The SpikedriverS Website

We are home again after burning up the miles in France and the UK. Our van Spike even got to go to Jersey on the ferry. Its been quite a summer so far and looks to continue with a trip to Spain and two to France. The new album will be on sale in September, and everyone on our email list will made an offer they cant refuse in August so make sure you are signed up.

We are very excited to be returning to the Ealing Blues ‘n’ Roots Festival on July the 24 th. This is a really great London event with loads of excellent bands including

Tim Aves & Wolfpack, Ben Waters, Storm Warning, Sonny Black,
and Robert Hokum Band and the food stalls are amazing!

The French & Spanish tour was a lot of fun, performing to lots of people in many wonderful places. If you are interested we have a Flicker site with some photos of the trip.
www.flickr.com/photos/spikedrivers

…. and finally just to let you know about some new concert footage. Our show at the Campaneac Blues Festival in Brittany in March was captured on video by a talented group of film students. You can have a look by visiting this link on their website: http://kertoonstudio.fr/index.php?option=com_vidomino&task=list_videos&cat_id=206

One of the great things about being a travelling band is finding ourselves in places we would otherwise never be. Last week we found ourselves in two very special and quite different ones.

It started on Wednesday when we were in the rehearsal studio minding our own business and the phone rang. The RAF swing band, the Squadronaires, was double booked and could we fill in for them at the Bomber Command Memorial Banquet hosted by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight?.

So on Friday night there we were in the depths of Lincolnshire countryside, standing in the sunshine on the lawn of the hotel where the Dambusters used to hang out, champagne glasses in hand, surrounded by people in black tie and evening dress, watching the last flying WWII Lancaster bomber roar over the hotel at about 100 feet. An incredible and for us, a somewhat surreal sight. Not your usual blues gig by a long way.

However, once the meal and the speeches were over it was our turn. We had been told that we should play quietly as the audience was “quite old”. Wrong! While some of them may have piled up a few birthdays they were a long way from being dead. By the time we got half way through our set we had a full dance floor and were cranking it out exactly the way we would at any blues club. You just can’t judge by appearances. Take off the evening dress, replace it with a Buddy Guy T-shirt and you feel right at home.

Saturday was the boats. This was the Severn Sailing club which is actually on the river Avon. The Avon Sailing Club being, of course, on the Severn. (Don’t ask it’s too complicated.) We’ve played here before and it was great being back. It’s a small club way off the beaten path in an amazingly beautiful setting. The evening light over the river made the real world seem a long way away.

The club’s gigs always involve a pig roast with the members bringing salads and strawberries. We were told an unrepeatable story involving several club members, a large quantity of beer, a long pole and a pig but that was the night before so we can’t comment. It certainly didn’t spoil the taste.

Once again it was a wonderful evening and ended with us sitting round a bonfire in John & Pat’s (the organisers) garden with a few friends and several bottles.

We were only away for two nights but it felt like we had been on holiday. One of those times that remind us how lucky we are to be doing what we do.

Award winning Live At High Barn
voted number 7 in the list of readers 50 top albums of 2008!!!

Our sincerest gratitude goes out to all of you who voted for us.
Thankyou so much. This really means a lot to us.

As well as receiving honourable mention in the Blues in Britain list of top albums of 2008, we also were the subject of the monthly competition.

The question: Constance Redgrave was sacked from a band,
apparently for smiling too much: what was the name of that band?

Well done to the winners: CJ Mitchell in Boundstone, Geoffrey Osborne in Bedminster Down, and Merv Osborne in Portishead.

Also, please do check out our new Video links page. A big thanx to our webmaster and friend Tim Callaway. He makes so much possible.

Coupling unique instrumentation with exceptional musicianship and alternative reworkings of over familiar classics with fresh original songwriting has seen the Spikedrivers outshine many a headliner at a British Blues festival-and made them a live drawer across the country.

Ben Tyzack (guitar/vocals/harmonica), Constance Redgrave (bass/vocals/percussion), and Maurice McElroy (drums/vocals/percussion) draw upon all their years of experience to offer one of the more compelling live experiences offered by any British Blues act. Despite their veteran status and constant touring, the Spikedrivers continue to challenge themselves-and the their audience!

It was inevitable there would be a demand for a live collection, and finally, after a number of false starts, the band were able to offer a memento to their many adoring fans. In 2008, with Live At High Barn-at the same time, offering an incentive to those who really should get up out of their armchair more often…

Ben: The original band was formed in March 1992 with myself, a percussionist called Chang and a double bass player called Mark Harding. That went on for a few years, different players came and went, and then I met these guys.

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.

It has been quite a while now since we had our first mention in the pages of Blues in Britain, or Blueprint as it was then. There's been a lot happening.

A couple of months ago we played the Blues to Bop festival in Lugano and we were sitting in a restaurant the day after the first show talking about how different it was from our first few gigs together. Ben mentioned the fact that he'd been playing with Constance and me for longer than he'd played with any other musicians. We thought about it for a bit and realised that it was the same for all of us. The eight and a half years we’ve been together was the longest any of us had ever been in one band. Yet it doesn’t feel anything like that long. We’re still trying to do better shows, write better songs, make better albums and looking to the future.

It's a fact. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

Ben was born in London. He was brought up in America, first in Iowa and then Charleston, South Carolina. He formed Spikedrivers in 1992 when he moved back to the UK.

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 very successful albums Delta Roots; Blue Trash, Ain't It Real and the just released Live at High Barn. Each album is different and 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 performance at the 2007 Shrewsbury Folk Festival or the Crawley Blues Club on YouTube.

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, whom 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.'

You can catch the Spikedrivers on tour with the Ben Waters Big Band throughout December and again in February 2009.

This week Maurice celebrated his forever-fiftieth birthday and to celebrate we went to the Hawk Conservancy Trust down near Andover for a magic evening of owls by flashlight and silent wings flying through the woodland night. It was wonderful. A real treat for anyone who loves theses amazing birds.
Happy birthday Maurice.

Bright sunshine, a gorgeous blue lake, and six days of playing with some extraordinary musicians. As some of you know, over the last two years, Ben, Maurice and I (constance) have been exploring and attempting to incorporate the sounds of Gospel music. When we were invited to Lugano and discovered that the legendary Dixie Hummingbirds would be there as well, we were overjoyed! To have then been given the chance of playing and singing with them was an honour we will long cherish.

Last weekend was absolutely wonderful fun. Cromer is the best place I know of for Lavender Ice Cream and watching the tractors on the beach. Yes.. Still obsessing about tractors. I will be posting reviews, live photos and such about it as they come in. Till then, here are a few of Maurices prize photos from the weekend.

Our travels take to some surprising and wonderful places. In our continued efforts to share the joys of life on the road, I must tell you about our weekend in Essex. Such a surprising and beautiful place. Manningtree and Maldon. Both excellent shows and great fun. The countryside is lovely and the sun was shinning. With a few hours off, it was a perfect time to delve into our extensive collection of travel brochures from motorway services. You didn't think anyone actually read them did you.

Tacky and bizarre dosn't really do it justice. This roadside attraction must have seen better days. A woodland walk through legions of sadly negelcted gnomage. Surprisingly we had the place to ourselves. The mystery of the missing fishing rod vandalism just added to the strangeness. Still, we loved it and Maurice seemed perfectly at home.

Best of Thursday Blues Compilation CD
We are proud to announce that one of our favourite blues venues, Third Thursday Blues at The South Street Centre in Reading, has just released the Best of Thursday Blues. It's a compilation of the clubs favourite artists from its first two years. Along with Spikedrivers, there are tracks from Michael Messer, JC and Angelina, Rag MaMa Rag, Honeyboy Hickling and lots more. If you would like a copy for yourselves, you can email wilkinandy@yahoo.co.uk and they will happily separate you from £7 + £1.50 p&p. It a great CD and you will be supporting the club and live Blues in the UK.

Hot on the heels of this fabulous weekend in Shrewsbury, we spent a week in the Channel Islands. This meant Gatwick Airport at first light and the joys of excess baggage. We do try to travel light but it's that extra pair of drum sticks that gets us every time.

The tour started on Jersey, meeting up with proud new grandparents, Thelma and Bob Tilling. We then did four islands in four days with four workshops and four concerts! Our heads were spinning by the end of it, but that's ok because we finished up in a wonderful place called Sark. This is a two mile wide rock where the tractor people live and we seemed to fit right in.

In between, we island hopped to Alderney and Guernsey on these amazing little planes called Trislanders. They only have two seats across and huge windows. We just couldn't get used to the absence of a co-pilot. Still, Maurice was ready to jump in at a moments notice .

Every island, every workshop and every concert was completely different. The workshops were all brilliant and wonderful fun. You can see some blurry shots of the kids from all the islands on our workshops page.
This one is from Guernsey.

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The Spikedrivers
A London-based transatlantic trio taking a different route to the blues, explains Dave Peabody.

It's hard to pin a badge on the Spikedrivers. Just when you think you've got them buttonholed they turn a musical corner, shifting pitch slightly, just to keep you on you toes. Guitarist, vocalist, songwriter Ben Tyzack (American mother, British dad) got the notion to form a group around 1991. "I'd played in lots of bands and having moved back over to England [got] a bit frustrated because here you join lots of bands, practice for ages, and never do any gigs. I had a few experiences of that...it was more sort of rock stuff and I'd always been interested in the rootsy blues stuff, so that's when it dawned on me if I started a band myself, and tried to push the signing a bit forward, then I'd always have that and if other members came and went I could kind of build on it."

Indeed, over the years many members did come and go, until Irish-born drummer (and percussionist) Maurice McElroy and Californian bassist (and percussionist) Constance Redgrave took root to stay and form the current innovative, creative and versatile Spikedrivers line-up with Ben. Constance positively bubbles as she comments; "It's been six years now and I still feel like we are on honeymoon. I've never been anywhere that felt musically so comfortable and yet so much fun. I seem to have more scope finding out where I can go here than I've ever had anywhere else. I write more, I sing more, I take chances, I play, and I don't care if I make mistakes. The mistakes are where the really fun stuff happens and those are the surprises. I don't have to worry about these guys. If I screw up they are not going to fall apart. We sort of hold each other and we all take turns just doing what we do and it's always fun to find out what happens next."

Maurice is quick to echo Constance; "I'm doing more in this band than I've ever done in any other band. I never used to sing at all until I joined this band. All of the percussion - that comes in because you can. It enables me to play with all of the elements of what I've learned over the years. In most other blues bands the chances of picking up a pair of brushes, for example, I mean, forget it. Here I can do it and I can bring in the weird stuff line the Udu drum and the Cajon and nobody thinks you are mad. Ben just does 'Oh, that's an interesting sound' and then a little while later we end up with a song that suits it. Being on stage with the two guys is about as good as it can get. I just feel like all the time it keeps changing and like Ben says, "it's growing all the time and there doesn't seem to be any limits on it."

Constance has a theory; "If it's blues... it's blues and it doesn't really matter what you bring to it if this is the format; I think that's why we can be so wide-ranging and have so much variety. We have a very wide view of what it is. I think my songs are blues... and maybe they are contemporary blues, I don't know. My history is very wide-ranging; I went from growing up with the Grand Ole Opry and listening to C&W, through a whole period of doing Gothic music... and I'm a prog/rock kid from the West Coast. So, you've got all of these influences coming into this, and now what's on in the background in my house is chill-out compilations. So those rhythms and those sounds become part of what you're writing and they come out in it."

"I don't think I ever envisioned a final 'this is what I wanted it to sound like', says Ben. 'It was more about playing the music, doing a bit of writing and kind of keeping the early roots of blues in there, but bring in lots of other influences. We all write. I'm obviously the main writer in the band but I think there's every combination. Sometimes I'll bring a song in and it's pretty much complete but needs a really good arrangement. Sometimes it's almost arranged. Other times it can be constructed right from the word go, but usually lyrics and melodies are sort of there."

'Again", chips in Maurice, "this is one of the elements of this band that is actually so much fun; getting the arrangements, of actually finding a way of saying what is it that will absolutely make this song complete, without any extraneous stuff tacked onto it."

They have produced three albums together: Delta Roots (2001), Blue Trash (2003) and their latest, Ain't It Real (2005), with all three band members, contributing songs and ideas that are sparked by many influences. Maurice; "Ben's father’s an artist, a painter, and we as a band when we're traveling get a lot of inspiration from visiting places like the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. If there's and exhibition on in a town that we have enough time to see - we'll go and see it. We look at that stuff all the time and that feeds in. When you're talking about creativity it's not all the one thing. A sound can inspire a painting the same way that a painting can inspire a song. In particular, when we were doing the last album, Ben was bringing in these bits and pieces. Some were already songs. Some later became songs. I got this impression that some of the work that he was doing was like painting but using sound. It was like a different way of looking at it."

The last three Spikedrivers albums are now available as complete digital downloads with artwork.

There is also a free Spikedrivers screen saver available from our website. This includes a selection of photos. The file is 2.2 Mb in size, on an average dial-up connection it will take about 5 minutes to download. Once downloaded, double click on the file and follow the instructions to install the screensaver.

Many thanks to Andrew Cronshaw, Dave Montier, Paul Martin, Sam Hare and Katie Dahlstrom for the photographs in the Spikesaver.

News - Summer 2010

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