Brushy One String

The Jam Jar Presents
Brushy One String
+ Rubba Riddims & Kesh
Thursday 1st October
Doors Open 7.30pm
The Jam Jar, Bristol

Brushy did not have it easy: Orphaned at an early age, the thoughtful singer/songwriter did not learn to read until adulthood. But he came by his musical abilities honestly. His father, revered Jamaican soul singer Freddy McKay, passed away when Brushy was still very young, but his mother, Beverly Foster, sang all the time (she had toured with the likes of Tina Turner as a backup singer). Brushy tried his hand and voice at many styles, including playing pans on the street as a child. He even played guitar for a while as a youngster. “I didn’t really know how to play, and I played so hard, all the strings broke,” he recalls. “So the guitar just went under the bed.”

That is, until Brushy had a vision, a dream in which he was told to play the one-string guitar. Shaken, he told some friends, who scoffed, but one insisted it was fate, and that he had to make that dream come true. Within a day, Brushy had created his one single-string arrangement of a popular tune on the radio. “The next day, I took a big broad hat and sunglasses and went to the market, and started to sing,” Brushy remembers.

And his way began.