The Senie Hunt Project is a blues rock band based out of New Hampshire, with more recent ties to Nashville. Before moving down south, Senie grew up in Bradford and played extensively across the state, developing his dynamic guitar playing style. His technique has a percussive quality to it, blending together driving rhythms and soaring melodies. Senie recently stopped by NHPR’s Studio D to talk about his music, and about his move to Nashville.
You have an incredible ability. And for those listening, I imagine hearing you play, they're probably thinking there are three people in that room. You have this percussive acoustic guitar playing [style]. Tell me about how you got started playing.
Senie Hunt: So I actually was a percussion player first.
I played the djembe, which is a West African hand drum. I was adopted from Sierra Leone, West Africa – 5 or 6 years old when I got here. Um, and I was adopted with my twin sister and when we were there, we were in an orphanage. It was just a place to keep us safe from the war (the civil war that was going on there at the time). And, uh, both my sister and I used art and music as a creative outlet to just cope with trauma, and to drown out all the noise that was caused by the war at the time.
I came to the US as a drummer, and when I think I heard James Taylor – [that] was the first time I really heard a guitar and recognized it and was like, ‘oh, that's that's a cool instrument!’
At the time, my parents or my mom – I asked her what it was and she said it was a guitar. And then I said I wanted one, and by the next, I think probably the next holiday, Christmas or whatever it was, I ended up with a guitar. And I had no idea what to do with it except drum on it. So I spent a lot of time just kind of figuring out things with the strings, and then I just kind of learned mostly from watching Jimi Hendrix videos, Steve Ray Vaughan, the Allman Brothers, B.B. King, and all the great blues artists of the day. And, I was inspired to keep playing by that. And my dad showed me a few chords that helped me kind of get a little further into the guitar.
So, a kid born in Sierra Leone, growing up in rural New Hampshire, absorbing all of this stuff from great blues players, great guitar players in general, your dad kind of turning you on to all of this. For you, when you started forming bands and wanting to play out with people, who are you looking to play with? What were you looking for in terms of like, where did you want to be a Blues player? Did you want to be rock punk? What were you looking to do?
I always wanted to play whatever I wanted to play, if that makes any sense. I didn't want to focus on blues, but I loved blues when it came to forming the band. I had the project, The Senie Hunt Project. It sort of was mostly a natural progression. We got together a few times. My friend Chris Laliotis who plays drums, Curtis Arnett. At the time he was playing bass, but he's my sax player now, and we had showed up at Market Days and I said, ‘Hey, if you have your instruments, let's just jump on and play with me.’ And that was our first performance. And then we had another one at Nicky's, and then we got our bass player Chip Spangler from Andrew North and the Rangers, and he jumped on bass so Curtis could jump on sax. And then it just sort of started growing from there.
Well, you've got –there's a lot of great local talent. That's incredible when you look around. But when you find players like that and you can add all those different textures, different instrumentation, you can go anywhere.
Yep. And they're all from other bands, too, that are very different styles, varying instrumentation.
You’ve spent a lot of time down in Nashville. Living down in Nashville?
Yes.
Tell me about that. Why? Why Nashville and what's it done for you?
I moved to Nashville three years ago now. Almost exactly, I think at the time of this broadcast. I moved down initially because I wanted to see the industry, and experience the business side of music.
But also, you know, I grew up here and never got used to the winter. I'll be the first to admit I don't think I ever accommodated– the snow was not very accommodating for me. So I wanted to move somewhere a little bit warmer. Also for me, it was diversity. You know, New Hampshire's not the most diverse state, but there's some things coming up here. And I love the Multicultural Festival. I always love coming back for that. But I just needed to be in a place where I could kind of experience diversity, because what I was realizing on a personal level, I met people like me who were black and I almost I didn't know how to interact because I grew up with, you know – my family's white; most of the school I went to were white. And so when I came into the bigger world and met people like me, I felt kind of distant from that connection. And it's been great.
