The Fergus Quill Trio - ¡Blamo! (2022)

After a year and a half since their debut album dropped, the Fergus Quill Trio are back with their second release "¡Blamo!" for independent Leeds label Tight Lines Music. The Leeds jazz mavericks have produced an album that pays homage to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s and in particular, the soundtrack music written by Italian composer maestro Ennio Morricone. The tracks merge film theme/soundtrack style music with jazz improvisation.

"¡Blamo!" came about during the lockdown period when band leader Fergus Quill reconnected with his childhood love of Italian "spaghetti westerns". These were Italian made westerns filmed in Spain with mainly Italian/European actors and often a few well known US stars to sell the product over in the States. They were popular from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s and when they first came out, they were genuinely groundbreaking, especially the works of master film director Sergio Leone. They showed a grittier, true life version of the old West, warts and all, closer to how it was rather than the glossy and reimagined version Hollywood had been peddling for decades. In fact, the Hollywood western totally changed after the Spaghetti westerns arrived and started to be more like the latter but with bigger budgets.

Fergus's love for the genre came originally from watching them as a kid when his grandad had a compilation of Sergio Leone classics. During lockdown, he reignited that love for the genre by watching late night TV repeats of many of the classics. Their musical soundtracks began to inspire him with his own compositions and "¡Blamo!" was born. With titles like "A Heroes Return" and "Tune For Ennio", they definitely tip their cowboy hats to the Spaghetti western master composer Ennio Morricone.

The trio are Fergus on double bass/acoustic piano/vocals, Nico Widdowson on acoustic piano/fender rhodes/percussion/vocals and Theo Goss on drums/percussion/vocals. The album also features special guests that include Bess Shooter (flute), Joel Stedman (flute) and guitarists Ed Allen and Will Lakin. Vocal group "The Imaginettes" feature on various tracks. They are well known Leeds singers Amy Clark, Becky Harrington, Rosie Miles and Sunday Lendis.