NOTHING IN ISOLATION - ALEX VOYSEY

Blues guitar and orchestral guitar. As far apart as Earth and Saturn. Both have their rituals, and behaviours. Orchestral guitarists stick to the score at all times, they follow the silent but essential instructions of the conductor. Blues guitarists fly free, answering only their own spirit as it guides their hands up and down the fretboard, launching into freeform solos as and when the mood takes them. Orchestral guitarists wear dinner suits and shiny shoes. Blues guitarists wear jeans and tee-shirts and motorcycle boots or trainers. Each of them has a respect for the other, and the knowledge that the other’s word is absolutely not for them. Unless you are Alex Voysey.

WORDS: Andy Hughes PICS: Supplied

Alex grew up learning violin and viola, the second a direct result of his mother’s profession as a viola player with the Halle Orchestra. Having discovered that the electric guitar was far more to his liking, and his rapidly growing skillset, Alex changed paths, and instruments. And then he discovered Joe Bonamassa.

Anyone who has enjoyed the magical experience of watching Joe Bonamassa play guitar knows that they are in the presence of a master. In terms of technical skill, emotional input, and all-round instrumental and cerebral genius, Joe Bonamassa is in a world of his own. And Alex Voysey decided that, as a musical influence, Bonamassa was the one for him.

And as we settle down to chat about his career, Alex is still visibly buzzing from his recent personal interaction with the great man:

“That’s right, absolutely. I went to see him a few days ago, in Basingstoke, my drummer and I went around to the stage door to see if we could see him. I took a small package with a couple of albums, and a letter, in the hope that I might be able to get them to him. And he was there outside, chatting, and we did get to give him our last two albums, which was amazing. We did come away a little star-struck, and wondering if that really happened? I do hope he plays the music.”

It would be a criminal loss to Joe’s musical enjoyment if he fails to do so. But let’s go back, to Alex’s start as a guitarist: “When I was twelve, I asked for a guitar for Christmas, and my brother asked for a drum kit. I come from a musical family, I was learning viola at the time, because my mum played viola with the Halle Orchestra, so I was in the classical world already. It became very apparent very quickly that I was much more suited to playing the guitar than playing the viola. I was self-taught for the first couple of years, and then I got a great guitar teacher, a guy called Jason Browm from just outside Manchester. He spent the first six months of teaching me crushing all the bad habits out of me, and then we went on from there.

“Before finding Joe Bonamassa, I was a massive Queen fan, Brian May was a big inspiration for me growing up. I was a big admirer of Guns ‘N’ Roses, the Appetite For Destruction album got me into Slash’s playing, and then I explored his solo albums as well, and became even more of a fan of his guitar playing. So, I was listening to classic rock and heavy rock, before I found Joe Bonamassa.”

“It was I’ll Take Care Of You, from Don’t Explain, his first album with Beth Hart, and it was the playing on his middle and end solos that was just so different to what I’d listened to before. It was so emotive, and that made me stop and think, actually, that’s how I want to play. So I checked out more of his material, and not long after that he played a concert at Leeds and I went along with my dad, and I’ve just never looked back from then until now.”

Alex has managed to parlay his adoration for blues guitar into a professional career, but like all pro-musicians, his outlet for his talent, and his income stream from it, were simultaneously cut off instantly, with the advent of the Covid lockdown. But musicians are nothing if not resourceful, and Alex was able to turn the temporary hiatus into a creative opportunity, specifically the writing of his latest album Blues In Isolation. Alex remembers the time well:

“I was a Hermes van driver during lockdown. Like so many other musicians, I had to find other income sources to pay the bills. But my writing process has developed a lot, just with Blues In Isolation. I’ve always loved writing music, but I’ve never felt all that great at writing words. For the first album, Head In A Blur, I wrote the lyrics for two tracks, and the rest were collaborations with singers and lyricists in my year at Leeds College Of Music. When we came to make Blues in Isolation, I was getting home from working for Hermes, coming up to get my guitar and playing all the ideas that were starting to develop. So the music came first, and all the songs are the result of experiments I was looking into in terms of songwriting. The words all came later on, because I am very much not a lyricist. My wife (author D.D. Holland) and I got into a really good rhythm for writing, she is a published author and she is really great with words. So I would write something, she would come and have a look at it, tick some lines, put crosses on others. And sometimes there were a lot of crosses on one line, to indicate that it was really very, very wrong. So the lyrics are all mine, but they have been slashed about, and prompted into re-writing.”

“D.D also wrote the words for two tracks, You’d Better Come Back Home, and Lab Rat.”

The creative process often benefits from outside input – a fresh pair of eyes on a lyric, and ears on a melody, can be vital in making sure that different directions and moods can be explored to reach the end product. Alex is delighted to have said input from the members of his band:

“My drummer, Paul Arthurs, is a producer as well, he has produced all three albums with me. I have known him for years. When I was fifteen, we came down from Manchester to Cheltenham to be part of a local music school, called Peter Gill’s Rock Schools. Eventually I got too old to be a student, so I was asked back to teach. So, I have known Pete and Paul for my entire professional career. They were in the original line-up of what is now the band, Pete has branched out to do his own things, and Paul is still there. Pete is just everywhere, and we joke about his habit of booking himself a gig in Inverness one day, and Devon the next. As for new songs, I bring them to the guys and we play through them, and they either say Yeah, great, or we work through bits that need it. Paul might say, I don’t think that particular bit is working, so we will take it apart, and try it another way. Unless it’s something really specific, I will just give the guys lead sheets or chord charts and let them work out their own parts, because they are far more qualified to work out what is best, than I am.”

Highly unusually, for a blues guitarist as individually skilled and successful as Alex is, he enjoys a parallel career as a studio session guitarist, but more unusually, he works as a guitarist in some of the biggest orchestras in the UK, incudling The Halle, CBSO, RLPO, RTE Dublin, BBCNOW, The London Concert Orchestra, and The Manchester Camerata.

His skills are in demand to provide guitar embellishments to orchestral interpretations of James Bond themes, Abba, sublime catalogue of pure pop, and feature film screenings with live orchestral accompaniments. Such career openings don’t always happen by chance, there is an element of the connection of circumstances involved.

Alex elaborates on his dual career path:

“I actually came to that aspect of my career first. When I graduated from Leeds College Of Music, the conductor of the Halle Pops was already aware of me because he had worked with my mum in the orchestra. They were performing the Abba Symphonica by Steve Sidwell, and the conductor asked the Halle to book me as second guitarist. He knew I had just graduated, so I sat next to Adam Goldsmith who is a phenomenal London session guitarist, and I got to work with him, and learn from him, sitting in the orchestra that I had grown up going to see. That was a very surreal experience! Being on the other side of things, inside the orchestra felt really strange, but at the same time, it felt like the first step into what I really wanted to do.”

Is the next album under way yet?:

“We have just started, we have a couple of ideas we are working on. I’m writing it in the same way as Blues In Isolation, I’m writing the music first, getting some good riffs and ideas going. Not everything I come up with ends up on the album of course. You can’t produce completed songs every time, that’s not how it works. It’s not making nuts and bolts which are the same every time, it’s making music, and that’s different every time.”

Alex Voysey will be playing blues festivals through the summer, and hopefully embarking on a new tour when time permits. Attendance to see a gifted and highly individual musician, and his sterling band, is definitely recommended by the inhabitants of BM Towers. You can thank us later.