Interview by Mark Lacey
Photo: Jim Heal
As bromances go, you’d be hard pushed to find two more kindred spirits than Dom Martin and Blue Nation’s Neil Murdoch. Having met some years ago by chance at a festival, their friendship and camaraderie is undeniable; built on mutual admiration for their respective musical talents and cemented by the unique combination of Belfast and Birmingham humour. With both having won awards for their rising status in the blues genre, their debut tour together last year set the foundations for a welcome re-union in 2025.
MGM: Whenever people talk about the pair of you, you’re both described as firmly rooted in the blues genre, although you’re coming from slightly different angles. How do you feel about the blues label and where do you see your parts in it?
Dom: The blues have always been such a big part of my life, just for the feeling of it alone. It’s a great place to start playing guitar because it doesn’t have to be overly difficult, and even the mistakes and the fluffs make the song a bit more authentic in a way. I could identify with it straight away. It was like, I haven’t got anything and you’re taking that, too. That mentality was very prevalent where I came from. I wouldn’t really say I’m a blues artist, per se. I’m too experimental to be stuck in one place, although I wish I could just play blues and just be a traditional blues artist. It’d be a lot easier to try and pull off some of the songs that I’ve written over the years. But I think, especially in the UK, the blues community are very open-armed and welcoming to all sorts of different music, not just blues. That blues community is lovely. I owe a lot to blues music and the blues players of the past. I always tip my hat to them as many times as I can, especially Rory Gallagher and Peter Green; guys like that, that teach us that twelve bar blues, it doesn’t have to be this twelve bar chord progression. It can be whatever you want it to be. You can add a little colour into it. Blues is such a great starting point to go off and do other things.
Neil: I’d echo that. I think we don’t really sit solely in blues. Someone once said we’re too blues for rock and too rock for blues. We sit in this no man’s land, which I really like. But I agree with what Dom said about the community. It was the first community that really took us in. People like Dom, and Lawrence Jones, and Chantel McGregor; they took us out on tour and took a chance on these three lads from Birmingham. It is the first community to actually open doors for us and help us get to that next level. Everyone’s always really nice. I’m waiting for someone to be horrible to me, to be honest.
MGM: Part of the reason you have that blues label is because the UK Blues Awards have recognised you both at different times. You’re slightly later to the party, Dom, but your career has taken off. And Neil, you’re still winning awards for being an emerging talent after 10 years. I wonder how long it is before you get to become established talent.
Neil: I think it’s 42 years that we need to do. Luke (Weston) said that when we accepted the award. He goes; this is the longest time we’ve emerged ever. All my friends were messaging me going, “you’ve been doing this for 15 years. How are you only just emerging?” I was like, I’ve been a late bloomer. But it’s good. The best thing I love is when someone comes up to you after a show when you’re supporting someone or if you’re playing a festival, and they’ll say, “I had no idea who you were”. I love that because that means they felt confident enough to come up and say that to you. But they always follow it up with, “We’re going to come to another show”. And that’s what keeps the momentum. Playing music is the best thing on Earth. I hate it when people are like, oh, I hate playing music. I’m like, no, it’s class. You get to play your own music, and I get to hang out with Dom for a full month and annoy him. It’s going to be great for me.
MGM: It’s actually quite unusual to speak to two different artists in the same interview. Some bands go off and tour with each other, and by the end of the third or fourth date, they’re giving each other a wide berth. But you’ve played shows before in 2024; was that how you met?
Neil: I met Dom at a festival. Obviously, we knew of Dom because as the band try and get on more supports and find our way, you know the artists that you’d love to support. We played this tiny festival, and it was me and Luke playing acoustic. Dom glided over at the end of our set and was looking at my guitar, and I was like, do you want to play it, mate? I knew what Dom could do, and he picked it up and my God, my guitar has never sounded that good in my life. That was an ego crusher for me. It was wicked, though, because then we had about five minutes, and I said, if you ever need a support, even 20 minutes, just let us open up; that was it. And then about three months later, our management got a call from Dom’s management saying, there’s a 17 day tour, can you come on it? I don’t think we could say yes quick enough! But it was probably the third gig when we started to realise that the humour was the same. When you get three Brummies, there’s no hiding place. What you see is what you get with us lads. It’s very straight to the point. We know our place, obviously, on the hierarchy of the gig, but we’re going to take the mick. That’s what we do. That’s what the city’s born on. And then when you’ve got lads from Ireland and Northern Ireland, it’s right back at you. I swear to God, if people see us when we’re backstage, just ripping into each other, they’ll be like, oh my God, these two hate each other. But then it always ends in a hug. It is a family, and we’ve never experienced it before.
Dom: Yeah, I second that. Definitely. Doing the tours and stuff is hard enough as it is without bringing other bands and egos into it, and all sorts of crazy shit that people do. And with those guys, it was a blessing. It was so much fun, which is what it’s supposed to be. Why dig yourself into an early grave over it? It was a breath of fresh air for me, and I’m glad we’re able to do it again.
MGM: Were you aware of Blue Nation before you met at the festival that Neil just referred to?
Dom: I had heard of them through different people, but I hadn’t listened to their music a lot, and I had never met them. When I did eventually, I was like, it’s Blue Nation, but where’s the blues music? At first, I was like, no. But then it grew on me so much. Some of those songs have such a positive message and such a great vibe that I couldn’t imagine my life without their music now.
Neil: It’s like we’ve paid each other, isn’t it?
MGM: The nature of being touring musicians is that you’re travelling a lot or you’re sat in dark rooms writing music. Do you guys get to see much of each other outside of these touring cycles?
Dom: Not really. The odd time. If I’m in England or something, we’ll maybe meet up. But we’re all so busy. It’s hard to socialise with this lifestyle. Well, for me it is anyway. I’m not the biggest socialiser anyway. Most of the socialising I do is at the shows. And after that, I’m pretty solitary. I like it like that. But these guys, they won’t leave you alone. I like that too. They keep in touch a lot, and the communication has always been on point. I’m a horrible communicator, unmusically. But it always felt like it’s like a family thing. It was very easy to talk, always very down to earth, and very honest. I love the honesty of these three; all three of them. And you can hear that in their music and their lyrics as well. It’s good, hard, bloody rock music. It’s a positive message, and they’re so honest with everything.
Neil: You were saying, we don’t socialise much. We’re either in a van, in a studio, going somewhere to a festival or coming back from somewhere or literally stealing an evening with your other half to try and centre yourself a little bit. You give them the family time as well. So, the number of birthdays, Christmases, weddings, and parties you just miss because you’ve got to. We’ve lost friends, and we’ve lost people by doing this because they don’t get it. But then the mates and friends that do get it are just behind you 100%. When you meet another band and you meet someone that can give you advice, you just know that you’re stealing time from them. If I say to Dom, hey, I’m coming over and I’m going to spend a couple of days; I know that’s time where he may need to decompress or he needs to see his family. So, you steal those moments with each other at shows, or at award shows. We went to one of Dom’s acoustic gigs, and it was sold out, and obviously we were just gate crashing, but we sat outside. It was good to chill out and just not be on the clock. But it’s easy with FaceTime. I just FaceTime Dom, and he’s always got his shirt off, and it’s just like, Oh, great. I need to go work out now.
Dom: I have nothing to hide from you, Neil. I always answer first and get dressed later. That’s the motto. It’s got me this far.
MGM: There’s obviously a great bond between you guys, and this is the second tour you’ve done together. What was the thinking behind it this time?
Dom: We wanted to try new things. We realise it can get stale very quickly if you’re doing the same thing every year, year in, year out. So, it’s constantly being mixed up and trying new things to see what will work and what won’t. And trying to save money because everything’s always been so expensive, but it’s more so now.
MGM: Two of the highlights for this tour have been the Cavern in Liverpool and the 100 Club in London; two really iconic venues. How do you feel about playing on those stages?
Dom: The 100 Club is a great venue, but it has this big pillar in front of the stage, and then the sound guy is behind that. So, if you have any problem on stage, you’ve got to figure out how to telepathically tell him that something isn’t right. It can make or break of gig. I’ve done a few in there now and it’s always been an experience, and I’ve always enjoyed it.
Neil: When the boys came to us and said, do you want to do this co-headline tour, Dom showed me the list. Obviously, we’re huge Beatles fans, like massive, so I said, I’ll do this tour 100%, but please, for the love of God, can we go on second in Liverpool? Dom was like, yeah, no worries!! But those places … you feel it when you go on stage. I mean, my God, in the 100 Club, when you’re in that tiny dressing room and you see all the names on the wall, you feel it before you’re anywhere near the stage. You feel the anticipation from the crowd as well, because they know it’s an iconic place. It’s the same at the Live Rooms in Chester.
MGM: It’s been less than a year since you last toured together. How is this tour different for people who maybe saw you this time last year?
Dom: Every night’s different, even if it’s just you by yourself playing or if it’s with a band and you’re doing the same set every night. It depends on the crowd. It depends on your own energy and your own mood and whatever is going on. It’s hard to separate the stage from real life. It’s something I could never do. All my life comes on that stage with me; the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole thing. It’s all on the stage with me. I love to try and find a balance in that. So, I guess, every gig is a little bit different.
MGM: The last time you played, you were both out promoting albums. Dom, you had the ‘Buried Alive’ album, and Blue Nation had released ‘The Ordinary People’. This time, you are giving away the Blue Martin guitar. You mentioned Peter Green earlier. People are still referring to ‘Greeny’ 60 years on. Will they still be referring to the Blue Martin in 60 years?
Dom: I hope so. I hope the guitar goes somewhere nice. I hope it gets played and gets worn in and gets worn out and it gets passed through many hands and many generations of music. God knows where it’ll end up, but I hope it goes on a good wee journey. A lot of time and effort and parts and people have been involved in doing this. I did most of it myself, but the guys helped out a little bit ha ha!
Neil: To be fair, when we were sitting down talking about it, it was a big thing. We were like, this needs to be both of us. I remember doing FaceTime with Dom, because we are millions of miles away from each other, and saying, what do you reckon to this tone control? Or what do you reckon to that volume control? And what do you reckon to that pickup? And what strings? And what about the neck? And we’re talking about it and coming up with it, because we didn’t want it to just be like, go get a guitar from Argos. And we didn’t want it to be, oh, yeah, you won a guitar. We both know that this is probably the end of this life of this lineup, right, because we can’t constantly go on tour with each other. So, there has to be a uniqueness to it. With the guitar, we wanted to do something that someone could own and look at it and go, there’s the Celtic design of Dom, there’s the Blue Nation paisley, and then the Celtic rope is the Brotherhood. The biggest thing we said to each other is it’s got to be Brotherhood; it’s got to be about the family and how we’ve come together. And I tell you what, I’m not a Fender fan. I’m a Gibson boy through and through, but my God, this guitar is class. The pickup in it rips, the neck’s amazing, like a relic body. It’s just mad what we’ve been able to pull together. Me and Dom don’t want to give it away. We want to keep it.
Dom: I want to keep it so bad, man.
MGM: Gaining attention on social media is getting harder. Back in the good old days, bands used to announce a tour, they’d sell tickets, and people would come and have a good time. But now the fans seem to want more. This competition for your guitar provides a wider sense of being part of something and doing something unique.
Neil: We’re in a world where everything moves ridiculously fast. I can order something online and it can be here this afternoon or tomorrow. And if it doesn’t get here tomorrow, I’m annoyed that it’s not here tomorrow. We’re in a world of instant gratification. Dom can tell me about a new artist he’s found, and I can find everything out about them in nanoseconds. I go on Spotify, and it will tell me where they’re playing. It’ll tell me that they’re playing close to me. When you’re in that environment and everybody’s wanting you to come to tours and buy the vinyl and buy the CD, we have to remember that fans are not just following Dom Martin or Blue Nation, they’re following 20 bands. They’re having to divide their time up. So it’s about what value does that artist bring me from a personality standpoint; and what can I get out of this? What’s the show going to be like? You have to deliver value. And it’s why when we’re on stage, we won’t script what we say. It will literally be that whatever enters into our Brummie minds will come out of our Brummie mouths. People have latched onto that because then they’re like, every show is different. Same with Dom. I saw 17 different gigs with Dom, and I thought, he’s going to go there on the guitar, he’s going to do this and he didn’t; he did something else. I didn’t expect it. But that’s what makes it interesting. I would love to put a tour out and everywhere goes ‘sold out’. We’re in a different world. As artists, love it or hate it, to rise above the noise, you have to be creative. But it gets tiring, because we just want to play guitar and play on stage and write music. I do get that artists don’t want to be a social media person.
Dom: You can’t be a musician now and do the sell-out tours without becoming a content creator as well. You need all this other stuff and all this other expertise. You look at other people’s videos and it’s like, Jesus, these guys are so professional. My videos are shit. I look like shit. I sound like shit. How can you compete with that? There’s no blueprint to a quick success as a content creator. It’s all just hit or miss. The algorithm can take it all over the world or it can end up just in your inbox. It’s a complete minefield.
MGM: One emerging trend on social media is that you see some bands that post every day of the week, and they’ve got loads of content about their lives, and regular band Q&A sessions, but they haven’t written any songs yet. Has content creation replaced the music?
Neil: You got to give value. You got to tell people what’s going on behind the curtain, or something that the band’s going through. But you can’t do the same thing over and over again. That’s the thing. The algorithms want you to post every day. So, it’s either pay for the adverts, which is a cost, or don’t post, and then say, why aren’t people coming to shows? People are not coming to the shows because you’re not getting through the algorithm. Love it or hate it, that’s the nature of the beast.
Dom: You’ve got to be yourself when you do it. Sometimes when the camera goes on, you become this version of yourself that you can’t stand. You’re like, what is going on when this button happens? How does it have the control, the capacity to turn me into this weirdo that doesn’t know how to speak properly, doesn’t know how to do anything properly. It just completely freaks my mind. The anxious side of it and becoming somebody else for a couple of minutes to do a video can seem daunting, but I reckon the more you do it, the better it becomes. Personally, I hate it, but I’ll do it because it’s so important.
MGM: There seems to be a bit of a resurgence of blues-based rock at the moment. You mentioned Chantel McGregor and Joanne Shaw-Taylor, and there’s others like DeWolff, and Will Wilde, who’s doing amazing things with his harmonica. Kris Barras has also returned to a more blues-based sound with Hollow Souls. Why do you think blues appears to be on the rise right now?
Dom: I think it comes round in circles. It’s always been like these every 25-30 years; somebody will come along, and it’ll spark a bit more interest. People love to go off on little journeys in music and find different genres, and then they hear something and it just draws them back into that original bluesy thing. I think it does come in circles. Part of that is being in the right place at the right time as well, musically.
Neil: It pains me to say it, but Oasis getting back together and just saying that the guitar is alright again, is a big thing. They’re playing to a million people or something. It’s nostalgia. You start looking at blues guitar, and go, let’s dig out the Led Zeppelin again. Let’s get the Cream record out. Have a listen to ‘Badge’. Listen to some Rory. The blues scene and blues rock music is steeped in nostalgia, and people will just fall into that. People love to just go a bit down memory lane.
MGM: This may be the end of your touring together (for now anyway), but do you see yourselves recording together at any point?
Neil: 100%. Writing, recording. Dom and I are already talking about it. We did that on the first tour, didn’t we? You fall into those songwriting chats. We just said it’d be so cool to write together.
Dom: The thing I love about Neil is if it’s shit, he’ll just be like, no, it’s shit. Let’s try something else. I’m the same. If I don’t like it, let’s do something else. I love that honesty in music. When you do find a song that you both agree on, you’re like, let’s go for this. I think there’ll be a couple of songs like that that come along over the next couple of years, and we’ll definitely do some collaborations.
Neil: That’s a contract, and that’s an exclusive. We’ve not told anyone else that, to be fair.
For more information:
https://linktr.ee/bluenationmusic
About Author
