CARMEN VANDENBERG
“I’ve never been amazed by fast chops. If you can convey emotion with one note for 16 bars – like BB King – that’s what you want to do, right?”
Carmen Vandenberg makes everything appear effortless, drawling through interviews with the assurance of an old hand. But dig a little deeper and the picture emerges of a blues fanatic and sonic pioneer, who has walked a fascinating road from the ACM music college, via session work for Kate Nash, to her alt-rock outfit Bones UK. “I want to experience the world,” she tells us. “And I want to jump off stages.”
A leap of a different kind came back in 2016 when Jeff Beck asked Carmen and Bones UK singer Rosie Bones to co-write an album with him. Beck had publicly stated he didn’t want to make another “guitar nerd album”, and while this briefly seemed like a betrayal by a talisman of the scene, his manifesto made more sense once you heard the album, . Politically charged and powered by leftfield tones, it turned out Beck hadn’t ditched the guitar at all, just
