Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Jazz Festival New York Posts 2025 Lineup
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
“We’re part of the British jazz scene, but we don’t play London jazz,” says Knats bassist Stan Woodward. “We play Newcastle jazz.”
(Photo: Ellie Slorick)Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: Though Knats currently live in London, they do not play London jazz. They’re from the West End of Newcastle upon Tyne, in the far north of the U.K., and pride themselves on playing Newcastle’s homegrown Geordie jazz, known for its deep, danceable drum’n‘bass grooves and infectious, aggressive melodies.
“It’s funny when you say West End, because people not from Newcastle assume it’s like London’s West End, which is theaters and stuff,” bassist Stan Woodward explained via Zoom. “The West End of Newcastle is like the rough part.”
He joined the call along with drummer King David-Ike Elechi and trumpeter Ferg Kilsby. Lifelong friends, Stan and Elechi started playing together in an after-school club, where they rocked out covering Arctic Monkeys and Metallica before forming their own band to play different genres like reggae. Then they heard the siren call of jazz, and applied to Trinity College, London’s jazz conservatory, where they’re now in their third year. But it wasn’t until they met their “missing link,” Kilsby — a fellow Geordie who they tracked down after spotting him in an Instagram video — that they solidified into Knats.
Elechi and Woodward now live together in a spacious London flat with a skylight, which doubles as a studio, and Kilsby lives just a couple blocks away. During a lively conversation, they laid out the phenom of Newcastle jazz while discussing their musical evolution.
Fresh from a road tour blitz supporting Geordie Greep (Black Midi) and playing behind R&B legend Eddie Chacon on U.K. tours, Knats released its first single, “Tortuga (For Me Mam),” in advance of the release of the group’s self-titled album for Gearbox Records, a “future analog” label that puts out previously unreleased work by jazz masters like Thelonious Monk and Don Cherry as well as genre-breaking new artists.
Dedicated to Knats’ loved ones, the album includes Woodward’s tribute to his dad — DJ Se7en — and Elechi’s paean to his late sister Adaeze, which combines a gospel folk tune with West African percussive breaks. The trio took a deep dive into all of the honorees, while returning to the primary goal of their album: Newcastle is not to be overlooked.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Cree McCree: Where did the name Knats with a K come from?
Stan Woodward: Knats is a combination of me and King’s names. My name backwards is actually just Nats, and the K, which is silent, is for King. When we first started, and were just making house tunes on SoundCloud, we called ourselves King Nats. And it didn’t really have much of a ring to it, so I thought let’s just shorten it.
McCree: What about your “missing link,” Ferg? What was it about his playing that drew you to him?
Woodward: We hadn’t heard anyone in the area playing jazz, and this 15-year-old kid’s just burning it on Instagram.
We finally found him after searching for ages and ages.
Elechi: Ferg joined us at Trinity College a year after we entered, and he’s now in his second year. So we’re all studying jazz.
McCree: What drew you to jazz?
Woodward: My dad was a drum’n‘bass DJ, and his DJ name was Se7en. And a lot of those old drum’n‘bass records come from great jazz samples, so he got into it that way. So I grew up listening to Mingus and Herbie Hancock.
Elechi: I started in church, I’ve been singing in church since I was a kid. Mom’s into smooth jazz, so I listened to a fair bit of David Sanborn and Brian Culbertson. But I didn’t really get into jazz until I found ’90s hip-hop and then started looking at the samples from there. Me and Stan kind of found it at the same time, and started sending each other stuff.
Woodward: We spent two years together listening to records like Miles Davis’ Seven Steps To Heaven. And we would just transcribe, play stuff together and teach ourselves.
McCree: What about you, Ferg?
Kilsby: My dad was a big, big jazz fan, so he showed me a lot. And my older brother’s a jazz drummer, so as I was growing up, he was always just showing me stuff and how to play it. My entire career now is just trying to impress Henry. [laughs]
McCree: When did you decide to dedicate the album to your loved ones?
Woodward: After we recorded it. When we sat down and thought about it, we realized so many tunes are dedicated to people that we love.
McCree: The first track on the album is “For Josh.” Who’s Josh?
Woodward: Josh is our original keys player when we were in Newcastle. He’s actually in London, too, but he’s a classical composer and preferred going down that route. We parted ways quite early, but we still love him. And he wrote the initial riff of that tune.
McCree: I love the story about “Rumba (!)” being conceived in a rum bar. Who had that vision?
Woodward: That was me. I love rum. I’d been in Trinity writing and there’s a bar nearby called Rhum Bar, spelled R-H-U-M-B-A-R. I went in for a drink there after, and the first part of that tune came together when I was in that rum bar.
McCree: There’s also a lot of island rhythms in the piece “Tortuga (For Me Mam)”
Woodward: That’s a special one because me and King were both brought up by single mothers. I did write it for my mom, but it’s dedicated to single mothers in general, and both our moms. King’s mom refers to me as her son and vice versa. They made everything possible for us.
McCree: One of the most beautiful tracks on the album is “Adaeze,” which you wrote for your late sister, King.
Elechi: It’s a gospel folk tune with West African percussion. I’ve been really getting into music from Senegal and West Africa in general. But there’s an underlying rhythm, which is from organ music. Me and Stan sat together and arranged it.
McCree: How did you end up signing with Gearbox Records?
Woodward: Our manager, Dan Gray, who’s amazing, is friends with Darrel Sheinman from Gearbox. Darrel came to our show at the London Jazz Festival and afterwards he said let’s make an album. It’s always been a dream of ours to get on a record label and make an album, and we were over the moon to have that opportunity. We recorded it in Studio 13, Damon Albarn’s personal studio, and Darrel got Hugh Padgham to mix the album. He’s an absolute legend, who created the gated reverb sound on Phil Collins’ drum break on “In The Air Tonight.”
McCree: What would you most like people who listen to the album to take away from it?
Woodward: That it makes them feel how passionate we are about the music. That old Geordie spirit of really going for it.
Elechi: Just taking a chance on Newcastle music from the north as well.
Woodward: British jazz as a whole gets a rep of just being from London. And it’s really important to us that we differentiate ourselves from that. We’re part of the British jazz scene, but we don’t play London jazz. We play Newcastle jazz. The Knats album represents many things, but most importantly that Newcastle is not to be overlooked. EURO
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