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Interview: Manny Blu on Nashville Meets London and ‘Put Your Whiskey Where Your Mouth Is’

Like many country musicians, Canadian Manny Blu originally started out as an athlete, playing hockey, soccer and football before taking up a career in MMA at just 16 years old.

However, after an injury left him unable to compete, he picked up a guitar to pass the time and hasn’t looked back since. With 2019 album ‘Leave It Like It Is’ under his belt, along with three EPs, over 1m streams and working with songwriters including Michael Hardy and Ryan Hurd, it’s safe to say he’s establishing himself as a new rising star in country music.

I caught up with Manny recently to talk about his upcoming trip to the UK for Nashville Meets London, his latest single ‘Put Your Whiskey Where Your Mouth Is’, touring with Dallas Smith in Canada and more.

How would you describe your music? I know, you’ve talked about this idea of ‘country punk’ – can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, I was tired of being put in a box. So it’s kind of my way of just deciding that I’m gonna put two words together of styles of music that I liked, that lets be as creative as I want with my music. I’ve always been pushing the envelope a little bit. So I thought, as we were listening to music for the EPs we put out last year, I felt like this was a little bit of a gap in country – just in the fact that a lot of country rock is is very heavy, but also very slow. And a lot of times, there’s a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose behind it. But I just felt like between the pop side and the rock side, there’s nothing that blends together in a more fun, upbeat thing.

And I’m a big fan of pop punk and what’s what’s going on in the pop punk world at the moment with the rebirth of it. So it was kind of just a way to take some pop punk influences and added into some country music storytelling. So it’s not that every song is gonna be the perfect example of the blend. Some is gonna be obviously a little more rock and roll and some is gonna be more country. But I think as a whole, it’s more of a vibe, more of an idea and more of a sort of attitude and an approach.

You’ve just recently been on tour in Canada with Dallas Smith. How have you been finding being back out on the road?

Yeah, it was awesome. It was crazy. The biggest tour I’ve ever been on. It was five tour buses, 51 crew, arenas every night. So it was a great experience to be able to, to hang with the other artists that were on the bill – Jojo Mason, Sean Austin, the James Barker Band boys. Dallas’s band and crew are just absolute top class, it’s phenomenal. And so is he. So just seeing everybody around the facilities every day, and just getting to chat a little bit with them, and then getting a piece of their mindset and things like that. Obviously, we were the first ones on stage and it was a great learning opportunity, so we took all the changes we can to learn and to open our minds to different things. Because with two years of not really touring and being in Nashville, you’re with the same people, and it becomes the same kind of ideas, right?

And so I think opening up our minds a little bit to different things and taking what the best sort of advice was for us, from all those those exchanges, all those conversations and then also just watching true pros do their thing every night, you’re gonna learn something right? Dallas and James Barker Band and all the guys. Meghan Patrick was out there with us for a bit, so hanging with her was was incredible, too.

So it was just really fun to get to experience a bit of a different side. I mean, it was weird, because you’re gone for for six weeks, when you’re so used to being home, and just going to the rehearsal space or doing one off shows here and there and coming back home that night, or the next night. So being away from home for a while got… it was like okay, we’re really out here doing it. But after all it was it was a really cool experience. And I’m really glad I got the opportunity.

What was the best piece of advice that you got from the people that you were working with on that tour?

I would have to say it was from Jojo. Jojo sat down with me and said, “Hey, man, I want to give you some advice if you want it.” And it always means a lot more coming from somebody who’s in the middle of doing it. Everybody can have their opinions and everybody can have their their advice, but from performer to performer, he gave me the advice. He helped me on a weakness that I knew I had which was the banter in between songs. He says, “you know, you do what you do during the songs and it’s fun.” He goes, “just own those moments, as awkward as sometimes they are, whatever it is.”

For me, the crowd was was very different every night – either they were really vibing, or they were trying to figure me out for the first two songs, so it can get awkward. But I think the best thing he told me was to just own the moment no matter what it is, because you’re onstage, and that’s your stage. And it’s something that I knew I was… I can sing the songs all day every day, don’t matter to me. But sometimes it’s linking them together, sometimes there’s some little technical difficulties that happen on stage that you have to control as a singer, because you’re the one with the microphone. And nobody should know that something’s going on. So it’s just those kinds of things that that make a good show a great show. And I think that that made a huge difference in my approach to everything moving forward. And I was super happy that he was able to help me with that.

You’re coming over to the UK to play at Nashville Meets London. What can we expect from those shows?

I think excitement. I’ve been wanting to come down to the UK for a while. Obviously, there was a moment there where we couldn’t, there wasn’t much travelling. So I’ve been wanting to come to the UK for a long time. I said when I came to Nashville that I wanted to be considered a global artist – not just Canadian, not just a Nashville guy. But I wanted to play shows in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, and wherever else the tours go, or shows go. But the UK was circled for a very long time. It seems to have a lot of country music coming in and out of there. So I’m super excited to see what it’s all about. And I think it’s gonna be a really, really awesome week.

How have you found the response from sort of fans in the UK when they found out that you were coming over to see us?

There’s a few people that kept messaging me – “come to the UK, when are you coming to the UK?” And there wasn’t an opportunity for a while. But as soon as we announced that, we got a lot of those messages going, “that’s so awesome” and “finally, we’re gonna get to see you”. So that that means a lot to me. It’s people who’ve been supporting me without ever getting to see me play live for over two years now. So the opportunity to kind of just go out there and showcase what our show looks like for a few minutes is is gonna be a blast. So I’m really, really looking forward to it.

Are there any songs you’re particularly looking forward to playing live or that you’re particularly enjoying playing live at the moment?

Yeah. I always loved my song ‘Rusty Things’, but it didn’t pick up that much when we first put it out on the on the EP and then it kind of took a life of its own on TikTok and is now becoming a set staple. Which I’m pumped about, because it was a song that was like, “I love it. But if it hasn’t gotten much response, do I still put it in the set or not?” And there’s songs that we went to Canadian radio with like ‘Valet’, and ‘Train’ hitting a million is pretty cool. So obviously, those songs are in the set. But a song like ‘Rusty Things’ that I personally love a lot, to be able to now put that permanently in the set is really cool and exciting.

I did also want to ask you about the experience of being on TikTok and going viral. Was that quite a strange experience? And what do you particularly like about TikTok and what it offers for you as an artist?

Oh, that’s a tricky one. I don’t love the power that TikTok has. I think we’ve put in a lot of work. I think, since we released ‘New Ink’ back in 2019, we’ve put out new music every six to eight weeks for 24 months. I think that should speak for itself, in a way. But TikTok does a lot of the heavy lifting. I guess you just got to get on it and do it nonstop until something kind of happens. So fortunately for us, we’re able to find a system that works for us, which is really cool. Which in my opinion, I wasn’t gonna do TikTok to be silly, or for jokes or for a little pranks or whatever. It has to be something that helps the music. I mean, ultimately that’s the point right? And so a silly video of me pranking my friend that gets three million views doesn’t help anybody listening to music.

So we found a cool kind of system in my drummer who’s my band leader and one of my best friends. We get to do that together. So at least we make it fun. And we kind of just lip sync to the songs with just the drummer and vocalist which is cool. And so when we you know when we put out ‘Train’ last year we put out a video as well. It was kind of like ‘this is what you think country looks like, but this is my country – country punk’ with a little transition. And that kind of took off just a little bit, maybe super mini viral, I guess.

But then when the rest of the things took off, I opened my phone in the morning and I saw quite a few more than usual follows on Instagram. And I said, “That’s weird.” And my manager texted me. He goes, Did you check Tik Tok? And I said, “No, I haven’t yet.” And when I looked at it, we went from like 17,000 followers to 60,000 at that point, and then it just all weekend just didn’t stop. And the coolest thing for me is, my manager and my team literally printed out the graph between the difference that it’s making to Spotify or people listening to the music. And at the end of the day, that’s the point, right?

I’m not an actor, I’m not anything else. I want to play music, and I’m gonna play music to the most amount of people. So the fact that something like that can help open the door to a lot more people seeing my music is super cool. And people are going, “When is this coming out?” And it’s like, it’s been out since August, it’s just they haven’t found it yet. But having that opportunity is really cool. And I think that is a really cool aspect, that TikTok is to be able to reach so many people so quick, if the song is good.

I also wanted to ask you about your latest song ‘Put Your Whiskey Where Your Mouth Is’. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Yeah, there’s a fun story with that one. It was supposed to be on the EP ‘Devil’. And as we were putting the EP together – I always like five song EPS. I find it’s a great number for consuming. And I also didn’t think it fit. I didn’t think sonically it fit. It wasn’t the vibe I wanted to go with. I wanted to follow up ‘New Ink’ with a bit of a fresher feel. And I didn’t think it fit. And then as we were working on ‘Country punk I was going through old songs and I saw that we still had that one in the can – produced, mixed, ready to go. And I said, “Man, this is a really fun song to just throw up as a one off, maybe a summer type type thing.”

So we passed over it for the ‘Country Punk’ EP, because it was still not the vibe. And then when we were coming into 2022, I thought, ‘we have a couple of songs’ – same thing happened with ‘Playback, it was supposed to be on the ‘Country Punk EP – and we decided to just release them on their own and give them their own space and do that. So it felt like a party song. It felt like a bit of a house party vibe. And I thought, ‘maybe we’ll get two other guys [Cody Parks and PJ North], friends of mine on it to enhance that idea of a house party.’ So they crushed it. We’ve got to play live together actually, before it came out, before we left for the for the tour in Canada, which was really cool. And the response from it has been has been great.

I did want to ask you about the process when you’re putting an EP together. Is it quite challenging to decide what you’re going to narrow it down to? Or do you have a clear idea in your head when you start working on something?

That’s a good question. I think it depends. I think every EP we’ve made, it’s always had a bit of a different process, just by the nature of what else was going on. For the most part, we decide we want to make an EP and we start sourcing songs. We start listening and initially there’s probably one or two that stand out, and then you kind of build around that. And that’s the sort of the idea. I mean, we know the vibe, the idea we want beforehand, and we get the songs that kind of fit and kind of match. And then there’s usually one or two that stick out and you go, “this might be what we base the whole thing around.”

So at that point, it’s just rounding it out and making it have a little bit of dynamics, but also making the project as a whole cohesive and making it make sense together. So If you listened from one to five, or on shuffle, then the whole thing makes sense together and creates a vibe and you can get in the car and go. I do it all the time. This is why I think this way as an artist. I do it as a consumer too. You get in the car, and I’ve got tonnes of playlists, and I’m like, “ah, I don’t have one that’s perfect for today.” So I just put on an album or EP of whatever vibe I’m feeling that day. And I love when artists can… when it’s not too all over the place. I mean, diversity or versatility is really, really cool, as long as it kind of makes sense together. So that’s what I do.

The other thing I wanted to ask about was your ‘Live and Turned Up’ series on YouTube. How did that come about? And is there anything you learned from that that you’ve taken into touring or other projects?

Yeah, that was just… we were just tired of not performing. So I feel like we’ve got a pretty cool live show. And so we wanted to find a way to showcase that while not been able to tour. So ‘Live and Turned Up’ was a way to just dig into the songs a little bit and play some fun covers that perhaps expose some abilities that I have that are not necessarily showcased on songs that were out yet, or songs that we have as originals. But it was just a fun way to keep ourselves busy and keep ourselves entertained, but also constantly putting content out where you can see us on stage, and you can see us playing the songs live. That was the idea, really just to showcase it while we couldn’t do it.

And legitimately, what I learned from that, though, was how to perform to a camera. So I feel like, if you can do it to a couple of cameras, because it has to look cool, right? I mean, no one’s like, look, watching it and going, “oh, I understand it’s a little bit awkward” because there’s only cameras. If you’re going to put it out, people want to see you be entertaining and having fun. So you got to do that to just a bunch of cameras and other people are standing around in the room. So that definitely helps with being able to show up to venues or opening slots like the Dallas Smith tour where it might not be full right when we start, and you still got to put on a show for everybody because there’s other people that are in the arena that you can’t see. And so I think the biggest learning process from that was just breaking that wall of being a little bit awkward because nobody’s here. And just having fun while you’re on stage and playing like it’s a full arena every night.

You were also involved in co-producing your ‘Devil’ EP last year. How did you find that and is it something you’d want to do more of in future?

Yeah, for sure. Co-producing was a lot of fun. I mean, obviously, I don’t have a whole lot of experience in the in the world of production. But I definitely knew what I wanted from the ‘Country Punk’ EP. We already had the project for the year – we had set out to put out ‘Devil’ that year, and that was supposed to be the only one, and as touring wasn’t really taking off. And we had a song, ’95’, which didn’t belong on ‘Devil’. So I took that song and based a project around that. We reworked that song, I think, nine times or something like that, just to get it right. And we had a version of it that we changed from the original.

And then we played it live on ‘Live and Turned Up’ and then we changed it from there. And I just wanted to make it sense when you listen to it in the in the car and give it a little bit of excitement So I was very definitive on what I wanted for this one. This was kind of a bonus project, so for me, it was just a lot of fun to just make. And we were able to get songs from friends around Nashville. We didn’t really source it from publishers this time. So it was just like a team home team effort of just people we know.

My musical director at the time was the one who produced it. And he does all the sort of technical kind of stuff and all the things that are missing in the song. But as far as over overseeing the whole thing and getting the vibe correct as a whole, I really wanted to have my hands in it. And I can I foresee… it all depends on how things worked out moving forward, but I would love to keep doing that for myself. Just to understand that and to have a little bit of the idea on the control of where we’re pushing the next project.

What does the rest of 2022 look like for you? Are there any plans for more music?

Yeah, the rest of 2022 is a lot of studio time. We’re working on a new project that we we’re not putting a specific date on, because we just don’t want to put an end to it. We really want to take the time to make something special and really want to make the best project we’ve made so far.

So probably most of September in the studio, and then I get married in October. And then yeah, probably more studio time in November. So a couple of things here and there. And then we got some shows in Nashville. Along the way, we’re going up to CCMAs [Canadian Country Music Awards] in mid September to go see all our friends there. That’s about it. It’s not stacked, but it’s just like little pockets of of time. So we’re going to fill those little gaps with studio time and really work on the new project. All

Can you give us any hints about the new project at all? Will it be similar to your previous stuff or completely different?

Yeah, I would say that it’s probably more of the same of what you’ve heard just elevated, really – more with a of a purpose. ‘Devil’ was the sort of start of country punk to me. I think the ‘Country Punk’ EP was us really finding our way and I think we’re really in the mix here with it. And I think we’re having a lot of fun with this one. I mean, this is supposed to be the best project yet. So I’m looking forward to it.

And lastly – have you got any plans to come back over to the UK after your Nashville Meets London shows?

Hey, I’ll go wherever people want me to play. So there’s nothing booked so far, but hopefully it all goes well and when we’re down there we will get some some calls for more stuff.

Manny Blu’s latest project, ‘Country Punk EP’, is out now.

See Manny live in the UK as part of Nashville Meets London at Trinity Buoy Wharf on Wednesday 24th August. Tickets are on sale now via https://www.nashvillemeetslondon.com/

Laura Cooney
Laura Cooney
Laura has been writing for Entertainment Focus since 2016, mainly covering music (particularly country and pop) and television, and is based in South West London.

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