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BiTS INTERVIEW: Lucy Piper

Lucy Piper was brought up with the blues. Her dad Julian, until his sudden death last year, was
the blues in south-west England. Founder of Blues South West, he was a superb guitarist who also
produced, recorded, toured and promoted concerts in the UK and Europe. Lucy is a world class
drummer, recently tagged by Thomas Ruf, and who is making quite a name for herself.

BiTS: Back to the very beginning. How did you become aware of your capacity to become a
drummer?

LP: Okay, with always just tapping
Julian Piper with Lucy Piper along at school. That annoying child

hitting the table because I had
songs in my head endlessly, albeit
back then, they wouldn’t have been
blues songs. They would have been
more popular stuff which adults
wouldn’t have liked. I started

lessons at 11, when I went to
secondary school and they had this
awesome drum teacher. He was
Irish and had an afro and a great
character. He’s still playing now.
Yeah, he massively inspired me and

showed me the way, really. A guy
called Steve Crossen and he’s still
teaching and performing round
here now. He’s Exeter based. I
actually started on the guitar first,

but because Sam (Lucy’s brother)
and my dad were big guitar players, I thought this is silly. We don’t need another guitar player in
the band.

BiTS: How far did you get playing the guitar?

LP: I never joined the band playing guitar, but I was fairly able in terms of just able to pick up stuff
quickly, songs and so on, but I never made it to playing with others on guitar.

BiTS: How did you discover that you’d got a sense of rhythm, was it just tapping along with people
playing and that sort of thing?

LP: Yeah, it’s very hard to explain other than you just know it’s inside you and it’s got to come out.
I found it as my way of expressing good emotions, but I don’t know, really. I used to jam with dad
from the age of maybe 12, 13 onwards, just up here in the garage. Yeah, so just from jamming with
dad, that’s how I learned that I was able to play with others.

BiTS: What was the drum kit that you were using? Was it the one from the school, or did you get

one for yourself?