At the very beginning of the year, solo acoustic act Joe Wilkinson took the time to speak with us about his career – his recent successes and plans for the future. 9 months on, he has racked up a following of over 20,000 users on Facebook and can be found regularly gigging small venues around the south coast of England as well as much bigger stages in Germany.
So, on Sunday, with my recent sports-related injuries, I put on a brave face and hobbled my way to the Queens Park Hotel – a regular haunt of AFC Bournemouth fans due to its location being right outside of the football grounds. The Queens Park Hotel is an ideal venue for a small gig. When not a match day, it is a quiet and relaxed family-friendly venue with comfy cushioned seats and friendly staff. With the promise of a setlist composed entirely of original material, I was looking forward to a cold pint and some catchy new tunes. I wasn’t disappointed.
Kicking off the set with a humble introduction before drifting straight into a solid, upbeat and catchy riff, his passion for music soon became apparent as he swayed enthusiastically to the rhythm, slapping his guitar to add a percussive dimension. His vocals were reminiscent of both Ed Sheeran and Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty and a pleasure to hear in their raw, unedited form.
Playing all new or original songs can be a big risk for relatively small artists, but Joe smashed it. His material is good enough to compete with any of the big names in the genre and he is right to promote it. Although I didn’t know most of the songs at first, by the end, I sure wanted to. Luckily, he was kind enough to slip me a copy of his EP ‘Songs Before You Knew Me’.
Perhaps the best part of Joe Wilkinson’s material is the diversity that he achieves between tracks, from All Boils Down, which has an ‘afternoon in an Irish bar’ kind of vibe, to Shields Up, a song he wrote about an ex-girlfriend which is more fast-paced and features Ed Sheeran style rapping.
My personal favourites were Six Strings and a Melody, a song which describes his passion for music over desire to seek fame through popular channels such as X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, ‘Freedom or This’, a song about a friend of his who found themselves on the dark side of the drugs scene, a track I can imagine hearing a full band version of, perhaps by Foo Fighters and finally ‘We All’, which would make a great soundtrack to a teen movie. Although, honestly, there wasn’t a single track that I wouldn’t re-listen to. This guy could go far, so head out to see him whilst it’s still free/cheap!
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