Artur Menezes

So originally from Brazil, tell me about your beginnings in music and guitar.

So I started, uh, when I was 11 years old.

I started playing acoustic guitar.

12, I got my first electric guitar.

And no, my mother's a singer.

She sings Brazilian musics, uh, music actually, like, uh, w- which we call, uh, MPB, which is popular music, popular Brazil, if you translate the way it is.

But as a young kid, I just wanna be like my big brother.

And my big brother, he was listening to AC/DC a lot.

So when I was three years old, I was listening to the vinyls with him, and I was a big fan of Angus Young, who was my favorite guitar player, right? Which was blues.

It's AC/DC is a blues-

Yeah

... band with a rock drummer, right? And I was, like, already playing the blues without knowing.

But one day I was jamming, and I used to live close to a radio station, so my amp usually was, like, picking up interference from the radio.

And I was jamming with one of the AC/DC albums, and then I stopped when I heard that music coming from the speakers.

I was, "Oh, this sounds familiar, but I like this." So I started jamming.

When the song ended, the radio host just said, "Oh, this is a s- bl- this is a blues show." And I was like, said the phone number, so I called.

"Hey, what is this? Blues? Blues? What is this?" Says, "No, this is a blues, uh, it's a, a, a blues show, and today is in special for John Lee Hooker." I said, "Oh, it's amazing." And then from that day on, I just kept playing the blues.

That's basically what happened.

So how did you know that this is what you wanted to do for a living, and when did you realize that?

I joined my first band and started playing professionally when I was 14, right? Uh, with older musicians, and I was usually the young kid.

And I was just, you know, playing.

In my hometown, there was, like, uh, seven blues bands.

I wa- I was playing eight of them, so [laughs] basically that was heaven.

I was playing all the bands, all the blues bands in my hometown.

And, um, yeah, and then I just started playing and playing and playing.