For lovers of 90s culture it’s more than fair to say that the Brand New Heavies provided a significant part of its early soundtrack with great original hits like Never Stop, Dream on Dreamer and a fabulous version of Midnight at the Oasis which rivalled the original by Maria Muldaur. With over 10 studio albums to their credit including the eponymous first album and the platinum selling Brother Sister, they have had an impressively creative career spanning 35 years.
The line-up has changed a bit over the time, and the departure of N’Dea Davenport was lamented, but the founding core of drummer-bassist Andrew Levy and guitarist Simon Bartholomew has stayed the same. They are embarking on a UK tour and will be playing at Oxford’s New Theatre with their longest serving singer Angela Ricci, belting out the lyrics to their disco bangers and funktastic favourites, whilst trying out just a couple of new songs from a soon-to-be-released twelfth album.
It was with great interest that I found myself chatting on a cold and rainy February morning with the engaging, erudite and charmingly self-effacing Andrew Levy…
I loved your version of Midnight at the Oasis, it’s a bold and unusual song to cover, can I ask why you chose it and does it still have a special place in your heart?
Yes, it does. We got asked to do a cover song by our record company because everything we’d recorded for Brother Sister was original, and they thought it might need something surefire to get onto the playlist for radio. I had this old cassette from a DJ who’d also been in the band called Lascelles Gordon. He put together amazing playlists and made us a mix tape. That track was on it. I just loved it so much – the key changes and the hippie vibe – it fitted into where we were. So I thought ‘let’s do a funky version of it’. We went to the studio and came up with this new groove, and the record company loved it.
I’m guessing it feeds into that whole rare groove heritage which is probably really your vibe and major influence isn't it?
Yeah, we were obsessed with rare groove, which was basically early 70s funk from America. It had a massive influence on us, James Brown and all those all those guys making that type of music. So that was our era, but they called what we did acid jazz, which was useful for press because people could get their heads around what we were doing. It helped tap into that sort of new audience that was coming from acid house music of the time.
Everybody in those days was looking for something different and underground that came from rave culture, weren’t they?
Exactly. Those were great days. There were different scenes, but it was cool because you had your little niche, either goth or soul or funk, house or acid house. Everything was much more defined and separated, and jumping between or in and out of those different genres and social groups was a lot of fun. It gave you inspiration which helped you create something specifically original to you as well.
Where did you grow up?
Ealing – we still have the house my parents bought in 1962 where I grew up! Then I went to art college in North London, and I stayed in North London until 2006 when I moved to Chicago. But yeah, I'm an early West London boy. I'm back in Richmond now.
The Brand New Heavies have been through a few lineups, but what’s always the core is you and Simon, isn't it? So tell me about how your partnership and collaboration works?
Simon and I went to school together, with Jan [Kincaid the other original member] as well. So we’ve known each other since we were 11 years old. Simon and I get on very well, we’re like brothers in a way. We both went on to the same art school – we know each other inside out and we know for the greater good of the band, we need to get on. We still book 50 shows a year all over the world so that long relationship has been tried and tested, and that's probably why we're still together.
Did you guys share musical influences?
Simon was a rocker. He was obsessed with Jimi Hendrix. I don't think I'd even heard rock before I met him. I used to go over to his house, and he’d play Electric Ladyland and all these weird psychedelic albums. I introduced him to jazz, funk, and soul.
I grew up with Jamaican parents. They used to have lots of parties. Every six months or so they had a big party, and my mum would bring out massive pots with curry goat and rice. The furniture was shoved off into the bedroom, and someone had a sound system playing reggae, always reggae. I’d sit in these bass bins and absorb the bass and rhythm. It really became part of me: that's probably why I found it so easy to play the bass and drums from all that reggae. But I had an uncle – Uncle Jerry – who was a bit more edgy and he used to play soul, which was something new to me. I remember hearing James Brown for the first time from him. I guess for a lot of West Indian homes, music was massive big deal. Music and food.
Perhaps it was because they were attempting to recreate their own community in a place they were displaced to?
I think it was just that. And because it was easy to put a record on and cook some rice and peas – you don't have to get a bank loan to do that. There’s nothing more comforting than food and music, I think, in life.
These days though I listen to a lot of classical music, like Bach. It’s very rhythmic, very syncopated and I love country music, because if you're writing songs, they are very marked out with the structure in terms of verse, chorus and bridge.
So with your tour, are you going to play a classic set for your heritage fans or include a couple of new tracks from your forthcoming album?
We're going do something slightly different. We don’t want to annoy the heritage fans, but we want to raise eyebrows a little bit too, so maybe a bit of a Prince-y vibe, a little bit of rock, distorted blues guitar with our traditional disco bangers and stuff like that. There might be one or two new songs we're going to be playing during the set but not too many that it will annoy our fans who are coming to hear the heritage stuff. But we've got to be aware that we can't just keep repeating: we also have to do something fresh and new just to freak people out.
There was a great synchronicity the 90s with the N’Dea Davenport lineup, but tell me more about working with Angela Ricci…
Angela has been with us since 2019 – the longest of any singer. So we must be treating her well. She just connects with me and Simon, and she really knows how to engage a crowd. She’s slotted right in. Also our shows, we don't over-rehearse; our show is always changing. I think that's why we're still being booked, because the audience can see we’re still evolving, we're thinking about what we're doing and we love every second.
The Brand New Heavies 35th Anniversary Tour with special guests Galliano will be at the Oxford New Theatre on 23 March. For tickets and further information visit the-brand-new-heavies.com.
