NOVEMBER 2023 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the November 2023 issue – OUT NOW!
VV BROWN
Roads leading to an artist’s statement or career-defining album are many and varied. For example, blues legend Robert Johnson’s trip was notoriously short: he recorded all of the music that made him famous aged 25 and 26 [and on 78rpm singles], before dying only a year afterwards of unknown causes. Others set off on one course – Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, say – only to deliver their masterworks after arresting creative control from a record label boss who would have preferred something more obviously marketable and conservative. In UK singer-songwriter VV Brown’s case, the route to her superb fourth album, Am I British Yet?, has been somewhat circuitous and involved three career restarts, periods of alternative employment and even what seemed like semi-retirement before she’s landed in a place where she feels able to make the best music of her life…
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JUDI JACKSON
American artists resident in London have been doing pretty well for covers of Echoes this past year. Back in March we greeted the arrival of spring with admirable New Orleans-born soulstress Acantha Lang. A disappointingly damp August was significantly brightened by Daptone’s young soul signing Jalen Ngonda, originally from Germantown, Maryland. And now, as first supplies of Christmas mince pies hit supermarket shelves, we present to you Ms. Judi Jackson from Roanoke, Virginia, the mostly jazz, sometimes soul and occasionally pop vocalist/songwriter whose heart-stopping tones have already earned her several awards during her so far six-year stay with us.
We meet in a private room at The Ned, now a five-star hotel in the City of London, housed inside a building designed by Sir Edward Lutyens [hence its name]. Judi has herself sung at The Ned several times: indeed, it would be a perfect place for her to deliver songs from her gorgeous new album of jazz covers, My American Songbook, released November 10…
STEPHEN MARLEY
Stephen Marley, who’s currently touring behind his latest album Old Soul, is a giant of the contemporary reggae world. That’s not because he’s all over social media or forever telling his story to an endless procession of journalists – it’s more about what he represents and the fact that the music he makes is so important to the genre as a whole.
Reggae has been left short of legitimate figureheads ever since his father passed away. We’ve been living through an age of false pretenders and not so venerable elders, yet Bob and Rita’s youngest child must have mentioned the word “responsibility” at least half a dozen times during our interview. He is his father’s son – a keeper of the flame who, together with his siblings, has undertaken to not only safeguard the legacy that’s been handed down to him, but also continue it in the same spirit…
ERSKINE & KAVUMA
The covid inquiry may have recently been buried by bad news but for bereaved families, the revelations of life-threatening Downing Street policy [not to mention a chancellor dubbed Dr. Death] – are hard to stomach. Decidedly irresponsible leaders doing what admirably responsible citizens could not, only added insult to infamy. That said, so-called Partygate did set off one welcome chain of events, as Theo Erskine explains.
“In lockdown we learned that the government was breaking the rules, and we were like, ‘Should we just start hanging out and practicing?’” he says with the most wry of smiles. “I mean, ‘Why not?’ We were like ‘Oh, we should get our band together!’”
The saxophonist is sitting in the café of London’s Royal Festival Hall alongside trumpeter Mark Kavuma and the two joint-leaders of Erskine & Kavuma are in upbeat mood, as the sun streams onto the river Thames…