The poster for Toby Lee & James Emmanuel’s Blues & Soul Revue at The Crescent, York
BLUES guitar prodigy Toby Lee was last spotted in York playing with Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, sharing special guest billing with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond at York Barbican on December 11 2024.
Next Wednesday, he will be in good company again, sharing the stage with Decca label-mate soul singer James Emmanuel as their eight-date Blues & Soul Revue promises to “melt faces and warm souls” at The Crescent.
Featuring Lee’s full touring band, solo sets, glorious collaborations and on-stage jamming, the night will deliver “guitar solos, smooth vocals and at least one person in the crowd yelling ‘Woo!’ at the wrong time”…if you ever wondered how AI would put together a press release about a UK blues sensation going on tour (it says here).
Warwickshire-born Lee, who headlined the Fulford Arms on May 18 last year, is touring on the back of dropping into myriad summer festivals, from Glastonbury to Love Supreme, Isle of Wight to Belladrum.
“I’m very excited. It should be a fun tour,” says Toby, speaking to The York Press while in rehearsal for an itinerary that opened on October 22. “I’ll be playing The Crescent for the first time – and I do like a standing gig, so that’ll be great.
“I’m always that annoying member of the band who says, ‘guys, let’s cut four songs and play something we haven’t played for two years’,” says Toby
“I’m still promoting House On Fire, which we released on October 4 [on 100% Records] last year as my first fully original record. Quite a step up from doing covers mixed with originals previously [on 2021 debut Aquarius] but this time we wanted to focus on originals.”
All the songs were composed by Toby, working with Shadow Hands (alias Bnann and Gareth Watts) and Sam Collins, who plays bass in his band, at Cube Recording Studio in Truro. He is now working on the next record, he says. “It’s at the very early stages at the moment, but there will be something that will come out next year,” he promises.
What did he learn from making House On Fire? “The thing for me, if I’m totally honest, I didn’t realise how vulnerable you are as a writer when you’re writing about heartbreak,” says Toby, still only 20, after teaching himself guitar from the age of eight.
“I’m quite reticent with my emotions, but then suddenly you’re at the point of letting out every emotion to someone you’ve never met before – and that’s a rare thing about being a musician.
“But I do love writing on my own because you tend to have this voice in your head, and it’s so much more satisfying when your version comes to fruition – though it’s also good to have someone to help you cross the finishing line.”
Toby Lee and his band in action
From being uncertain initially about songwriting, Toby has grown to enjoy it the most of his music-making roles. “Songs tend to come to me when I’m most relaxed or when I’m about to fall asleep and I have to stay up to complete them,” he says.
“But I also like that thing of looking out to sea. It’s the best place for it [creativity]. That’s my happy place, where I can be relaxed and open myself to it. It might not be so great for recording, but sometimes I can record a demo in my 14ft-long old 1967 Volkswagen bus, with dogs barking and seagulls squawking!”
Toby has found his musicianship progressing from the blues – he played guitar at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis in 2015, aged ten – to embracing a “more soulful, rocky style”, now bringing together a live set that will still please blues and jazz devotees too.
“When you’re playing so many styles, the thing that takes the longest is creating the set list,” he says. A set list that keeps changing too! “One hundred per cent, I do that! I’m always that annoying member of the band who says, ‘guys, let’s cut four songs and play something we haven’t played for two years’.
“I get that for some musicians, when you know what you’re doing each night, there’s no anxiety, but I really like to change it up because it keeps us in the moment, having a bit of fun, and keeping the jamming parts very natural.”
Toby Lee’s cover artwork for last year’s House On Fire, his first album of original compositions. Toby filmed the video for his House On Fire single in his 1974 Corvette Stingray, named “Elvis” by next Wednesday’s guest act Isabella Coulstock
Mentored by Bernie Marsden in his early days, Toby has shared stages with Buddy Guy, Slash, Billy Gibbons, Peter Frampton and Joe Bonamassa (at the Royal Albert Hall), as well as starring in the West End production of School Of Rock and performing with McFly on Tonight at the London Palladium in his teenage rise.
Above all, Toby looked very much at home in Jools Holland’s company at York Barbican last December and when performing House On Fire with the dapper boogie-woogie piano doyen on Jools’s Annual Hootenanny 2024 show on BBC Two last winter.
“I know people say ‘never meet your heroes’, as they seem like one person and then you meet them and they’re totally different, but that’s not the case with Mr Jools Holland, who’s even more lovely in person,” he says.
“Even if he hasn’t got the time, he’ll still find it for you, and it was such a compliment for him to give me that time on tour with him. It was an experience I’ll never forget. It could come across as quite daunting with him being a household name, so there’s a pressure attributed to it, because you want to get it right, and two nights before we played The Royal Albert Hall, I lost my voice, as I was also touring with my own band and doing lots of radio stuff.
“But Ruby Turner [ever present on Jools’s tours] got her voice coach in to help me get my voice back, and Jools ended up having me playing guitar on a couple of extra songs. I love how it’s such a family with him.”
“It was an experience I’ll never forget,” says Toby Lee, recalling last year’s tour with Jools Holland (left) and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra
Looking ahead to next Wednesday’s Blues & Soul Revue show at The Crescent, Toby says: “It’s a bit of a different tour for me, this one. Something we’ve never done before. Touring with James Emmanuel, a soul singer from Edinburgh, who’ll open for us.
“He’s one of those soul singers with a voice like butter. He’ll be playing with my band for his set, which is good for my guys to try something different. It’ll be really cool because we’ve never had a full band support at our gigs before.
“The one thing that we wanted to create was to change it up a bit with having different parts to the show, so here we have different musicians working with us to give a diiferent vibe to it.”
Completing the line-up will be Toby’s fellow vintage car enthusiast Isabella Coulstock. “She’s a singer-songwriter, who’s supported The Who, Chris Isaak, Jools Holland and Nick Heyward, so I feel like she’s doing me a favour,” he says.
Toby Lee & James Emmanuel, An Evening Of Blues & Soul, with Isabella Coulstock, The Crescent, York, November 12, 7.30pm. Box office: thecrescentyork.com/events/toby-lee/.