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I remember your performance at this year’s Southport festival, and there was a girl at the front of the crowd at Southport who was crying throughout that song…
“Yes! I remember that girl, right at the front. I tell you, she had me messed up. Oh, I was done. I just wanted to go down and squeeze her. I eventually did, I went down and gave her the mic. But she was a little shy. I scare them sometimes, because I’ll grab you. You have no choice but to hug me. I’ll grab you. But people feel it, that song.”

It’s definitely been taking people by storm…
“I’m loving it. I have always felt that was about the song. I said, you know, it has the potential to touch people and we’ll just sit back and wait for it to happen. But I’ve always loved it. I’ve always been that excited about it.”

Taking things back a few steps to when you were growing up in Memphis, I’m told you you started writing professionally at 15 years of age.
“My older brother actually paved that way for me because I would watch him sneak out when he was 16 to sing on Beale Street in Memphis. When I became old enough to sneak into the club (he was about 20), I snuck in with him and sat in the back, and then I eased up to sitting with the band and doing more than one set with them until I got to my part of the night. That’s when I got into writing with them and feeling out as much as I could with it.”

What club was that?
“That club was Marmalades on Beale Street – the blues capital of Memphis. If you were trying to do anything, you had to go down there, and sing, even if it was on the kerb. Because you knew that was where the boys like B B King would eventually come by and at least sit in there with you and vibe with you a little while. You were always thinking: they must know something right that I need to learn, as oppose to going up and just getting an autograph, so we did it, we snuck in.”

You also seem to have had a bunch of famous family friends, Little Richard among them…
“I was blessed with them I guess. When I was little I didn’t realise at the time. I had to grow up to realise: ‘Wait a minute! You were who? You did what?’ Back then my father was one of the more experimental ministers in a local church. He felt that you needed to be in the community and around the people. So he would meet these people, all these musicians, at fund-raisers and other events in Memphis, so he became friends with a lot of these famous people.”

Do you have any childhood memories of Little Richard in particular?
“Yes, I do…” [breaking down laughing] “…as soon as you said it, I pictured him, I’m thinking about him. He, more than any of the other ones, would never let me say ‘oh, I can’t do that,’ or ‘How am I going to do that?”. I’d just always hear him say, ‘Get up there girl, you can do it, get it done, don’t even think about it’.”

A good advice giver, then?
“It was more like ‘You better go and do it’. Or else. And I loved that. He was right. Always very positive. His biggest thing that he knew would always get me motivated was ‘I didn’t go through what I had to go through, as a black man in a new arena, so that you could be anxious about getting on stage.’ He was basically saying ‘You will never have to go through the shit I went through. You owe me!’ And he was right, and I got to respect that.”

That seems a fairly major lesson to learn.
“It is. I think a lot of people miss it. So I try and let folks a little younger than me know that too, to try and get them to remember there were people who took things forward for black musicians, so that now you can reap rewards that they wish they could have back then. They had to work harder.”

I hear you’re working on a musical at the moment…
“Yes, it’s calle Angeles, it’s a play that should be starting middle of next year, starring me, Gladyce Knight and Clifton Davis, and I’m excited about that. We’re going to travel and hopefully end up in New York, on Broadway. So far, we’ve finished the soundtrack, and that’ll come out first, so you can get a load of that. Watch out also for my next new single – which is a collaboration between myself and the guy who wrote ‘Finally’ – Jay Sinister.”

What about a solo album?
“That’s what I’m working on now, finally…”

Is that what it’s going to be called?
“Ha, no. Finally I’m able to settle down enough to write an album. I always knew the style that I would want to do an album in. And I think now the music industry is now a little more receptive to what they want to call new soul, or neo-soul now. That’s what I’ve always liked, but before if you weren’t r&b or pop, there wasn’t a spot for you. The music that I like and enjoy seem to write and generate best, it wasn’t that. So I think it’s happening now when it should, because I’ve always liked the house, and I like being able to cultivate it with the soul and with the r&b and that’s what’s happening now. If you’re feeling Jamiroquai, or Mint Condition, or Maxwell, or Sade you will love it. So we’re finally getting the CD together and I’m excited. And that’s what I’ve been waiting on.”