I’ve been scratching my head about what to call the style of music that JT+Agnostics play. Yeah… it’s blues, sort of, I mean we do play some 12 bar blues which most think is the blues, but we love playing non blues ballads as well, and Holly does a great version of Guilty (Randy Newman). I’m partial to a jazzy blues with way more chords (so the guitar player says) as well. An elderly (90+) friend of mine after hearing us play at a party at my home here said she loved the “jazz” we played. So the style is in the ear of the listener?
So in a state of mindlessness (which is the opposite of mindfulness [yuk] ) the term Kiwicana blues popped into what’s left of the left of my brain. Of course the connection with Americana is obvious – blues and jazz has a long history in NZ, from the beginning of the 20th C. We kiwis took to it like a duck to water, especially with the large numbers of USA soldiers posted to NZ in WW2. So I’ve never felt it to be a foreign musical form. I have been confronted by some people to enquire why I don’t play NZ music. WTF? The set is mostly original songs. Of course it probably has something to do with early imprinting with my father Alexander Alfred, who played a mean version of American Patrol every Xmas at my uncle and aunty’s farm on the piano, especially after he’d had a couple of sherries.
So Kiwicana blues it is.