Check out this
UG exclusive footage of the photoshoot for
Marcus Bonfanti's new album "
What Good Am I To You?", out Jan 2009.
Marcus Bonfanti is leading the way for a new Blues revival.
27-year-old
Marcus was born and raised in London to an English mother and a “dangerously Italian” father. Inheriting his dad’s work ethic, he shared an appetite for musical discovery with a younger brother who’s also in the business, as a respected bass player. Marcus, self-taught as a guitarist, has already packed plenty in, from
LIPA (the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) to top level session work, from school days as a trumpet player to learning licks in his bedroom to the strains of ‘
Black Dog.’
Bonfanti knows that comparisons are customary at this point, but he sometimes finds them more amusing than accurate.
“Someone called me the lovechild of Tom Waits and Van Morrison once,” he laughs.
“I quite like that one.”
Jimmy Page became a lasting inspiration, right through
Bonfanti’s time at LIPA. He opted not to complete his three years there, but with the resourcefulness of the jobbing musician, was asked back to play in the band at the graduation party he hadn’t qualified for. By then, roads were leading out of Liverpool for
Marcus, even if some were interrupted by breakdowns in the Mersey Tunnel on the way to painfully low-pay, low-glamour gigs in Newcastle.
“But it was great experience,” he remembers.
“I thought I might as well get out, play some bars, get ripped off a few times, meet some musicians and do what all my heroes did, because it seemed to serve them pretty well.
A 2008 debut album, ‘
Hard Times,’ set the scene and sent some subtly effective messages about a new British voice demanding to be heard. ‘
What Good Am I To You?’ makes good on all those promises.
Misc : Marcus Bonfanti: 'What Good Am I To You?' Photoshoot
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