DJ Fontana and The Jordanaires.
He released two scorching rockabilly
albums, Mr. Wild Guitar and Relentless, in
the early 90s, blasts out the blues with the
Voodoo Vendors, and found success with
the Congo Faith Healers, channelling the
sound and spirit of New Orleans. In 2019, he
recorded with legendary drummer Jimmy
Van Eaton at Sun Studio, and he’s returned
to rockabilly with latest album Feel The
Heat, keeping that wild guitar singing its
siren song loud and proud.How did you wind up recording with
Jimmy Van Eaton?
I got invited to play the Nashville Boogie
in 2019 and do some gigs over there, so
I thought it would be great to go down
and have a look at Sun Studio. I figured it
would be amazing to actually record there
and wondered who was still around of the
original guys. Nearly all of them are gone.
Then I discovered that Jimmy was living
close by and still playing. He’s a legend, he
played on everything – Johnny Cash, Roy
Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis – so I thought I’ll
be cheeky. I sent a message saying I was
coming in to Sun Studio, wanted to book
a session and wondered if he’d be interested
in playing with me. He got back to me,
‘I checked your stuff out, I love it’. It all just
happened really quickly. We did an evening
at Sun Studio, which was a dream come true
for me.What did you play?
We managed to record 12 tracks and mix
it at Sun, so it has that famous Sun sound.Jimmy said: ‘What do you want to do?’
I said, ‘To be honest with you Jimmy, I don’t
want to stand in Sun Studio and do the
clichéd tourist thing and play That’s Alright
(Mama) and all the Elvis standards. Why
don’t we wind it back a few years to when
Howlin’ Wolf recorded here and all the
blues guys?’ He said, ‘Do you want me to get
you a bunch of musicians?’ I said, ‘No, let’s
just do it, me and you. I’m going to do it in
a traditional blues style, so I’ll be tuning my
guitar down and playing harmonica, we’ll
just jam’.Do you have a title for the album?
It’s going to be In Memphis After Midnight.
After the session, Jimmy drove up to see me
play a gig, then took me out for dinner with
his family, which was amazing. He’s a lovely
guy, so down to earth and grounded. It was
a pleasure to work with him.You recorded your new solo album,
Feel The Heat, at home...
Yeah. I have a real basic setup. When it
comes to recording, I really am old school.
I like to play as a band. I know a lot of people
say, ‘we played live’, meaning they might
have put a guitar and drum track down
live. I like to put everything down live,
I always say you can’t add the mojo after
the recording. I was singing and playing,
but also recording and engineering – it’s the
first time I’ve ever done that. It sounds like
rock’n’roll should. It’s quite raw.How do you approach songwriting?
I dream a lot of songs. I’ll wake up and have
a melody, a finished arrangement. I’ll come
down and play the song through and then
it will just need some tweaking, but the
melody and the arrangement are already
in my head. It just comes to me, so I don’t
struggle over chord changes and melodies.
I write some poetry then put it to music,
it just happens organically.What’s happening with the Congo
Faith Healers?
The band is very eclectic. We have a jazz
drummer, a classical bass player who’s from
Ukraine, and our trumpet player is from
Cuba. The music shouldn’t work but it does.
Going on tour with KT Tunstall, Natasha
Bedingfield, Razorlight, Finley Quaye... that
was amazing. People love it because we’re
eclectic. The band has all the reference
points of the music we all love. There’s
blues in there, rock, Latin – that band never
fails. We’ve done the craziest gigs, from
playing in the south of France in some
billionaire’s villa to a local pub in Islington,
or going to Dubai and playing for Jack
Daniel’s. I’ve got two albums written for that
band, which we’re going to be recording
here. This year is definitely going to be
a Congo year. 9Sonny West’s new album, Feel The Heat,
is out now on Killertone RecordsMr Wild Guitar talks to Vintage Rock about late-night sessions in
Memphis and the importance of capturing the mojo
“We managed to
record 12 tracks andmix it at Sun, so it
has that famousSun sound”
WORDS BY DAVID WEST
Sonny West
Sonny West ringing
the mojo out of a
delectable Gretsch