Brother Strut, a new funk-soul band whose line-up has collectively performed on records that have
sold over half-a-billion copies, have released their debut album ‘First Strut Is The Deepest’ on Brother
Strut Records.
The band was formed in 2012 by producer & sax player Stevie Jones, after previously been pitching
pop songs to satisfy A&R men, who he felt were just churning out the same old stuff. This, Jones soon
learnt, was not the route to happiness and decided to abandon all other music production projects
and work on something that was driven solely by his love of funk, blues and, in particular, American
soul music of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. With this basic concept in his head, Jones set out to find some of
the best, and certainly the funkiest players in the world to make an album - and he succeeded
spectacularly, recruiting Steve Pearce (bass), Frankie Tontoh (drums), Otha Smith (electric guitar),
Melvin Duffy (electric guitar/pedal steel) and Andrew Murray (piano).
Not only has this line-up played on numerous hit singles and albums, they’ve also worked for the
likes of Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Madonna, Elton John, Sting, George Micheal,
Robbie Williams, Al Green, Level 42, Amy Winehouse, George Michael and Don Blackman. The
Temptations, Phil Collins, The Supremes, Ramsey Lewis, Detroit Spinners, Tina Turner, Robbie
Williams, Jools Holland, UB40, Elkie Brooks, Chris Difford, KT Tunstall, The Waterboys, Joe Cocker,
Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Leona Lewis and Natasha Bedingfield. Between them, these artists
have sold somewhere approaching one billion records - and the members of Brothers Strut have
collectively played on over half of these.
Jones purposely didn’t want to use only one vocalist on the album, as he explains, “The idea was that
the musicians were the main focus, so I could chop and change the vocalists from album to album.”
As a result, ‘First Strut Is The Deepest’ features five emerging talents on vocals; Megan Henwood
(BBC2 award-winning artist), John James Newman, Ben Lee (vocalist/guitarist with Joe Brown), Mike
Davies (guitarist/singer for Eliza Doolittle and Jessie J) and Sam Tanner.