As we spoke, drummer Neil Mason was hard at work downstairs adding a final percussion part to what’s become a landmark record for the band. The Cadillac Three are doing something seriously right.Īfter a brief but warm hello with the band backstage that night at the Electric Ballroom, we sat down for a face-to-face with Jaren and Kelby on Tennessee time, while they were completing the album at Nashville’s celebrated Blackbird Studio. Every night, they’ll play the hell out of both their earlier anthems and the brilliant sophomore album Bury Me In My Boots. That upcoming schedule will continue with dates in Germany, Holland and Spain, in a European run that’s wrapped around a never-ending domestic tour. Monetarily speaking, it hasn’t been easy at the beginning, but it’s paying off now.” So we were like ‘alright, this is a commitment, two times a year if not more’. When we did the first trip and saw how cool it was, and how we sold the first show out in, like, 10 minutes, we were blown away.

“We were always infatuated with Tom Petty and bands that came over there and did what they do, and people appreciated it, and they kept going back. We weren’t forcing anything, we just literally did what bands do, you put a record out and kids reacted to it. It’s just been such a cool thing to see that whole thing grow, kind of by accident. “She lives there, and she always comes out and hangs. “Chrissie Hynde’s one of my best friends,” he says without a whiff of name-dropping. They’ve become such adopted Brits that Johnston has even been considering getting a flat in London.

In the summer, they rocked the Ramblin’ Man Fair, and in November, their stature will likely take another giant leap forward when they return for an eight-date tour of Britain and Ireland. You get those old Skynyrd and ZZ Top fans, and then the younger fans.”Īs Ray points out, the band’s live UK audience had increased six-fold from their first visit in 2014, when they sowed the seeds of their following at London’s Barfly. “We had kids from 20 to 65, it was all over the map. “You could see it in the ages of the crowds over there,” he beams. “That’s when you know you’re doing something different.”īassist, steel guitarist and dobro player Kelby Ray joins in with the memory, underlining how the band have created a scintillating subdivision of Southern rock with deep country roots. “I saw a Travis Tritt t-shirt and a Pantera t-shirt at the same show,” he laughs. Frontman Jaren Johnston saw two worlds collide. It was in February this year when The Cadillac Three’s repeated UK visits – eight in two years by that point – were rewarded with their biggest audience yet one sizzling night at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. Cadillac Three frontman Jaren Johnston tells Paul Sexton about the moment he realised that the country and rock worlds were coming together.

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