By Noe Gutierrez
When you think of some common activities a 14-year-old young man may participate in you may consider organized sports or the online video game Fortnite, or even popular social networks like Instagram and Snapchat. UK phenom Toby Lee is no typical adolescent. At only 14 years old the Blues guitarist can say he has jammed on stage with 2005 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Buddy Guy, English-American rock guitar guru Peter Frampton and ZZ Top lead vocalist and guitarist Billy Gibbons. He can also share that he has performed on The Ellen Show and on Steve Harvey’s Little Big Shots variety show.
Toby will once again join Buddy Guy, Lukas Nelson & The Promise of the Real, Jimmie Vaughan and Los Lobos at the Wedbush Garden Jam Music Festival at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden on April 5th and 6th. You can see the full line-up and purchase tickets at gardenjammusicfestival.com. Despite the 7-hour time difference, we spoke with Toby from his home in England just outside of Oxfordshire on a weekend evening as he devoured his chicken fried rice. As with any juvenile, we spoke with a parent first to know what we’re walking into. Lo and behold, this young man blew my mind with his level of maturity and charisma. Toby’s family is fully supportive and have allowed him to just be Toby.
His weekly at-home internet jams every Sunday at 8 p.m. UK time attract tens of thousands of YouTube viewers. He hasn’t missed one in three years. A couple of years ago he played with Ronnie Baker Brooks, a Chicago bluesman, in Frederikshavn, Denmark at the Blues Heaven Festival and that video has drawn 115 million views!
CVW: How are you feeling young man?
Toby: “I’m feeling old. I don’t like getting older. It means I have less time to be a kid, play around, and be understood for that. I still play around as much as possible.”
CVW: There’s a lot of buzz about your United States debut on a festival stage.
Toby: “I can’t wait to be out there. The weather, the show, the food and being in the desert is gonna be awesome! I couldn’t tell you how cold it is here. It’s probably off the reader. Cold and wet and miserable.”
CVW: What do you do when you’re not playing guitar or at school?
Toby: “I’m obsessed with cars. I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to cars. Our whole house is model cars and car bits, all sorts of stuff just to do with cars. I go on bike rides up and down our driveway. When I did School of Rock, The Musical, with the money I earned, I bought a 1965 VW bus. It was completely original. It was found in a forest in Texas. It was absolutely rusted out, it was crazy. It’s had a full restoration. It’s not a stock car anymore, and it’s slammed pretty low. It’s very clean and blended. It’s a labor of love for me.”
CVW: When you are playing guitar, where do you play?
Toby: “We’re in the middle of nowhere. I can literally plug in an amp, put it on full volume in the garden and no one would hear me. We’re miles away from the next house.”
CVW: I recently talked to Jimmie Vaughan about the obsession guitarists seem to have with classic cars. What’s your fascination?
Toby: “My dad has always had a classic car. He absolutely loves cars. My main obsession with cars is the old Volkswagens, the beetles the busses. The first person in our family to have a Volkswagen was my mum. Then my dad. I loved them when I was little and I love them even more now. At school, everyone is reading a standard reading book or they have to look at an atlas or something and there’s me in the corner reading either music magazines or a Volkswagen workshop manual. I’m different like that but people seem to like me for who I am and not what I do which is very nice. The music is a lot richer that way.”
CVW: I’ve seen video of your performances and you are visibly in the moment when you are playing. Can you put into words what you are experiencing?
Toby: “When I’m playing I just feel so happy. I feel amazing. It’s hard to describe. I feel free. If you go wrong, you start again. It doesn’t matter. Every day something is going to go wrong. There’s no problem with that. It’s something you can explore so much and there’s so many different variations of one particular note. It can be a note that’s been bent, it can be a single note, and that’s only one note and then you’ve got six strings and all the frets on the guitar, there’s a lot to explore and it’s just so fun and it makes me happy.”
CVW: I can recall a former music instructor telling me, ‘if you make a mistake, make a big one.’ Thus far, what lesson do you dwell on the most?
Toby: “I was always taught that if you make a mistake make it look like it was supposed to be there. It sounds better like that, that’s what I say. The crowd is there to just enjoy themselves and have fun. If you make a duff note, they’re not gonna care. If you think of how many notes are played in a set on whatever instrument, drums, saxophone or guitar, there’s so many of them, let’s say you get 30 of them wrong of the thousands or tens of thousands of notes that are played, who’s gonna say, ‘well, they got two notes wrong in that song.’”
CVW: You’ve played with some pretty spectacular musicians so far in your short career. How do you break it all down?
Toby: “I don’t think I’ve gotten over that night when I played with Billy Gibbons and Peter Frampton. To have Billy Gibbons get out in front of you with his handkerchief and wave you down, it’s kind of like, wow! He’s such a casual person. He’s well known and such a cool guy. He’s the kind of you guy you’d see somewhere and he’s just happy to be normal. But at the end of the day he’s THE Billy Gibbons!”
CVW: You were invited to the 2019 NAMM Show by Gibson Guitars to be their UK young ambassador. Tell us about that trip.
Toby: “To see that many instruments and people playing and being passionate about it. Everyone was having as much fun as when I’m performing. You know that when you go to a normal concert there’s probably only a few people who are really gonna sit there and watch what’s being played. At the NAMM Show everyone wants to watch you and take away things they can use in their own playing instead of watching it to have a good time. It’s quite nice. People will come up after and ask, ‘what was that little thing you did there and what was that thing you did?’ I will admit most of the time I have no idea because I improvise everything and don’t think about what I’m playing, I’m just having a good time. When they hear me say ‘just have fun’ they seem to take that away as good advice.”
CVW: The Blues seem to be your niche. How did that come about?
Toby: “I’m not really that sure to be honest. That was always the style of music that I went to. I love playing everything, rock, metal and jazz. It’s been nice to experiment with all of them. Say you’re playing rock or jazz or metal, there’s always blues things that you can throw in that will make it sound a little different and will make it your own. Say you did some metal guitar fast run, it wouldn’t really work that well in blues but when you’re playing something in a blues scale it will work just as well in any other thing you play.”
CVW: Speaking of metal, I’m a Yngwie Malmsteen fan and learned about the Blues through his playing.
Toby: “His fingers are like lightning bolts. They’re amazing! If you really listen to it, you will always hear the Blues licks in his pieces which says all you need to know about the Blues, it’s right there!”
CVW: Joe Bonamassa called you “a future superstar of the blues.” What was your reaction to that declaration?
Toby: “That makes me feel really good. He’s a lot older than me. In my eyes, he’s one of the best guitarists in the world. To be compared to him makes me feel like I’m respected like he is. He’s my hero, he’s brilliant! I’ve met him once and seen him perform live twice.”
CVW: You released your first EP Ten at ten-years-old. Now you’re recording your first full album Fourteen at 14 years old. Also, your dad mentioned to me you’ll be working with guitarist Bernie Marsden of Whitesnake. What do you want to share about Ten and Fourteen?
Toby: “Ten was so fun. It was serious but in the funnest way possible. It was quite deep in the countryside. I’m really looking forward to Fourteen. I’ll be singing on this one. Other than School of Rock, The Musical, I haven’t really sung properly. I was waiting until my voice was a bit lower. If I recorded one on Ten my voice would sound like a clown. While I was eating dinner I was watching one of my first videos, I don’t normally watch my videos because every time I try I criticize something. I just watched the beginning and my voice was so high. I’m glad I waited because it probably would have been an opera album, not a blues album. We’ve got a great bunch of musicians. All the people in the band are similar to me. Some people say you shouldn’t make too good friends with the band in case you want to kick them out at any point because you find someone else, at the moment, I absolutely love my band. My keyboard player is giving me welding lessons. They are all just great great fun. The bass player is absolutely amazing. Our drummer is brilliant and really tight. He doesn’t show off his playing too much, he keeps the beat really tight and when it’s his time to shine he’s really good.”
CVW: You’re performing alongside Jimmie Vaughan, Los Lobos, Buddy Guy and Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real. Can you put into words how you feel?
Toby: “I’m really excited to be on the same bill, it’s so cool. It’s an absolute honor. They’re the best musicians out there. You can’t get much better than that. I’m very happy and of course, Lukas Nelson. It’s going to be cool.”
CVW: Music has really opened the world to you. It’s a lot smaller because of your gift. What do you take from that?
Toby: “We have lessons at school that talk about these countries and people will never really know what it’s like unless you go to them. To be able to go to these countries and perform is just awesome. You get to learn a lot about different people. You definitely learn who’s reliable and who’s not. It’s a really good experience.”
