Chantel McGregor brings the blues to Worthing

It isn’t a particular tour right now. It’s a more of a continuous tour that just keeps going and going, says Chantel McGregor who is delighted to be returning to familiar territory this summer with something like her eighth gig at the Factory Live in Worthing on July 18.

Winner of plenty of British Blues Awards accolades including Young Artist of the Year (2011), Best Female Vocalist (2012 and 2013) and Guitarist of the Year (2013 and 2014), Chantel is still enjoying the release from all the frustrations of lockdown

“But we did actually put out a couple of albums during lockdown which we called the Shed Sessions.”

Chantel performed a weekly live stream during the early part of the pandemic, the Shed Sessions which streamed every Saturday at 5pm for over a year. In August 2021, she released two albums featuring music she had performed during the sessions.

“During the first half of the lockdown I was up with my parents in Bradford and I had a shed up north! I did the live stream every week just to put on something for people to look forward to. People connected with me and I needed some normality as well. I needed to connect with them. People really enjoyed it. The fans really, really embraced it which was so lovely and a lot of people made connections with other people and made friends with other people that they had never met in person but just through the sessions.

“It was just one of those things. It was so weird being at home so much but in a weird way it was actually quite nice to have some breathing space and to slow down and not to be on the road all the time. Well, apart from being very poor! I had no money. Gigging is our income and we didn't have any income anymore. We couldn't get furloughed. We had to shop really, really cheaply and we had to ration our treats with just one treat a week, to have a Chinese on a Saturday!”

But the upside was learning to appreciate once again all the simple things: “Just going out for a walk was really special, all those things that you took for granted and then you went out for a walk and you realised how lovely it was. I think the appreciation for those things is still with me. I definitely still appreciate them but it also makes you appreciate more the fact that you can go out and see friends and gig and do all the things you want to do.”

Not that any of this filtered through into her songs: “I never really write about things like that. I write about really weird things that I have seen on TV or in books that I've read. It would be very dull to be writing about being in my garden shed!

“It's really lovely to be touring and the tour is going really well. Things are really picking up well after the pandemic, and it’s just nice to be back out there again especially as we're travelling to some new places. I've never played Hastings before. We are always on the lookout for new places and new venues to play.”