Worthing return for singer-songwriter Alex Francis on back of new single

With a reputation based on his soulful voice and heartfelt songwriting, Alex is playing Spun Records in Worthing on April 16 (7.30 doors) as part of his Simplified & Amplified five-date tour.

The date is a duo date with his good friend Gui Rezende: “Over the years he and I have performed a lot in the duo format. He's a wonderful complement to the songs that I write and the way that I put them down on stage, and conceptualising what this run of shows would look like, I wanted to get back to that duo format with him. I think it gives us more of a raw edge. He will be playing electric guitar and I'll be playing acoustic, and he has got a wonderful way of playing.

“We have played together for a long time in many different places, and it just seems to help the connection with the music that I'm doing. I love that I have the option to play it with someone I’ve been friends with for nearly eleven years. We come from different parts of the world but I think we do have similar musical tastes as well as being friends. The fundamental is whether you gel as musicians, and I think we do.

“We met through a friend of mine, a guy from Sweden who was living in Shepherd's Bush. This fellow was playing guitar for me and I'd been playing in a band-style line-up, but Anders was suddenly unavailable and he said what about this fellow that he knew from some blues night, I think. I just trusted Anders’ intuition, and he was right.”

The gigs come on the back of a new single that Alex has got out, a duet called Still with Georgia van Etten: “She is a very talented friend and we have knocked around the idea of doing something together for a while, and I was thinking that this song could be a duet. But it's actually quite personal. It was written in terms of my relationship with my mother. I'm a parent and she is the parent of me and it's about all the complexities, about all the ties that you have within a family, about how blood is thicker than water and just really about how nothing is straightforward. We decided to do it as a duet and have a two-pronged attack for releasing it.”

The Worthing date however will be with Gui as Alex continues to explore the south coast: “I'm finding that I can visit some fairly new/cold territory for me and find the kinds of venues that I want to be playing and find that I get a good reception.”

Alex started exploring the area last year.

“What we have done is a little bit of an experiment. We're trying to pick up on a few favourite areas. I've been performing at festivals over the summer and I'm looking at playing places that are close to those festival activities. We're doing a bit of a thing focusing effort on the south coast between Brighton and Portsmouth and beginning to get a following, to get a gathering of interest and enthusiasm.

“I live in Hackney in London and the more time goes by, the more I'm discovering that really focusing activity outside of London, where it is just so over saturated, out into the smaller towns is a really good thing. You're getting better responses outside of London, and the whole thing is just energising.”