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Compared to many acoustic blues musicians Paul, 52 from Sutton Coldfield, is the first to admit he picked up the guitar relatively late in life.

"Well actually I'm quite a late starter," he said, live on BBC WM Introducing.

"It was 10, possibly 12 years ago. I've had an interest in music all my life really. If I look back with the knowledge I've got now, most of the music that appeals to me has always had a slight blues influence. I'm really surprised that in my mid 40s I became enthused with this stuff. It hasn't quite taken my life over but it's become very important to me."

Paul performs around the country, either by himself, with a partner (he was accompanied by musician friend Dave Tighe on his visit to the BBC WM studios) or with his full band - Paul Cowley and the T.Ts. 

Paul Cowly and Dave Tighe

"It's hard work getting gigs and getting out and about," he said. "It's improved recently over the last 12 months or so - I'm starting to work not quite as hard as I have. Blues festivals are particularly good and they tend to be small venues - often country pubs - where where there's an audience who're particularly into this kind of music.

"There are a lot of blues/jam type clubs about but it tends to be electric blues which really is closer to rock than blues. When you get the right audience, the right setting, there's nothing quite like acoustic blues. A big audience for this sort of music would be 1,700 people; often it might be 20 people in a small pub. But when the atmosphere's right it's wonderful."

Traditional blues clubs are a dying breed in the West Midlands. A decade ago, Paul decided to set up one of his own.

Tuning up

"There were four of us," he remembers. "We called it The Sutton Blues Collective. The idea was that we'd meet monthly and provide a meeting place for blues musicians, have a jam. It was tremendously successful early on. So successful that we were confident enough to start booking international artists. We had some of the world's great solo acoustic blues players.

"We moved venues to a pub in Sutton about five years ago. Over the last couple of years it's really started to wane. The musical landscape sort of changed in Sutton. There's a lot of open mic, kareoke, tribute bands which is all great but putting international people (meant we had to charge people). Open mik is free.

"Just a month ago I reached a decision to draw a hault to the jam nights to free myself to pursue my own music. I really enjoyed promoting these nights and I've got a lot of contacts so I'm still going to put occasional nights on, as and when."

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