Head Bone Gumbo

With a freshly inked European distribution deal in place with Proper Records, in late 2011, Jude and his wife moved to England to live. Settling on the island just off England's south coast, the Isle of Wight, it wasn't long before Jude was once again writing songs for his next album, a collaboration with old friend, poet Blake Parker. quot;I met Blake in 1998 and we immediately hit it off and began creatively collaborating togetherquot;. The two created several screenplays, multimedia shows, films and videos, websites, and a trilogy of poetry/music albums. quot;We drank lots of wine, laughed loudly, pushed each other forward and best of all, became close friendsquot; reminisces Jude. Blake died of cancer in 2007. In 2011 his partner, Monica, published a book of his song poems - Laughter At My Window. Jude left Canada with a copy in his hands and in the spring of 2012 picked it up and began setting music to Blake's words. The result is Head Bone Gumbo - a mix that Jude calls 'countrybilly blues'. A real musical stew of styles, words, and ideas. quot;This is the most bluesy I've ever gotten on record, but there is quite a nice cross with country songs and some rockabilly tooquot; says Jude. quot;After the intensity of the last two albums it was refreshing for me to sit down with someone else's words and just simply have some musical fun. I think this is reflected in the simplicity and upbeat nature of this album. Basically the styles were dictated by Blake's words and images - Blake loved the blues, old country, and back-porch type music, so I think he'd approve of our collaboration on this albumquot; continues Jude. For this album's artwork Jude used photos of street art he had taken while visiting Brussels in April 2012. quot;There was some fantastic graffiti we stumbled upon in Belgium, really cool stuff, I literally just snapped it with my little camera, and when I came to put the graphics together it just worked perfectly. Strangely enough there were quite a few images of heads in the paintings - which really worked nicely with the 'Head Bone' vibe of the title - which is a piece of lyric from a song called 'Ghetto Head'. The 'gumbo' was added to infer the idea that this album is a spicy mix of styles and vibes if you likequot;.