The man is always on the move, but there is no whining, there is whining: Wille Edwards is a rough-and-ready singer à la John Mellencamp, guitarist in best Ry-Cooder manner and mastermind of the trio Wille And The Bandits founded in 2007. "I am an urban hippie despite my beloved wife and equally beloved two-year-old daughter," laughs the 33-year-old. "It's incredible fun for me to stand on a stage somewhere in the world every evening to confront myself with myself for two hours. That's a lot of work. And it is the most beautiful state I know of, packed with emotions, energy, ecstasy. You can't get closer to your ego anywhere."
eclipsed: "Steal" is according to your statement your "strongest album so far". That's what pretty much every musician says about his new work. How do you understand that in concrete terms?
Wille Edwards: In our case this has to do with the sound of the record. We deliberately recorded them in analogue, which means that everything happened live in the studio, everyone was there together during the recordings. This gives the whole thing a rough authenticity. And that's the trademark of me and the bandits.
eclipsed: So the live aspect is still much more important for you than the studio aspect?
Edwards: We have repeatedly claimed this in interviews like a prayer wheel, and nothing will change about it. Because we simply continue to enjoy standing on a stage, nobody can take this unique feeling away from us. However, the studio situation hardly differs from the live situation at the moment. Everywhere we make music, everything is incredibly organic.
eclipsed: Besides all the raw blues energy there is a lot of melancholy in many of the new songs. Why is that?
Edwards: We're bluesers with skin and hair. This means that there must be a lot of melancholy and nostalgia in us if we want to convey this claim convincingly. And at least in me, although I am very happy in my private life, something dark is slumbering that needs to be lived out musically so that it doesn't influence my everyday life. I also studied blues history very intensively. As a consequence, we want to bring back the original blues to modern musical life. Although in our opinion this can only work if you enrich it with a good portion of rock.
