Issue 161 | Whisky Magazine 55continue their education, with Paul
pursuing a PhD in drumming and Felipe
penning a Master’s thesis on the subject
of sustainable distilling on Islay. It was
then that the pair discovered they had
each independently developed a love of
Scotch whisky. Later, Felipe even began
hosting small tasting events and more
recently started writing about whisky
as a contributor to Forbes.
“We both knew we liked whisky a
lot and enjoyed talking about it. So, we
had the idea of going to Islay and doing
gigs out there at the bars and hotels. In
return, we simply asked for food, bed
and whisky,” explains Felipe. “We were
doing a gig at the White Hart Hotel inPort Ellen and this one rather merry
lady comes up to us and makes the
claim that she’s the distillery manager
of Lagavulin. And we say, ‘no you’re not’.
But, of course, as it turned out, Georgie
Crawford was indeed the distillery
manager. She said, ‘you’re coming to my
office tomorrow at noon.’ So, the next
day, we rock up and she sits us in her
office, breaks out the new make spirit
and we end up tasting the entire range.
While this is going on, she mentions
that we should come and play at the
Feis – we had no idea what that was.”
Having been brought up to speed,
Felipe and Paul proceeded to play
regularly at the Festival over thefollowing decade and it was during this
time that the template was created for
The Rhythm & Booze Project.
“A lot of the stuff we did on Islay were
just gigs, going out to bars and providing
music for some of the events. But we
also did an event at Caol Ila, we’ve done
it for years now, with Colin Dunn. We’d
play, he’d talk about the whisky, then
we’d bounce off each other, chatting
about the drams, and we just made
it work. It wasn’t us providing music
for a tasting – it was us together with
Colin mixing whisky and music into one
experience,” explains Paul. “Though, for
the record, we no longer just get paid in
whisky,” he adds with a laugh.054-056-Music-WM161.indd 55 27/06/2019 12:17