Ben Hemming

Ben Hemming didn’t find the Blues… the Blues found him. During a bad patch in his life, when he’d lost his woman, was stuck in a dead end job, and down on his luck, he decided to make a change. Leaving everything behind, he took to the road on a musical pilgrimage around America that would come to define his sound and himself. Picking up an old guitar in a pawn shop along the way he found gigs from town to town playing his way across the states in the tradition of the delta Bluesmen before him.

Then while stumbling home drunk one night along the main drag of Nashville, he came across a crowd. The crowd were surrounding an old man playing a one string guitar made from a broom handle and a box, while playing drums with his feet. In that moment Ben new he had found the inspiration he was looking for. But it wasn’t until he made his way to New Orleans that he managed to get his hands on such an instrument. Walking down the backstreets of the french quarter he found his way into an old instrument shop selling a cigar box guitar. And he realised that he’d discovered something special.

When he finally got back to London along with the collection of songs he’d written along the road, he recorded his first album ‘Broken Man’. With nothing more than the equipment he had to hand, he self released the album to critical acclaim. The Blues Magazine called him 'A unique musical identity’; Blues Blast Magazine described his songs as being 'of bleak beauty' and Americana U.K. hailed his work as 'A new Blues’.

Since then he has never looked back, going on to tour internationally four times to date, and releasing a second album ‘City of Streets’, independently and to great success. A maverick in the true sense of the word his live shows are the stuff of legends. Not only is he an excellent guitar player and powerful vocalist, but an awesome drummer too, and he plays both guitar and drums at the same time in a stunning show as a ‘one man band’.