Page 8 - ION Indie Magazine JanFeb 2018

British Blues Award winners Catfish have carved a reputation for themselves as an excellent live band with a
phenomenal frontman in 22-year-old guitarist/vocalist Matt Long, who plays with a real passion for the blues.
The band crashed onto the blues scene in January 2015, with their debut album “So Many Roads” going straight
in at number 1 in the IBBA blues airplay charts. Their EP, a tribute to BB King called “When BB Sings the Blues,”
charted at number 5 in February 2016. They received two nominations in the British Blues Awards 2015, taking
third in “Emerging Artist,” and followed this with three in 2016, taking first in “Keyboards” and third in “Young
Artist.” In January 2017 they released their much-anticipated second album “Broken Man” -- which is almost
entirely original material. “Broken Man” also reached number 1 in the IBBA blues airplay charts in March
2017. This is blues with a very broad brush -- from epic prog anthems to stripped back piano ballads.

I had the opportunity to sit down and interview band members Matt Long, Paul Long, Kevin Yates and Adam
Pyke at The Bat & Ball Country Pub in Wisborough Green. (www.haywards-restaurant.co.uk)

Graham Whittington/ION Indie Magazine: Catfish is still a relative newcomer to the British blues rock scene,
but as a band, you have come a long way in a short time. What do you put that down to?

Matt Long: I would say lots of hard work and still enjoying what we're doing. We started out years ago and we're
still going now. It just shows that we actually really enjoy what we're doing. Playing new places to new and
interesting people is what we strive to do. And in that time, we're building up a following. That's really
encouraging us to push on, because they're really getting behind what we're trying to do. We're seeing familiar
faces at gigs all over the country that are now turning up to follow us and listen to the quality of the music that
we're producing.

Paul Long: I think the best PR is word of mouth. It doesn't cost anything other than hard work, but kind of a slow
organic growth beats any PR hype you can do.

ION: What made father-and-son duo, Paul and Matt,

decide to form their own blues band?

ML: A while back, I was in quite a few bands at one time
and I was gigging a lot. Then at pretty much the same
time, all those bands fell through. I was basically just
left high and dry with nothing and I was bored for about
six months. So, I went to my dad, Paul, and basically
said, ‘Can we just jam something?’ So, we went to loads
of jams down the South Coast. We went to the South
Coast Blues Jam in Worthing many times over those six
months. Eventually, dad and I just decided – let’s just
start a band, play in some pubs, do some covers, have
some fun, make a little bit of money. One time, we
went
went down to the jam night and we asked
Kevin and (at the time) Dusty if they would

like to join a band and just have some fun in
some back-ends of pubs until something else
came along for all four of us. And here we are
-- still going. Then we recorded an album,
which was the 'So Many Roads' album -- and
people instantly took to it. So, we thought
we should probably write some original
material.

Pictured: Matt Long