By DAN ARMONAITIS
Little Lesley & the Bloodshots were to have played gigs this weekend at Smiley’s Acoustic Cafe in Greenville and at Rockabilly Reckoning in Austell, Georgia. Instead, like other musicians throughout the world, their shows were canceled due to concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
In the internet age, however, that doesn’t mean the Greenville-based rockabilly/country outfit can’t still play for the public. Little Lesley & the Bloodshots will perform a livestream concert on Saturday, March 21 that can be viewed on the Facebook page of Red Arrow Studio, which is hosting the performance.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” said band leader Lesley Swift, referring to the social distancing measures that have brought the live music industry to a halt. “No one really knows what to do, and it’s not just musicians. It’s everyone.”
The livestream concert will start at 10 p.m. and will be broadcast from Red Arrow Studio in Westminster, which is owned and operated by veteran sound engineer Cliff Witherspoon.
“Cliff reached out to me and said, ‘would you want to do a livestream?’ and I jumped right on it,” Swift said. “It’s a way to keep our music out there and reach people remotely.”
Little Lesley & the Bloodshots previously performed at Red Arrow last summer as part of the studio’s ongoing online concert series that has showcased a variety of musical styles.
“It’s a pretty cool setup,” Swift said. “Cliff’s got a stage with really nice lighting and cameras, and he records from his sound booth …. I was thinking, ‘well, we could do whatever at home with my iPhone camera and that would be better than nothing,’ but this is going to be really nice because the video quality and the sound quality is really high.”
Swift said she and her bandmates recently returned from the United Kingdom, where they played a few shows and recorded a forthcoming Little Lesley & the Bloodshots album for Western Star Records.
The new album, “Love Songs,” is scheduled to be released this spring, and Swift is looking forward to previewing material from it during this weekend’s livestream concert.
“I’m pretty excited just to be able to get these songs out there and let people hear them,” Swift said. “This new album, honestly, is by far the best record I’ve ever made.”
While Swift built her reputation as a rockabilly artist, she’s lately been taking a turn more toward classic country and honky-tonk.
“It’s more billy, less rock,” said Swift, who now plays acoustic guitar rather than upright bass, which was her primary instrument for several years. “It’s still really old-school; it’s not like we’re going from a vintage sound to more of a modern sound. It’s just more on the country spectrum.”
Part of the shift can be attributed to the band’s addition of Spartanburg-based musician Sean O’Shields, a pedal steel player who also contributed the electric guitar parts on the forthcoming album. Little Lesley & the Bloodshots is rounded out by Brian Kennedy on drums and Mark Dye on upright bass.
“These songs are arranged for five pieces, really, so I’ve kind of put out some feelers that I’m looking for a full-time electric guitar player,” Swift said. “But the thing is I’m not just looking for any guitar player. I’m looking for someone who can really play this style, and that’s a little bit tougher because it’s more specialized.”
A native of Little Falls, New York, Swift lived for a while in Reno, Nevada, where she and her husband played in a punk rock band during the late 2000s. While the couple lived there, they became enamored with rockabilly music and, after moving to Brooklyn in 2011, Swift formed Little Lesley & the Bloodshots and was very active in the New York City rockabilly scene.
Swift continued the band after moving to Greenville in 2016 and has, particularly in the last year, cemented her place within the Upstate music community.
Little Lesley & the Bloodshots started a weekly Thursday night residency at The Velo Fellow in Greenville last July, which will now be a monthly first Saturday gig once live music returns to area venues. The band is also set to play every third Friday at Smiley’s Acoustic Cafe.
“The music community here, in general, is pretty amazing,” Swift said. “I’ve played music out west, in New York City and here, and it’s unbelievable how everyone here supports each other and is so nice to each other. That’s something you never really see anywhere else.”
While much of the Upstate music community is isolated from one another for the moment, Swift is happy to have the opportunity to play the livestream concert at Red Arrow on Saturday night.
“We’re just trying to keep everything positive,” Swift said. “We can still play music, we just can’t do it in person. This too shall pass and we’re just going to have to get through it, and I think we have some super uplifting tunes to get people’s minds off (the coronavirus pandemic) for at least a little while.”
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