Cherry Lee Mewis
She’s a 5ft-nothing-23-year-old-white girl from North Wales with ex-horse racing parents, who gets her kicks out of scratchy old vinyl, roaring vocals and battered old guitars...
Cherry Lee Mewis is the real deal. She’s added her own fresh perspective to blues 'n' roots music with her album, ‘Little Girl Blue’, a mixture of 'forgotten', obscure blues tracks, adding a raw, unplugged feel teaming up with multi-faceted guitarist Max Milligan and producer and former Argent singer, John Verity.
Both Max and John's wealth of experience work brilliantly with Cherry’s fresh approach. Resulting in a mix of warm, vintage, gut-bucket blues with rootsy sparse guitar style, covering songs by Memphis Minnnie, Robert Johnson and Jeff Buckley, these 20's blues numbers have still been left in their original, impassioned state, at the same time leaving Cherry's fingerprints on them.
Cherry served her apprenticeship endlessly gigging in clubs and bars developing not only her powerful soulful voice, but her performance and style too.
"The concept of expressing myself creatively from the age of 9 was something I was always intrigued and inspired to do..."
She spent her time at that age balancing a promising career in horse-riding with music. Competing in horse shows on weekends, and singing in various shows in the time in-between. Cherry would also listen and tape chart shows, citing early inspiration from Eternal, Bjork and Alanis Morissette.
"Where as my mum would love motown and retro soul records, my dad would be more into the rock 'n' roll and the psychedelic, really obscure 60's stuff. He introduced me to Jeff Buckley, Edith Piaf and Janis Joplin."
It wasn't until later on, that Cherry became immersed into blues and jazz.
On Little Girl Blue she showcases her range of different influences, singing with raw power and emotion, hurt and pain.
"Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, no censored versions! I put my whole self into every single one of these tracks, I feel like i'm inside of them...."
Like most great blues performers, Cherry is best experienced live! As well as performing all over the UK, she and her band have just returned back from the Tropea Blues Festival in Italy, fresh from performing tracks from Little Girl Blue.
The great hobo bluesman himself, Seasick Steve says, "The only people who are going to keep the blues alive and kicking are the kids picking it up, these young bands out there - they got all the future." Cherry feels she's doing her bit to keep blues music well and truly alive and kicking.
"I put as much into the arrangement of a song as I do into the writing of one..." concludes Cherry, "This is music that I love. I hope my angle on it makes people that bit more interested."
Her song-writing and fearlessness as a lyric writer is also showcased on track, Ugly Night.
"Ugly Night is a track I wrote very quickly, for a change! I came up with the melody on my guitar, played it to Max and he added his thing and I wrote the lyrics. It sounds great with Jeff Dakin's blues harp on it too… "
Little Girl Blue shows Cherry at her tear-jerking torch / pure blues / jazz smoothie / soulful ripping best.