"People come and tell me, 'Oh I thought you were some old man'" says 26-year-old Leon Bridges, sitting backstage at Latitude Festival in a fedora and orange tweed jacket, his shirt buttoned up to the collar, derby shoes meticulously polished. "Which is, you know, kind of cool."
There aren't many musicians in their 20s who would take it as a compliment to be likened to "some old man," but Bridges has taken great pains to ensure his music, voice and fashion hearken back to a different era. An era over 50 years ago, when legendary soul musicians Sam Cooke and Otis Redding were changing the landscape of American music.
Watch an extract from Gigwise's interview with Leon Bridges below
To describe his musical ethos with words like "vintage", though, would not quite do it justice - there's something more intense about Bridges' dedication to an aesthetic that is not of his time - an earnest, all-encompassing commitment. So much so, in fact, that he told The Guardian at the start of this year, "It sometimes feels like I'm being a bit extreme."
Does he still feel that way? "Not at all actually. When they first asked me that, I had feelings of being extreme, with having my Instagram all black & white, just really capturing the essence of that era, but now I'm totally confident. I look at it as art, and just kind of creating that consistency with the Instagram and music."
If we were going to nitpick here, we might point out that Sam Cooke probably didn't use Instagram all that much. But that's a small technicality.
Given Bridges' dedication to soul music, it's surprising to discover that he came to it relatively late. You'd be forgiven for assuming he grew up with soul music pulsing through his veins - but it was only when he started being likened to musicians with which he was not familiar that his passion for the likes of Sam Cooke began. Before that, he says, "I was listening to a lot of underground hip hop."
Though these influences are not as immediately obvious, Bridges insists that they're there if you look hard enough. "What I took from hip-hop was the phrasing," he explains. "The song phrasing and, you know, storytelling. It's crazy how you look at a lot of guys, R&B singers and soul singers from the 50s, who are doing that same phrasing that the hip-hoppers do - so it all started with those guys."
Watch the video for 'Coming Home' below
Bridges' aforementioned old soul, and the composed ease with which he communicates, means it's easy to forget how new he is to the scene. During our conversation, we forget frequently. At one point he stops us part-way through an elaborate question about the differences between US and UK festivals to point out, "I haven't done any American festivals yet. This is all new."
It's hardly surprising, then, that nerves sometimes factor into his performances. "It seems like I'm even more nervous when I play a club gig," he admits. "There's two different energies. At a festival gig - especially this early in the game - a lot of people don't really know who I am, so there's like an excitement to just do to our thing on a bigger scale."
Watching Bridges perform in the iArena later in the day, we prepare ourselves to forgive his obvious signs of nerves - he only played his first UK show in March, after all - but they never appear. In person, and on stage (in fact, he says, there's little difference - "The way I am as a person is the same you see on stage, and the same you see when I'm chilling at home") Bridges is quietly, calmly self-assured.
"Tis aight," he utters breezily as we thank him for his time - and with that, he stands up, straightens his suit, and ambles away humming.
His album Coming Home is out now.
Leon Bridges' upcoming UK tour dates are below. For tickets and information, visit here.
SEPTEMBER
23 - Manchester, Albert Hall
24 - Glasgow, O2 ABC
26 - Bristol, Ansom Rooms
28 - London, Shepherds Bush Empire
29 - London, Shepherds Bush Empire
