All About Manchester

Rising stars

Manchester has produced some great bands down the years. From The Smiths to Oasis and from The Stone Roses to Elbow, the city is synonymous with ground-breaking music. Now, as they release their first album, five-piece blues and soul outfit Beggar Joe are aiming for a space on that great band pedestal and, word on the street is, they might just make it. Lee Stansfield meets the hotly-tipped band before a gig in Chorlton.

Beggar Joe started out five years ago, when Jon Kenzie (vocalist & guitarist), Justin Shearn (keyboardist), Andy Brown (bassist) and Chris Butler (drummer) found a musical harmony of sorts with each-other, while they were studying music at the University of Salford. Three years later they added an extra component through worldly travelled percussionist Rome Mosabbir and were ready to begin the difficult trudge up the music ladder.

Now mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, the fivesome have amassed a good legion of fans from their treks through Manchester's club and bar scene, and from their traffic-stopping busking days early on in their career. A quick search on YouTube for the 'Street Soul Guys' will bring up videos shot by onlookers during their days playing the street corners. "Yeah we used to busk loads," recalls Kenzie with a smirk.

Their big break came when music sales and distribution guru Chet Mehmet discovered them at one of their London gigs. He was so impressed that he convinced record producer Al Stone, who has worked with Joss Stone, Bob Dylan, Bjork, Jamiroquai and an awful lot more music stars, to travel with him up to Manchester to see Beggar Joe play live again.

Stone was instantly hooked. He and Mehmet set up a new record label, C.A.T. Records, and made Beggar Joe their first signing.

Through that new label, the quintet have just released their self-titled first album, and although you wouldn't blame them for feeling a twinge of anxiety, they all look surprisingly composed. "There's not so much pressure, but confidence really," says Brown, and Kenzie agrees: "I'm sure it crossed all our minds at some point that Al Stone was going to be working with little old us. But at the end of the day he's really good at what he does, and we just went into the studio and did our thing and it all worked out."

Their 'thing' is described in their PR spiel as 'modern-day blues and soul', but it's not as straight forward as that. There's also jazz, folk and rock in Beggar Joe's music, which makes it very tricky to pigeonhole. "The album is quite diverse in the styles and genres we take on," says Kenzie. "It'll be interesting to see how it'll be categorised."

Prompted to talk a bit more about the album, the band's frontman points out a couple of tracks to look out for: "We've got a double A-side single, which is a tune called Ain't No Way, and a tune called Sleeping City - they'll be the ones that we will be promoting for the radio."

Although Kenzie does most of the talking, you get the feeling that the band works very democratically, with no big egos to cause friction. Having been together for a few years now - wading through countless sweat-filled Manchester clubs, selling their music on the street, travelling to far-off shores such as China to play in front of 15,000 strong crowds - the group have inevitably developed a strong bond.

"It's probably the best band we've been in, in terms of how we get on," explains Brown. "There's not too much grief."

"We're all suitably cooking in the pot," adds Mosabbir with a smirk, and then recalls a trip they have recently taken together. "We spent six weeks in the South of France recording the album, to get us away from commitments and distractions so we could focus. That was a big test for us, actually."

Kenzie agrees. "We didn't kill each-other when we stayed in this house together in the middle of nowhere in France."

This fond familiarity with each-other is also evident in Beggar Joe's music. "I think that musically together as a band we know each-other so well - we know each-other's way of playing and stage presence," offers Kenzie. "The way we react together on stage is very natural now because we've been doing it for so long."

Upon being asked what heights of stardom this album will propel them to in the future, the band remain quite modest. "It would be nice if we steadily gained more success over the next five years," says Kenzie. "It would be nice in five years' time if we'd done another four albums and they'd been reasonably successful, at least to give us a living."

As Beggar Joe are still very much striving to make it into the big time, they all still have jobs outside of the gigs; jobs nevertheless that revolve around music. Apart from lead singer Kenzie, all the members of the band teach music in and around Manchester, specializing in their respective instruments.

"That's the hard part," admits Kenzie. "When we are gigging out and about, we are constantly juggling it with making a living and keeping afloat."

On this night, they are playing at Oddest in Chorlton (the triplet bar of Odd and Odder) as the headline act, yet they are not getting paid for it. The gig is to raise money for Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, a charity that provides music therapy to people with disabilities, and Beggar Joe are playing for free. And when we are told how much money does get put in their pocket for paid gigs, it's easy to understand why they have to maintain those other jobs as well.

"There are a lot of promoters who will put on a night and even if you get about 50 people down you're talking about 20 quid for the band," says Kenzie. That's £4 each for anyone without a calculator, but he doesn't look too bothered about it. "There's no money to be made in it, but in terms of getting an opportunity to go out there and play and have a good time, it's great," he adds.

His bandmates share Kenzie's attitude. "The thing about Manchester which is great is there are loads of small venues so you're always kind of guaranteed a bit of a crowd," says Brown.

And so the night begins. The band stay outside for a while, shivering stubbornly against the cold with their cigarettes until they need to go inside. As the acts commence, Oddest begins to fill with people. Being a small bar, it isn't long before we are forced to stand, huddled like penguins, our attention drawn towards the small alcove where Beggar Joe are about to come on stage. A small cheer and a few whistles greet them before the lingering hush, as fingers are placed on instruments. The music begins to flow in an inspired infusion of blues, folk rock and soul, made even more special by Kenzie's smoky voice, which will stay with the audience for a very long time.

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