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The BiTS Interview: TBelly - Russell Keefe

Russell Keefe is the Brighton based front man for alt-blues band TBelly, and of the raucous
GlamRock band Slade—taking over the latter role from Noddy Holder. He is a songwriter
of long standing and most of the music he performs with TBelly is

his own. For a number of years he was in the lineup of The Bay

City Rollers. Ian McKenzie spoke to him by telephone.

BiTS: Tell me something about you and the band, about when
you started and the idea lying behind it.

RK: What TBelly? Well, I sorta started that in
about 2015, maybe 2014, I think. I’d been
playing with Les McKeown for a long
time from the Bay City Rollers. I was in
his band for about 16 years, and I’d
just sort of left and I didn’t know
what to do, really. I didn’t know
whether I wanted to start my own
band or anything and I started
writing some songs. I remember
saying to my partner, I’ve got
some new songs and they’re
alright. I said, I think I’ve got to
start a band, another band and she sort
of went, oh no [laughing]!

BiTS: I see you label
yourselves as alt-blues.

What makes it “alt”?

RK: Well, I’m not sure really because to say that it’s just blues, it’s a bit
more than that. I mean, the blues is a different thing to different people
anyway, I think, to be frank. It encompasses a lot of different things about blues. It’s got blues
in it. There’s some actual proper blues, blues songs where there’s stuff that incorporates that
as well and also trying to take it a little bit somewhere else where maybe some people
wouldn’t. So it’s that sort of thing, really. To try and encapsulate a style of music in one word
for me is quite difficult, I think. For a lot of bands, if you say to someone in the band, what’s
your band like, what genre and it’s quite difficult sometimes to pigeonhole yourself in one
thing?

BiTS: Where does the name come from?

RK: I used to work on The Bill, the TV show, a long time ago. When I was writing these songs,
there was a tea point in the middle of the building where we’d have a cup of tea in the
afternoon and I was trying to think of a name and one of my pals, colleagues, said I’ve got a
proper tea belly. Honestly, it’s absolutely true, and so I went, that’s it, TBelly because it
incorporates a bit of the Lead Belly and a bit of the history of blues down the years or T-Bone