Bo Bruce Interview

 

Savernake Estate, with its 4,500 acres of the only privately owned forest in Britain and grand stone Grade 1 listed palladium mansion sounds like the ideal place to live. A childhood surrounded by stunning scenery, opulent landscapes and a historical family heritage may appear to be the perfect setting but the reality for Bo Bruce was far from the idyllic state people assume it would have been. “All that was affluent and impressive was just face you know. All these tragic things are happening against massive backdrops; that’s the only way I can describe it. The horror scene that might happen on a side street in Eastenders was happening in our world but with a different backdrop.”

When Bo was first exposed to the British public on The Voice last year people soon learnt that even though she had a title, Lady Catherine Brudenell-Bruce, and came from aristocratic heritage that trouble didn’t find it’s ways into her home. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, the most terrible things happen to anyone and everyone. All I know is that’s true no matter where you come from and people are beginning to get that, but yeah there were definitely people who where like ‘how can anything bad happen to you when the back drop was so impressive?”

Born in 1984 to the Earl of Cardigan David Brudenell-Bruce and Rosamond Winkley, Bo was brought up on Savernake Estate but an ideal childhood crumbled around her, much like the 19^th Century Lodge her father now lives in is reportedly crumbling around him. Last year Bo took out a restraining order against her father and now isn’t allowed to legally talk about him, her voice drops to barely more than a whisper as she address this point. “I’m not officially allowed to utter a word about my dad. I just can’t.”  As Bo stays quiet on the matter her father hasn’t been quite so discreet and has given several interviews about his daughter but never once alluded to what lead up to the separating of their relationship. His troubles with his children, Bo’s brother Thomas James Brudenell-Bruce - Viscount Savernake, who is also estranged from his father, isn’t the only battle he is facing at the moment. He is currently engaged in a long running battle with the trustees of the estate that has included being taken to court twice charged with criminal damage, theft and assault although he has never been convicted. 

Before appearing on the Voice Bo was a finalist in the Orange Unsigned Competition in 2009 but notes that the show was completely different to her later TV appearance “we were shoved on tour and there were cameras and it was very sort of off the cuff, it was cool and very laid back. The Voice was much more studio based and lots of interviews that took up all your time.” After the Orange Unsigned Competition Bo was offered publishing deals but decided to concentrate on her song writing, releasing an independent EP, Search the Night in 2010. As an artist she was already establishing herself and working out what she stood for when she appeared on the ITV show and immediately after she filmed the blind auditions sat down with a producer to work out whether she had made the right choice by signing up to the show. “I had a vision already and I wanted to make sure they were aware of that and not going to make me take things off line. I had management and a publishing deal and lots of things I just didn’t have exposure, which was why I was keen to do it but they assured me that I could do that and they stuck to their word.” The fact that she already had her own style and was writing her own songs stopped her from contemplating doing the X-Factor or something similar “I did the Voice because I saw how much control I could have but there is no way you could do that on other shows.”

Although Bo came second on the show, not winning isn’t something that she regrets “some very strange things happened to me circumstantially that just wouldn’t have happened had I had to live the life of the winner of that show.” Referring to the chance meeting with Coldplay’s agent at one of their gigs after she mistook him for a bouncer and he expressed an interest in working with her. That wasn’t the only fateful encounter that night as “the real deal about that night was meeting Jonny Quinn and Gary Lightbody from Snowpatrol because they took me on-board and started writing with me and signed me to their publishing company and became mentors and friends and that sort of affected everything and that was purely having a beer watching Coldplay.”

As Bo’s musical career was taking the leaps she had hoped for her personal life was dealt a shattering blow when her mother passed away from pancreatic cancer shortly after the show ended. She credits the people she worked with on her album as helping her cope with the dichotomy of the last twelve months, particularly Henry Binns of Zero7, and Jonny Quinn and Jonny McDaid from Snow Patrol. “I found making the record was made a lot easier by the people I was surrounding myself with, people I worked with became dear friends. I had to do two processes; I had to do an album and go through all the emotions that I was going through. If all those people had just been work colleagues it wouldn’t have worked for me, I had to make connections with those people so that they became friends and family.”

Tellingly the first single off the album is entitled ‘Save Me’, the video depicting Bo balancing on a rock in lake, her vulnerability palpable. The ending of the video suggests that her saviour doesn’t come in the shape of the expected male companion but herself.  “I’m alright, my feet keep walking but I am aware that there is a huge void that I am still trying to fill, perhaps I am filling that with my career, I’m not sure. I feel much younger than I am, which is difficult because I’m not 12 I’m 28.” Although clearly still struggling with the past year she doesn’t give off the impression of someone feeling sorry for herself but instead using it to acquire a new sense of fate “The timing of what’s happened to me you couldn’t even write it. All the good and all the bad that has happened at the same time, things have been there to soften the blows.”

As the show that propelled her into the public sphere resumes for a second season Bo is off on tour but her weekly performances didn’t quash her nerves about performing. “I’m always terrified because I don’t like talking to lots of people at once so I don’t really know why I have chosen this career. I sort of go in and out of my head a lot and that’s another thing I am trying to work on, one minute being really present and then being a bit loopy and not really there because I am so stressed. Just before going on stage is a weird time for me, particularly on The Voice I used to have these very strange out of body experiences where I never really remembered I sort of felt like I was taking LSD but I wasn’t. The point is I just disassociate under pressure, which I have been doing since I was a kid actually.”

Having experienced a year that swung between trauma and the musical recognition she has been courting for years, Bo isn’t putting too much thought into where her life is headed. All she hopes for is that her album is “received well by the people who I want to receive it” and to continue drawing from a new found strength she wasn’t aware she had “That I’m stronger than I figured, things have gone on that I didn’t think I would live beyond and I am still breathing and walking and eating and sleeping and functioning, and that has surprised me.” In fact Bo has done more than simply just function, she has poured her emotions into her new album and carried on fighting to distance herself from her aristocratic roots and demons of the past, whether she will be able to one day tell her story in its entirety remains a question for the future. In the meantime Bo hopes to live in every moment “I spend a lot of time aching about my past or freaking out about the future I often miss what’s actually going on in my current state.” 

Published in Yorkshire Post Magazine, Yorkshire Evening Post & Metro