19 years old, playing blues in bars from a younger age, played the first Planet Rock Roadstars tour along with Simo and Federal Charm, has played Ramblin Man Fair, sat in with Blackberry Smoke and his debut album “Cut Against The Grain” was released on Mascot Label Group in January…
Young hotshot guitarist and singer Aaron Keylock has the gig that most teenagers playing rock can only dream of. We met up with Aaron just before his first London headline show at The Black Heart in Camden for a quick chat…
Your debut album “Cut Against The Grain” has been out for a couple of months now, what’s the album all about to you?
“It’s a collection of songs that I’ve put together over like 9 years or something. I was sat on it for a while between recording in LA and release so it’s good for it to finally be out there. It’s the type of album that I was lucky enough to have that amount of time to spend on it and get right with great musicians playing on it and the legend Fabrizio Grossi producing. It was fun writing it, playing it, recording it and I hope people enjoy it.”
On that note, what do you want people to get out of the album for themselves?
“For me I didn’t think there was an overall vibe until it was done so when I looked at the songs I realised it’s about doing what you want to do and being who you want to be. You know, being that one 70’s obsessed kid from Witney in Oxford, playing classic rock and roll music so I was going against the grain then to what all the other people in my school were doing. A lot of the songs were wrote when I was coming to end of school, I’d be writing songs more than I was revising!”
How did that go down with your family and teachers as you were playing more guitar than studying?
“I started playing when I was 8, loved it so much and realised in secondary school that this is what I wanted to do full time so I did pretty much give up on school. It didn’t go down as well as it could of done, the Careers Officer in school thought I was mental, but it’s working out. It wasn’t an easy get out of school by any means as I really have to throw everything I have at it. It really is something that I dedicate myself to and had in my head that it was going to happen. Between the ages of 13 and 15 I played 350 shows and since then it’s grown with playing the Roadstars tour and festival dates.”
It’s been a bit of time since the album release and you playing this headline show…
“I played here at The Black Heart before when we had my signing party a couple of years ago so it’s great to come back with Jordan and Sonny (at this point we are joined by the Jordan and Sonny who are visibly excited and enthusiastic about the show that evening) and play together. It was amazing being out on the road with Roadstars and we learnt a lot about playing with each other and grew tighter together as a result as it was the first proper run we had had instead of gigs here and there. We’ve got mainly festivals lined up now with the Wychwood Festival and it’s Ramblin Man Fair again that we’re really excited about. There’s talk of some tours in between and later so we’ll see on that. Maybe Download in the future, who knows?”
So, why should people buy your album?
“You know what, I’ve never thought about it! To be honest, when you make music, when you truly mean it, you don’t do it to try to sell it to anybody, it’s just real music. I made the record for myself, in my head it was like if I like the music and I can listen to it at home that’s good enough for me. Hopefully that comes across on the record. Music for me has always been an outlet for how I’m feeling, thinking, what I see going on around me and an expression in general. Buy it, turn it up and come and see us play sometime!”
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