KBPS Interview: Georgia van Etten

Georgia van Etten is a soul and blues songstress based in London with a rich, creative voice and a badass vocal trumpet. She has wowed audiences globally from major stages in her homeland Australia, to Ronnie Scott’s and famous European festivals like Montreux Jazz (Switzerland) and Porretta Soul (Italy). We got a chance to speak to her as she releases her debut single ‘Take My Hand’ and was preparing for her first Sofar Sounds event that night!

You have your first Sofar Sounds gig this evening. Are you looking forward to it?

I am! I got the call yesterday that I was doing it so it’s very terrifying to only have one day, but I’m ecstatic as it’s something I’ve wanted to do all this year! I didn’t think it would happen, but it is!

How would you describe your live sound?

It’s very much blues, but it has a lot of influence in soul music and jazz but it’s more like the rocky kind of soul!

Your new single is ‘Take My Hand’. How would you describe it?

This track is more like a blue ballad; it has more of a classic Bonnie Raitt-style country-ballad feel. It’s less heavy than a lot of my other music. It’s very much like a bitter-sweet kind of love song, and with my ten piece band it kinds of has this big “boom” when the band kicks in after about thirty seconds.

What was it like performing with the band?

It’s incredible! The guys and gals in the band are invincible musicians and sometimes when playing with them I get scared because they are so good. But it’s amazing hearing your original music coming alive with a ten-piece band, it’s an amazing thing to hear what’s in your head being translated by so many instruments.

The single is taken from your ‘Live at the Pool Studio’ EP; what was the recording like?

It was a bit of a nightmare! Trying to co-ordinate a ten-piece band is pretty full on, and even finding studios that we’d all fit in was pretty full on! But it was an incredible experience. We got Mark Fewell on board who directed the whole thing [and] it was amazing. We had a jimmy jib, a giant camera in there and we had all sorts of equipment in there. It was a big production and very exciting for me to do it.

So as well as the music it was all filmed?

Yes! It’s available on YouTube. ‘Take My Hand’ is up and ‘Sugar’ will come out in a few weeks and I’m really happy with the production – it looks really great and I’m very pleased.

The EP was launched recently at a special event. How did that go?

It was gorgeous! We launched [the EP] in this tiny little bar on Broadway called Kansas Smitty. It was an intimate launch with friends and a lot of people who are fans of my music, so it went really well!

You are now based in London but how does it compare to Australia in terms of your music?

Let’s just say I had to leave to establish my career. Australia is great if you’re in that indie-rock scene or you do electro music, but for my kind of music, blues and soul, there’s a very small scene and I think in London more people work in the industry and more people listen to soul music, so for my genre I’m really grateful that I can live here and can do the music I love, and it really has a great following here.

Further to this single what are your plans?

The aim of getting this EP out is so that I can get a booking agent and do these bigger festivals. There are wonderful blues festivals all around the world that I definitely want to be on, and also so I can hopefully be in contact with a label or management; getting an album out next year would be amazing! That’s the dream.

You’re also active on social media and posted on your Twitter about the launch of the WORLD'S 1ST CARBON FIBER FLUGELHORN LAUNCH. Did you attend?

I did! My husband is one of the top trumpet players in the UK and he’s been involved with a company who have launched the world’s first carbon fiber flugelhorn. It’s really strange to think of a trumpet not being made of brass but it has an incredible sound and is really lightweight. You’ve got to hear it to believe it!

Do you play it yourself?

No, [but] I would love to play the trumpet. I play the mouth trumpet (!) but I’d love to play the real deal. It helps having a trumpet playing husband if I ever wanted to learn!

Finally, what are your ambitions for the rest of the year?

One of my big dreams is to go and play on the Jools Holland show as I think [for] the kind of music I play, that’s such an amazing platform. I’d love to see myself doing some bigger European festivals [too]. Those are my big aims right now, that I hopefully can achieve, fingers crossed!

Click here to find out more about Georgia on Facebook and listen to this interview and the song on BCB 106.6FM (bcbradio.co.uk) 6pm on Saturday 5th August 2017.