Barrie Cadogan Interview

Squeezing us in between tour dates and many other commitments, Little Barrie’s frontman, recent touring guitarist with The The and longtime Primal Scream six-stringer, drops by the studios for a catch-up and to deliver a blues video masterclass. With David Mead.

- David Mead

The past few years have been particularly eventful for Barrie Cadogan. When we spoke to him, he had just finished a tour with Matt Johnson and The The, which included gigs in the UK and across Europe, America, and Australia. Johnson hadn’t toured since 2002, after deciding to take time out of the music industry’s glaring limelight. But once lured back, he decided to put a band together and, thanks to a certain Mr. Johnny Marr, Barrie got the job playing guitar.

“Johnny had worked with Matt before,” Barrie tells us, “and recommended me to him. Matt recognized my name because he had Shazam’d the Better Call Saul theme, so he heard the name before.”

The aforementioned TV show theme music was another event in Barrie’s calendar, and we’ll be hearing how that came about later. Next was a gig in London to honor the memory of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘third guitarist’ the relatively unsung Danny Kirwan, who died last June. Kirwan had a been a longstanding influence on the guitarist (Barrie will be sharing some of the techniques he learned from Danny in a later video lesson).

First of all, though, we spoke about the tragic passing of Virgil Howe, drummer in Little Barrie. His sudden death came just prior to a tour that had been set up to promote the band’s newest album, Death Express, in September 2017. It was to change everything for the band and is something that Barrie hasn’t spoken about until now.

What effect did Virgil’s death have on you and the band? It must’ve been devastating.