For those of you who haven’t heard of us we are Spikedrivers and we play delta style blues except we’ve added our own twist to it. These days most of our songs are original compositions.
Ben Tyzack is our main songwriter, singer and guitarist. He has lots of guitars. Constance Redgrave is our bass guitarist, also a singer and she plays a mean washboard. I’m Maurice McElroy and I play drums, cajon, udu drum and assorted percussion. I also sing a bit.
Ben formed Spikedrivers in 1992 when he moved back to the UK. Born in London he was brought up in America, first in Iowa and then Charleston, South Carolina.
Ben: “Iowa was a great place to grow up, big skies, cornfields and railroad tracks. A lot of the imagery in my songs comes from there. My father was a painter and also played trumpet in a traditional jazz band. He had a huge record collection so I kind of absorbed a lot of that early jazz, ragtime and blues just by hearing it around the house.
The interesting thing was how it affected me once we moved to the south. I felt like I already knew the musical history of these new surroundings. There was a real sense of belonging. That was also when I started to learn guitar, write music and perform. The connection with the area is still very strong to this day.”
The original band released two CDs; ‘Delta Boogie’ and ‘Whisky River Blues’, both now out of print (a compilation is in the pipeline). After several changes of line-up, Constance and I joined in 2000. Since then we have put out four albums ‘Delta Roots’; ‘Blue Trash’, ‘Ain’t It Real’ and we’ve just released ‘Live at High Barn’. Each album is different and we think they prove you can have your roots in the blues tradition while still breaking new ground.
Constance: “I came to the UK from Los Angeles with the Death Metal band ‘Christian Death’. But I grew up listening to country and western music. My grandfather played washboard with Bob Wills. Whereas Maurice started out playing in 60s soul and blues bands, he then did prog rock and worked in theatre. Now he’s into flamenco, which is where the Cajon and Udu drum come from. Mix all that with what Ben’s doing and there’s no way it’s going to sound like anyone else.’
Over the past eight years we have been working continuously and not only on the blues circuit. These days we’re as likely to turn up at a folk or world music festival. Have a look at our shows from the 2007 Shrewsbury Folk Festival or the Crawley Blues Club on YouTube. We’re also doing more workshops both at festivals and in schools. People seem to like them and we enjoy doing them.
So where are we going from here? Well, bigger and better shows we hope. In Lugano we got to sing with the gospel group The Dixie Hummingbirds. That was real buzz and it’s inspiring us to do a lot more harmony singing. We also got to play with Ian Siegal who we hadn’t seen for years. We’ve been asked to go back and do other festivals in Italy and we’ve got a new agent for France and Belgium. Good gigs, good food and great coffee. What more can you ask for?
Ben: We’re planning a new studio album for next year and we’re just about to do a tour with Ben Waters. It’s all looking good.”
Constance: “It’s been eight and a half years and we still enjoy working together. Long may it continue.”
