BEN JANSZ
Interview by Bob Gordon
What’s the best thing about playing festivals?
The best thing about performing at festivals, apart from being at a festival, is the fact that you get to connect with so many people at once in such a concentrated amount of time! People discover you, you discover others, and the conversations and jams that flow and follow are such an inspiration! It’s my favourite thing about being a touring artist.
Do you have a Blues at Bridgetown experience that you’d like to share, either performing or as an audience member?
I haven’t had the pleasure to perform or be an audience member of Blues at Bridgetown yet; this is my first time!
Where do you feel you fit in musically along the blues and roots scale?
That’s a hard question for me, as I always have struggled to find the right container to describe my art. I honestly think my sound is more Australian roots, folk, rock, with a lot of blues flavours, but not really your typical blues sound. When I write, it’s all about honouring the fleeting moment of raw emotion and feeling, and I just let it become what I feel it wants to be.
What have been the highlights of your music career thus far?
That’s like asking what the highlight of your life is; it’s pretty much impossible to pin down! If I had to try, it would be this – it’s less a moment and more a pattern. It’s seeing how one can truly move someone by sharing their art. Being a catalyst for life-changing realisations, an opportunity for someone to feel, to heal, to be inspired, to feel less alone in a world that is becoming more absurd every second. That’s the highlight, over and over again, every time it happens, not any one show or milestone.
What have you been mainly focusing on in 2026 and how is it coming along?
Honestly, mundane as it sounds, getting my books and accounts in order, recalibrating how to make this lifestyle choice financially and spiritually sustainable. It’s forced me to fall back in love with why I do this; being an independent artist can get convoluted and messy. I’ve also spent most of the last 12 months since returning from touring the UK building a live-in box truck with my partner, which quenches another thirst for building and creating!
What are your plans and hopes for 2027?
Tour as much as possible! I need to live in music again. I had taken a bit of a hiatus, and now I have over an album’s worth of music to record and want to get this next body of work out there. Also, collaborate more, possibly even build a 4-5-piece band; I just really want to feel that conduit to the gods of music, art, and creation, that flow state that you can only feel when you are truly living it!
What can folks expect from your performances at Blues at Bridgetown?
I will be sharing some of my released works and a lot of my new unreleased songs too! You can definitely expect radical authenticity, vulnerable storytelling, and a cascading river of emotions unlocked from the rawness of what I share with my arsenal of instruments and stories. Or, alternatively, expect to feel mild confusion and amusement… I hope you just get to feel something.