Groove is in the heart

After years of under-achievement with a string of major labels, soul singer Nicole Willis found love and creative inspiration with husband Jimi Tenor. By Doug Johnstone

IF it’s true that you can tell the quality of an artist from the company they keep, then Nicole Willis is one hell of a musician. The 43-year-old soul singer has got a music industry CV as long as a trombone player’s arms, including stints in embryonic forms of The Brand New Heavies and Deee-Lite, collaborations with Leftfield, The The and Raw Stylus and even a duet with soul legend Curtis Mayfield.

“I’ve been lucky to get such good opportunities to work with people,” says Willis rather modestly. “Especially someone like Curtis Mayfield. I collaborated with him on ‘Let’s Do It Again’ for a tribute album. It was his first vocal performance since the accident that paralysed him, so it was a very emotional and moving experience.”

Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, Brooklyn-born Willis switched between America and Britain singing with a number of bands and signing several major label deals, earning her way but never really breaking through from the soul underground in a way that her record companies would’ve liked. Fed up with the machinations of the industry and having found love with esteemed Finnish soul musician and producer Jimi Tenor, Willis got married and upped sticks to Finland, where she and Tenor began working on her solo career.

Two underrated solo albums emerged earlier this decade, but it wasn’t until she teamed up with local soul outfit The Soul Investigators for 2006’s Keep Reachin’ Up album that things took off.

Reminiscent of the classic Seventies soul that emerged on Motown and Stax, Keep Reachin’ Up received rave reviews. So imbued with the spirits of funk and soul is the record that it’s easy to forget it was made by a ten-piece outfit from Finland, not exactly known as a hotbed of soul.

“The Soul Investigators are just really good at what they do,” explains Willis. “That’s just their sound, it’s not something contrived, they’ve been playing this way since they started. They grew up together, learned their instruments together, and that’s just the way they turned out.”

While her latest music might be steeped in soul, Willis doesn’t restrict herself to genres in the music that she loves.

“I used to take my inspiration from bossa nova when I first started singing, but over the years I’ve listened to all kinds of music,” she says. “Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz, and also working a lot on my art, because I’m an art student, and that’s an inspiration to me as well.”

And of course, there’s the inspiration of husband Jimi Tenor, who’s become something of an underground soul legend over the years. Tenor produced Willis’ three albums to date, as well as providing extra instrumentation.

Unsurprisingly, Willis cites hubby as her biggest influence.

“Jimi’s been a great inspiration, he’s got such a good work ethic,” she says. “He works all the time, every day, it’s not so easy for me to do that kind of thing, I need to really be inspired and feel excited by my ideas. Jimi really taught me something about music, about how to work, and how not to be hesitant. And he helped get my career going, because without him I probably wouldn’t have made some important choices career-wise.”

As Willis talks, she seems happy with her lot – soul singer, art student and now young mother. She also sees it as incredibly important that she and Tenor are based away from any music industry centres, and are free from that whole major label rigmarole, releasing Keep Reachin’ Up on their own Timmion Recordings label, and being free to work at their own pace in their own time.

“If we were in London or America, there would be more pressure,” she says. “Having been signed to a major label at one point, I don’t wish for that experience again. In that set-up, musicians don’t get together and see what happens, they can’t afford to work that way. With the Soul Investigators, they’re childhood friends, so they play together out of love, not because of professional pressure or industry pressure. That just doesn’t exist for us.”

Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators play Edinburgh Liquid Rooms (April 28) and Glasgow Renfrew Ferry (April 29) as part of the Triptych Festival.