Bo Weavil interview: “The blues is a state of mind”

With his eighth album Shadows, Bo Weavil invites us on a colorful journey where the blues blends with a palette of shades spanning rock, funk, and reggae. He shows he is an uncompromising artist who keeps the blues alive rather than locking it away in a museum. Blues Actu picked up its finest brush to sketch the portrait of a singular musician who surprises us a bit more with each new release.

🎤 Bo Weavil in Interview

Matt, Shadows is your eighth album. After a record with Latin accents in 2022, can we say this one returns to the blues, even if pinning a label on you is always reductive?

Let’s say that for about a dozen years, I have never felt like I was doing anything other than my own blues. A blues tinged with different influences, including Latin flavors, but not only that. The previous record, A Blessing In Disguise, was a lockdown album, therefore confined. I wanted it as gentle as possible, something to listen to warmly at home while the storm raged outside. I think that album perfectly reflects my state of mind at the time: a desire for travel and sunshine, a craving for “vacation” I had not taken for at least ten years. Making that project was vital for me, especially in such a peculiar period.

With the new album Shadows, my mindset is no longer the same at all. The times have become much darker, the good days are clearly behind us, we have to fight to survive and the struggle is harsh. I wanted to produce an album that gets under your skin, that shakes you up, yet without hurting. So, more rock, more funk, more soul, with the blues always in the background of course.

You are an innovative musician, always chasing experiments. What did you set out to explore with this new record?

It was funk and rock that inspired me most and that I highlighted, but also reggae which, in my view, is another form of blues inspired by American soul from the sixties. The idea was to conceive an orchestrated album by playing almost all the instruments myself. So I got back into the bass with gusto, which I only play in the studio.

With each new album, I give myself a new challenge. For this one, it was to do as much as possible on my own. I admit it was also motivated by obvious financial reasons.

You write that Shadows reveals “the kid behind his drums.” Tell us about that young musician and what remains of him in your work today.

I have always been passionate about music. In my family, when I was a child, we listened to everything, truly everything: world music including the blues, but also Indian and African traditions, rock (The Beatles, The Police, Nina Hagen), pop (Michael Jackson, Prince), funk (James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone), reggae (Bob Marley, Toots & The Maytals), folk (Bob Dylan), and even classical music now and then. And to a lesser extent, French chanson, although I am very picky about it. Few French artists move me. I will still name Gainsbourg, Bashung, Rita Mitsouko, and above all Higelin, whom I absolutely admire. A brilliant multi-instrumentalist songwriter, I listened to him a lot as a child. There are others, but not many.

Around six years old, I wanted to become a rock drummer and I adored Ringo Starr. But since we lived in the city and “drums are too loud,” I was given a pair of tablas for my birthday, my very first instrument. I even took tablas lessons with an Indian master. Authentic.

I started guitar around nine, but only really got into it in my teens. Then I finally took up drums, not as much as I would have liked. We moved a lot. The drum kit did not follow.

When did you decide to make it your profession?

Born into a family of musicians over several generations, I knew how difficult it is to make a living from music. Around fifteen, I told myself I preferred to keep this passion intact and not make it my job. I also knew that by turning it into my profession I would inevitably, probably, lose my naïve and passionate music-lover’s ear. So I initially aimed for a technical career path in sound and lighting.

My guitar was stolen when I was about seventeen, which temporarily put an end to my progress on the instrument. That is when I turned to the harmonica in earnest, which I quickly mastered, thanks in part to J.J. Milteau. He was a family friend, so I could easily connect with him and take a few lessons at the time.

As I approached twenty, life did me no favors. A particularly dark period. I was completely depressed and had no conviction about any professional choice. One fine day, destiny caught up with me. Lee Ketcham “Hallyday” convinced me to become a professional musician. He could see that music had been an integral part of my personality since childhood. He thought it would be a shame not to use that natural gift and told me so with force and conviction.

He gave me a new guitar, restored my courage and self-confidence, and pushed me to study music, which I did by joining the CIM school in Paris in 1992, a jazz school that no longer exists today. I learned some notions of harmony and musical structure that proved useful, but I am above all a self-taught musician. As for reading music, I skimmed those classes and retained nothing. I never needed it.

It was at that school that I met those with whom I would start my very first blues band, and that is how it all began. I moved to Lyon for a while, where I played my first concerts, solo, already as a one-man band. Then I moved back to Paris during the winter of 1994–95. I was twenty-two and already had a stage name in my pocket, Bo Weavil. We started touring together with Vincent Talpaert (double bass, drums). Then everything went very fast.

And childhood drifted away.

“Culture is a tough ride, not easy every day.”

If you met that kid today, what would you tell him, and what would you like him to tell you?

Hahaha… I would tell him that passion remains intact over the years and even deepens with practice. I think the kid I was, shy and reserved as I was, would be astonished and impressed if he could imagine my life as a musician. But every medal has a reverse side, and the kid I was knew it. On that count, he and I were not wrong. Culture is a tough ride, not easy every day. That is all I have ever known and I always knew it meant a huge amount of work for a meager reward. Yet the game is worth it in the end. In any case, the die was cast from the start, choices were limited, I have only ever known how to do one thing, make music.

Enough with the therapy talk, back to your musical universe. You mix styles and colors and mention “gray, red, blue, ocher, green shadows.” How do these different hues, and the styles you love, translate musically?

It is an image of course, a metaphor. The blues is a state of mind, yet it is also a color that gave the genre its name. So in my logic, each state of mind has its color. Red evokes passionate love and the blood of violence, which for me translates as rock.

Ocher would be that soft, warm shade that the seventies evoke for me, with the sound of soul and funk (I Want You Right Back, Roll In Soul Out) or African desert blues. Green, the color of forests and vegetation, would be the color of joy and well-being that reggae rhythms bring to mind (Fly Away Home, It’s Going ’Round).

But it is the shadows of current events, the gray of vile wars and the red of blood that has been flowing these past years, that set the album’s overall tone, notably with Shadows On The Lands, which tells the story of war through a child’s eyes.

I have been haunted by a nightmare since I was very small. A building in ruins consumed by flames, scorched earth strewn with smoking shells of burned-out cars, parents gone, vanished, and me as a baby crying and wailing, sitting on a car hood. It is only a very bad dream, but it has haunted me since early childhood. I remember it vividly, terribly. I translated it into my song.

You mention influences like Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Lenny Kravitz. I could almost add Keziah Jones to the list. In short, artists who, like you, shape everything in their studio and draw on all styles to create a unique sound. Tell us more about your creative process and how you brought Shadows to life.

As for songwriting, there are no rules that I know of. Sometimes I go a year or two without writing a single song. Then sometimes there is a spark and it becomes urgent, a necessity. I may then write several songs in a week. Generally, I like to write when I am alone and isolated, comfortably settled on the sofa rather than at a desk, with my acoustic guitar as my only companion, mind free and wandering.

On the production side, I recently had the chance to refresh my home-studio setup. My previous system dated back twenty years. It was beyond time. Today you can find tools of incredible quality, pricey for sure, yet far less than what pro audio gear used to cost. The key is knowing how to use them. It took me a while to adapt to this new technical environment.

I first set about producing demos in an ultra-minimalist way: a drum machine as a click, a single take of guitar, a vocal, and harmonica for riff parts. In short, my songs performed like live takes, without frills.

I then brought in Martin Piveteau, an excellent “all-styles” drummer who lives near me in the Vendée. He simply played over my demos as he would have done live. I then started again from the drum tracks only and recorded all the instruments and vocals, the bass parts, the guitars. The “brass-like” riffs and “keyboard” sounds were performed on harmonica, which I ran through Leslie effects to give it an organ color. I developed all the arrangements on my own.

Next, John-Joe Murray came in for a session and played violin on some tracks. Using overdubs, we created a string orchestration. I had already worked with him on the previous album. John-Joe is an excellent musician and a good friend. My friend Yvan “Don” Tamayo came to add percussion, notably congas. We have collaborated on several previous albums.

And the icing on the cake, Nouschka, my partner in life and on stage, played percussion and sang all the backing vocals on the album, sometimes joined by Mathilde Lucas and John-Joe on certain tracks.

I then handled the mix, which took quite a while. Although I have produced several of my albums, this is the first time I mixed entirely on my own. Usually this stage is done as a duo. It has advantages and drawbacks. The process takes longer, yet it is closer to what you truly want in terms of production. From now on I prefer working this way. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

“I grew up in houses that housed recording studios.”

The studio seems to be more than a technical place for you. Almost a cocoon, a space of childhood and freedom.

I grew up in houses that had recording studios, so it is a place I know very well. My first job, after leaving school very early around seventeen, was working as an assistant sound engineer. I learned a lot there. But it is also a very demanding world. You do not see outside, you live under electric lights, cut off from the world. You breathe air conditioning constantly, you work grueling hours, ten-hour sessions in a row, sometimes more, day or night, around the clock. A pro studio is open all day, every day. It is exhausting.

I endured endless zouk sessions for weeks on end. When you work in a studio, you do not choose the music you work on. I quickly realized it was not for me, that I preferred being a musician and making my own music.

Working at home, though, in a space you create, doing exactly what you want when you want, is pure bliss. Then you stop counting the hours and the time spent no longer matters, as long as you ultimately get the result you want.

African influences are never far away. How did the fabulous Mali I Miss You come about?

It is a song I wrote a long time ago, when the country was in open war around 2012. More broadly, it evokes the woes of West Africa, the violence of its colonial past and the current Islamist terror that severely hinders the emancipation of its peoples and their cultures.

I had already recorded it, under a different title, but I was not satisfied with that version. It has always worked very well on stage. I like the riff. I thought it was a real shame the first version was not polished enough, so I decided to re-record it, further developing the song’s overall idea.

I have traveled, but my great regret is not having been able to go to Mali. One of my dreams is to see Timbuktu and the Sahel more broadly. Today that has become impossible, and it pains me greatly. I absolutely admire the Mandé artists Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté. My dream was to meet the griots of Mali. I still hope I can go one day.

The Tuareg blues also inspired this song, whose most famous group is Tinariwen. I have been a fan since the very beginning. By weaving touches of reggae into their music, they found their own way of playing the blues. To me it truly is blues. I do not understand Tamasheq lyrics, yet the feeling this music gives me is the blues. That is the word the Tuareg use to describe their music, desert blues or simply guitar blues.

In your artistic approach, do you carry the idea that Africa, and even the Caribbean (see Bruno Blum’s excellent book), are central to the history of the blues?

Yes, absolutely. I find it a shame that we sometimes forget, far too often, that Caribbean influences have always inspired the musicians who shaped genres from the dawn of blues and jazz. Hawaiian music also inspired the use of slide. For a simple reason. In the nineteen-thirties, the best-selling records in the United States were Cuban and Hawaiian music.

The geographic proximity of New Orleans to the Caribbean islands and the Creole mixing of the whole region is obvious. Listen to J.B. Lenoir in duo with Fred Below, and you will hear it. Bo Diddley’s “jungle” sound comes directly from the Ghanaian clave that became the basis of Cuban music. Or take Snooks Eaglin, the New Orleans street singer who regularly blended Spanish guitar colors and funk accents into his blues. Funk itself was born in New Orleans. I also think of John Lee Hooker and his duo with Carlos Santana. The tracks they cut together, with that Caribbean feel, inspired me a lot too, notably on A Blessing In Disguise.

I like to say the blues is like a magnificent tree with many branches. In its roots lie the ancestral musical cultures from Africa, but also from Europe, and let us not forget the Native American roots from which many bluesmen also descend. The branches are all the musical evolutions that spring from blues and jazz. They are incredibly numerous, diverse, and varied.

This tree has evolved and keeps evolving in surprising ways. The magic of syncopated rhythm and the pentatonic scale has done its work and has won over many musicians and music lovers. Its branches crossed borders to reach us through records. A wonderful invention.

I do not forget the roots. For a long time I swore only by them. Yet I admit that today I enjoy moving from one branch to another on this sprawling tree and humbly trying to create my own branch, or at least my own leaves. It is essential to my artistic approach, to find a sound that is mine.

“The blues mirrors humanity and its nature.”

You say “shadows” can be both painful and luminous. The blues has always carried that duality, right?

Yes, of course. On one side, melancholic lyrics and hypnotic rhythms. On the other, lyrics with hidden meanings, playful metaphors or references to sex, and a rhythm that calls to dance and celebration. The blues mirrors humanity and its nature, reflecting it in all its duality.

Listening to the album, it feels like each track explores a different “shadow.” Did you conceive Shadows as a series of tableaux?

I love listening to artists like Jimmy Reed, for instance, where all the tunes sound alike, same key, same tempo, yet you stay in the flow. That is true for many bluesmen.

But I prefer variation. In a day, we are not in the same mood from morning to night. At least I am not. I feel that each mood corresponds to a different music, depending on the time of day or the situation.

I did not deliberately decide to make a series of tableaux on this album, but I like the image. What matters is that the images my songs evoke are coherent with each other. I believe that is the case on this record. The colors differ, yet the touch remains the same throughout.

Your lyrics seem, perhaps more than ever, very personal. Is it a way to shed light on your own shadows?

Most of my lyrics are lived experiences and express my rages and passions. Life, love, death, that is what my songs are about. Like most songs, really. The idea I dig into on this album is open-mindedness. We live in an open world that keeps moving forward, that is a fact. Open-mindedness is in no way a cracked skull. We are all brothers and sisters, with one home, our dear planet. We would do much better to gather together, roll up our sleeves, and clean our house of the damage we have done rather than divide ourselves so absurdly over ethnicity, faith, diet, sexual orientation, social status, or whatever else. Woke, me? Yes, probably. I own it. Utopian? Undeniably.

I have always had a rebellious spirit. Those who divide, those who want control, those who exploit others or box people into neat categories, I despise them, to put it politely. All of that appears, implicitly or explicitly, in my lyrics.

To describe your music, you often use the phrase “Groove in the service of emotion.” Where does it come from?

Olivier Faure (Les Sessions Olinfact) wrote those few simple words about me to “dress” a video he recently made about my project. I felt it was quite accurate and that it sounded good, so I kept it in my bio.

In this business, we often have to write our own project bios. It is a dreadful exercise to talk about yourself in the third person. I would never have come up with that sentence on my own, simple as it is, yet it defines my music fairly well.

In the credits we see a certain Philippe Fromont, with whom you co-wrote a few tracks. Tell us about this family collaboration.

Indeed, my dad is the one who gave me a taste for the blues. He introduced me to the blues of Charley Patton, Leadbelly, Son House, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as Clapton and ZZ Top. He is the one who sparked my love for guitar and old-time banjo, which he still plays very well today. He also plays violin in country, bluegrass, and Irish folk styles.

He also taught me English and often helped me understand the lyrics of songs I wanted to sing, at a time when you could not simply look up lyrics online as we do today.

Since he is a luthier, he built me a custom guitar that became my main instrument on stage and during the recording of Shadows. Sometimes he suggests lyrics that I set to music. We already have co-written songs ready for the next album.

My passion for funk, reggae, and soul comes more from my mom, Emmanuelle Parrenin, who particularly loves dance music. We danced a lot at home when I was young.

Although she works as an artist in a musical world very different from mine, a folk-progressive and electronic register, we have regularly played and sung together since forever. I can adapt to her very specific, personal musical style, which is highly modal like the blues can be, yet with different scales inspired notably by music from Eastern European countries. Through her I also discovered island music, Buena Vista Social Club, Cesaria Evora, and more.

With these two major cultural influences as the pillars of my musical education, I built my own musical identity.

Finally, the last word. What would you like listeners to take away after traveling through these “shadows”?

When I love music intensely, the hairs on my arms stand up and a chill runs down my spine. Sometimes I even shed a few tears, not out of sadness but from emotion and a kind of liberating satisfaction. I recently rewatched the musical film West Side Story. It is so beautiful. I cried the whole way through.

That sensation never lies. When you get that shiver and a tear in your eye, you know it is the real thing. I would love for listeners to feel that when they hear my music.