TROY REDFERN

A musical awakening courtesy of that famous sequence in Back To The Future led to a lifelong interest in country blues, National Resonators and gnarly, fuzzed-up slide guitar…

- David Mead

As the world slowly opens up to live music once more, few people are more eager to get back on the road than Troy Redfern. With a new album, The Fire Cosmic!, in the shops and an autumn tour with fellow bluesers Robert Jon & The Wreck, plus some summer festival appearances under his belt, his enthusiasm is infectious.

Like so many musicians before him, Troy’s interest in music started early. “When I was six years old I discovered Queen through one of my older brothers and kind of became obsessed,” he tells us, as we settle down in the Guitarist studios. “I got A Night At The Opera and would listen to that incessantly, and then Sheer Heart Attack…”

But it was courtesy of Michael J Fox’s guitar-wielding exploits in Spielberg’s time-traveling fantasy, Back To The Future, and then later on an introduction to country blues by a friend, that really sealed the deal. “I would have been about nine, and I saw the famous Johnny B. Goode scene, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ Then a friend lent me a Son House album when I was about 13 and he was just completely different to anything I’d ever heard – just his raw, authentic approach. The thing is with those early guitar guys, you can hear that it’s them coming through the strings.”

When did you get your first guitar?

“After watching Back To The Future, I convinced my parents to get me a guitar, quite a cheap electric, an Encore I think it was, and I began teaching myself. I had maybe 10 lessons, but found it hard learning the way the guy was teaching me. So I decided to just learn from records. I think I was about 16 years old when someone showed me how to open tune a guitar and from then on I just carried on experimenting with that.”

And then you began playing with local bands?