Phantom Limb: not just a figure of your imagination

15-08-2008 11:13

When you have a voice to rival Tina Turner and Whitney Houston before you hit your teens, there’s no doubt you’re going to be a singer; and that’s exactly what Yolanda Quartey went on and did: with the help of her buddies in Phantom Limb of course!Here we have a woman who was determined to break the norms set down by society, so I caught up with Yolanda to chat about playground bullies, the release of the new album and what exactly “Brashville” is!

What have you been up to this week?

I’ve just been back home because we released the single from the album today, its called Don’t Say A Word so today we’ve just been celebrating and I’ve been trying to keep up to speed and see what’s been going out and where in terms of sales.

To anyone who hasn’t heard of you before, how would you describe your sound?

We’re country soul music so we’ve got a bit of a Crosby, Stills and Nash feel in there and I think if you like things like the Fleet Foxes who are really hot at the moment then I think you’ll like us too because we’re very harmony-heavy and very soul and country orientated.

Who would you name as your influences?

Well I listen to a lot of things from the sixties and seventies like Etta James and Gillian Welsh, I’ve listened to every single album she’s done about 100 times, so Gillian is a very big influence of mine.

Crosby Stills and Nash and the Stones and a lot of country and soul music in general has inspired our music.

There’s a country movement coming out of Bristol at the moment and a guy who’s name I can’t remember called it “Brashville” - a tiny bit of Bristol and a whole lot of Nashville.

We’ve being going for about three and a half years but in that time no-one has managed to hit the nail on the head and we always loved country but we denied being part of that genre but everywhere you go now you see it creeping in so people are starting to realise it doesn’t just have to be Billy Rae Cyrus!