#104 The Curst Sons

AS Americana band The Curst Sons prepare to release their sixth album The Jumping Flea next Friday, vocalist Willi Kerr discusses launching their own label, exploring traditional music and cheating death.

“The Curst Sons are based in Brighton, though none of us was born here. Tim Dunkerley (slide guitar, mandolin and vocals) comes from Portsmouth, Dave Simner (banjo, lead guitar and vocals) from Wolverhampton and I’m from Mersea Island in Essex.

“Dave and I were members of Brighton band Daddy Yum Yum in the late 1970s/early 1980s and Tim was a fan. When Daddy Yum Yum disbanded we formed a couple of short lived bands together before I moved to London in about 1984.

“In 1998 I returned to Brighton and was diagnosed with an incurable cancer with a very poor prognosis. Deciding to enjoy what little time I had left I contacted the others, who had continued playing together in various bands, and we formed The Curst Sons. The doctors now say I’m cured!

“We have never played covers but we did start off by arranging various old American folk and blues songs. I had taken up writing while I was ill and had a lot of notes and scraps of short stories which became song lyrics. Slowly we started putting these together to form songs in the style we had developed arranging the traditional material. Our different personalities work well together creatively. I have most of the ideas but know almost nothing about musical structure; Tim is very quick and spontaneous while Dave is more thoughtful and methodical. Writing collectively has the huge advantage of avoiding arguments about whose songs we should perform or record. All of our songs are now self-written.

“The roots of our style are in American traditional music, but we don’t try to play in an “authentic” way. Our individual influences range from gospel to folk to rockabilly, which will affect each song. Playing without a drummer or bass player is restricting, but also stimulating. We have to find ways to create a full sound with limited instrumentation and that’s why no one else really sounds quite like us.

“We’ve played some small stages at big festivals but I guess main stage at Endorse-it-in-Dorset (now sadly no more) was our biggest individual crowd.

“We tend to have bursts of creativity. I think songwriting uses a more intuitive part of the brain, so that once we get ourselves into that mode the songs seem to start coming more quickly and easily.

“When we started out no one really knew what we were doing. Americana is pretty well known now but back then most people just thought we were playing country music badly! The only way we could release a CD was to do it ourselves and now that we’ve got that control it would be hard to let it go.

“The launch of our new CD The Jumping Flea will be at The Green Door Store, in Trafalgar Arches, Brighton on Thursday, February 11, doors 7pm, tickets £8. There will be a short acoustic session instore at Union Music, in Lansdown Place, Lewes, at 3pm on Saturday, February 13.

The London launch is at The Green Note in Camden on Saturday, February 20 and there’s a special early evening launch at The Jenny Lind, in High Street, Hastings, at 6pm on Saturday, February 27.

We love interacting with audiences in small pubs and clubs, but sometimes the more subtle songs get lost in the rough and tumble so we plan to include some more arts centre type venues where we won’t be competing with stag parties or drunks asking if we know any Brian Ferry songs! We won’t be forgetting out loyal pub audiences from the last 17 years though.”

Find out more:

www.thecurstsons.com

www.facebook.com/curstsons/