Traveling The Bluesrock World of Ivy Gold

Traveling The Bluesrock World of Ivy Gold

Ivy Gold is an exhilarating  bluesrock band based all around the world, featuring the dynamic vocal performances of the one and only Manou.  Also within the first rate Ivy Gold lineup are Tal Bergman (Joe Bonamassa, Billy Idol, Rock Candy Funk Party), Sebastian Eder (Avalon), Kevin Moore (Jennifer Rush), and Anders Olinder (Glenn Hughes), all delivering the rocking intrigue that is Six Dusty Winds – their just released debut album.  Traveling the road of independence, Ivy Gold is truly doing everything on their own, and the results are wondrous to experience.  Highwire Daze recently sent email questions to Ivy Gold’s dynamic vocalist Manou to find out more about this amazing collective ready to bluesrock your side of the planet and beyond…

 Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Ivy Gold, and how long the band has been together?
Hi everyone, my name is Manou and I’m the singer of the new contemporary bluesrock band Ivy Gold. We got together as a band about 1,5 years ago and now we are really happy that we just released our brand new debut album “Six Dusty Winds” worldwide.

Where are the band based out of and what is your local music scene like there?
We are based in Munich, Germany, Bristol / UK and Los Angeles, USA.. so we are quite an international bunch of musicians which means that there are also absolutely different music scenes. We love the diversity of our group connection and all the different influences each one of us brings into the field.

Ivy Gold kind of got together by coincidence – OUT OF THE BLUE. We never planned on a big project or anything like that at all. Sebastian and I had done a pre-production of a bunch of our songs. We initially just wanted to see what our songs sound like and that was it in a way. Once recorded, most of the songs actually sounded pretty good and the idea came up to send the demos out to a few people and see what happens. Tal Bergman works with Joe Bonamassa and of course we listened a lot to his music as well as to Tal’s & Joe’s band Rock Candy Funk Party. So one evening I took all my courage I had inside of me and contacted Tal asking him if he would be willing to play drums on our songs. And guess what – he liked our music – believe me – I was thrilled! From that point on we knew we had something special going on – totally out of the blue we had a project and we decided to put a great band together! Our friend Kevin Moore joined right after and then I asked my dear friend Sari Schorr to help me find a great keyboard player – that’s how we found the awesome Anders Olinder from the UK. And then I had put together a very special cosmopolitan band with members from the US, the UK and Germany!

Select two songs from Six Dusty Winds and what inspired the lyrics.
I would pick “This is My Time” because this songs really talks about how everyone can and should make up their mind about which path to choose and not care so much about what other people say or think. It is so important to stay true to your own inner guidance and trust your own intuition and break free from any mind loops or fears.

“Retribution” talks about the outer scope of the world today. What state are we in? Where are we as humans heading to? It is time to look at many things and see them as they are. It is time to take responsibility for ourselves, for nature and for our actions so that future generations can also live on this earth freely and happily.

Who produced Six Dusty Winds and what was it like working with them?
Sebastian produced the album! It was really great working with him. He knows exactly where the songs and the album needs to go, he has a lot of patience with singers and always works with the whole band for the best outcome of the project. He is an amazing artist himself and understands the production side of it so much as well.

How did drummer Tal Bergman (Joe Bonamassa, Billy Idol, Richie Kotzen) become involved with Ivy Gold?
Sebastian and I are huge Joe Bonamassa fans and followed Tal and his playing for a while. One evening we reached out and simply asked him, if he’d be interested in playing on the album. It’s great to work with him – he is just amazing!

And how did Sebastian Eder of Avalon become involved with Ivy Gold?
Sebastian and I had been working in different bands and projects together over the last years. When just hanging out together he’d play different licks and we just had fun, playing around with different melodies and lyrics. That’s how it all started… after the pre-production was finished it was clear, that we needed to record an album 🙂

What is Manou’s background and what bands, or projects has she been involved with prior to Ivy Gold?
I have a classical background and spent many years in different formations in the Gospel / Musical field before I worked with different local cover bands. At some point I started to write my own material and Sebastian was just the perfect guy to connect to.

What has it been like to write and release new music in the middle of a pandemic and all of the social unrest in the world?
Well, we actually postponed our album release a few months. In fact, we had a hard time to decide what to do last year when the pandemic hit the whole world! In the end, we decided to release our music despite the current problems. The music represents a certain time, mood and vibes when we wrote the songs and we felt that it fits the current time perfectly!

What could one expect from a live Ivy Gold show?
We live our passion for music!! Our genre is contemporary bluesrock. Well, the blues goes very deep. It’s all about emotions, feelings, the struggles of life and so much more… it’s the best genre for me to put all my experiences, thoughts, feelings into. And of course the rock is the fire and the inner strength to never give up! So we hope to give those vibes to our audience and keep them rocking…

If Ivy Gold could open for any band or artist either now or from the past, who would it be and why?
We would love to open for Joe Bonamassa 🙂

What do you hope 2021 brings for Ivy Gold and for the music world in general?
We really hope to be able to hit the road soon and play some live shows!! And of course let’s hope that all musicians, artists, venues and everyone else involved in the business, can survive and stay in the business!!

Any final words of wisdom?
As we are a completely independent band we really appreciate every support we get from the crowds!! We take care of everything by ourselves because we didn’t sign to a label even after getting a few offers. We wanted to stay true to ourselves and be in charge of our musical path. So it would be great if all the fans and readers of this interview out there support handmade and honest music by buying our cd, subscribing to our social media channels, spreading the word and simply enjoying our music!!

Thanks so much for this interview!! And of course for sharing and supporting Ivy Gold 🙂 we really appreciate it a lot – it means a lot to us!!

All the best to all of you!!
Manou & Ivy Gold

Ivy Gold Info: https://linktr.ee/ivygold.net