Kaz Hawkins - Memories Of (2020)

This is a special studio album my band recorded in February. An album to honour my touring show Memories of Etta James.

The story of Kaz has many wondering how she ever survived the trauma in her life but she puts it best herself saying ‘Music is the very thing that saved me when I sing I am in the safest place on earth. It replaces all the cruelty, shame and pain in my life so all I want to do now is sing for those still fighting’.

Multi award winning & always looking for different projects & collaborations, Kaz has three different projects running right now. Her hard hitting duo theatre show with special guest Sam York “My Life and I” takes the audience through Kaz’s life story and is her personal mental health mission.

After a two year break from band format, Kaz has returned with a new line up for Kaz Hawkins & her Band of Men who will begin European touring in 2020.

Kaz also launched “Memories of Etta” with nine top session musicians, recreating the life & times on stage of the Matriarch of the Blues, Miss Etta James. Especially created for Cognac Blues Passions in France, the show has had rave reviews and is now in demand across Europe.

An activist for Mental Health, Kaz has worked tirelessly for different charities over the years. She has been an official Ambassador at Aware NI, Northern Ireland’s Depression Charity and has completed library tours, given talks at Boston University, Florence Academy of Fine Arts in Alabama in special sessions where she told her life story using words and song to show how music can be used as a mental health tool. Kaz also visited prisons and schools in Beauvais, France at the invite of Le Blues Autour Du Zinc Festival.

Fans have come to love the many hats that Kaz wears, especially presenting her own radio show “Kaz Hawkins Got The Blues” on BBC Radio Ulster when she isn’t touring. Telling stories from her touring & new talent she comes across from around the world in a genre that has given her so much.

Kaz is an official ambassador of blues after she accepted an honorary membership of the UK Blues Federation whom she represented in the European Blues Challenge of 2017 where the UK won for the first time.