C.W. Stoneking fell in love with the blues when he was in his teens. Born in Katherine, in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, CW was the son of an American school teacher with a passion for music. He vividly remembers being eleven years old and stumbling across Living With The Blues, an early blues compilation, in his father’s collection: “When I first heard it I thought it was kinda funny music”, he told a Dutch interviewer a few years ago, “because it was so deconstructed and not really adhering to any rules that I’d been told music [should] fit into. And the more I listened to it, I just liked it more and more.”  He draws influences from old calypso, early rock ’n’ roll, ’60s girl groups, late-’50s R’n’B and gospel, among many others. His lyrics, are colourful and sometimes fanciful, but they’re underpinned by personal experience. Stoneking likes to cloak his personal insights in larger-than-life stories: “I work better with something to hang it on,” he told me. “I can run free with the metaphors in there and it doesn’t come out sounding preachy.”