The Band

He has been in more rooms than he can remember and remembers all of them. Big D — nobody uses the full name, if there is one — has been playing blues in small venues for the better part of thirty years. He found bass because it suited him: not the loudest instrument, not the most visible, but the one everything else leans on.

His voice arrived late, the way the important things often do. He started singing because the band needed someone to, and it turned out he had things to say. He still seems slightly surprised by this.

Completely bald by choice (he says). Full beard, dark at the top, grey-white at the chin. Blue-grey eyes that do not miss much. A scar on the left side of the jaw from a story he tells differently every time. No tattoos — he says he never found anything worth making permanent.

He grew up in a vicarage. His father was a preacher. That has nothing and everything to do with the music.

Mara plays Fender Rhodes and nothing else. She has been offered other keyboards. She is not interested. The Rhodes suits her: warm on the surface, with something underneath that does not quite resolve.

She holds herself very straight — years of classical training before she decided she would rather play blues in the dark than classical music in the light. She has never said she regrets this. She has never said she doesn't.

Dark near-black hair, pale skin, scattered freckles. A thin scar above her left eyebrow from a childhood cycling accident. A geometric tattoo on her left arm she got in her twenties and has never explained. She is forty-two and looks like someone who has been forty-two for a long time.

She arrived in the band without announcement and has been there ever since. Nobody remembers exactly when. That seems right.

The oldest member of the band. Sixty-seven, and the kind of sixty-seven that has earned every line. Shoulder-length dirty blonde hair pushed back from a face that has seen everything the road has to offer and taken notes. Gaunt but not frail — the leanness of a man who has been in motion for decades.

Four small silver hoop earrings, two in each ear. An anchor tattoo on his left arm, blurred with age. A long thin scar along his right forearm he attributes to a different incident depending on who asks.

He plays guitar the way some people breathe — without apparent thought, without waste. Every note chosen. Nothing added that is not necessary. He learned in the South before moving to Britain in the 1980s and never went back, though you can still hear exactly where he came from.

Quiet offstage. Economical. Has a sense of humour that surfaces occasionally when you have stopped expecting it.

Cy plays drums with the focused authority of someone who has known since childhood that this is what she was for. Nigerian-Jamaican, South London-raised, forty-one years old. She has been playing since she was eight and shows no signs of getting tired of it.

Long dreadlocks, dark brown and black with amber-golden highlights, worn loose. High cheekbones. A small gold nose stud on the right side. A large botanical floral tattoo covering her right forearm. A small Africa continent outline behind her right ear — visible only in profile, which is how she prefers her personal details.

She brought the Okoro Sisters into the band's world, having known Adunni since a tribute night in Brixton in 2017. That connection changed the sound of the live albums and the Christmas EP. Cy has a talent for bringing the right people into the right rooms.

She is the most immediately warm of the five — the one who remembers your name, your drink, what you said last time. This does not mean she is soft. Watch her behind a drum kit if you need clarification.

Roosevelt moves through the world with the quiet dignity of a man who has made his peace with it. Sixty-one. Dark warm brown skin, deeply lined from forty years of expression and concentration. Close-cropped white silver hair. Sparse white stubble. Deep-set eyes that have heard everything and forgotten nothing.

A circular burn scar on the back of his right hand — approximately the size of a coin — from an incident he does not discuss. A harmonica outline tattooed on his left inner forearm, the ink blurred and faded with decades of sun and wear.

He has long elegant fingers that seem designed for the harmonica, though he says the harmonica chose him rather than the other way around. He plays with the economy of someone who has learned that silence is part of the music.

Roosevelt has been in the band the longest of anyone other than Big D. How they met is a story that has been told many ways. Both of them get vague when asked.