In the vibrant world of blues-rock, Kris Barras stands out not just for his ferocious guitar riffs and soulful vocals but also for his relentless drive to innovate. Fresh off the success of the Kris Barras Band and their UK Album Charts No 5 UK smash Halo Effect, Kris is now channelling his creative energies into a new project, Hollow Souls. With a self-titled EP on its way, and a highly anticipated October tour on the horizon, Barras is set to embark on an electrifying new chapter in his musical journey. We catch up with Kris to get the full story behind this incredible project.

The self-titled new EP From Hollow Souls is absolutely incredible – 6 wholly outstanding tracks – and it’s due for release on 10th October, and the anticipation has been building over the last few months as you’ve released three singles so far, and I’d like to focus first on how this project came about. As the Kris Barras Band you’ve released 5 incredible albums, with album 4, Death Valley Paradise reaching number 27 in the UK albums chart and the latest album, 2024s Halo Effect, reaching number 5. This just shows enormous growth and success and therefore, thinking about the timing, what inspired you to shift to do this new project, Hollow Souls, when people may have expected you to ride the crest of the wave and focus specifically on the next step for the Kris Barras Band?

I mean, the KBB is not going anywhere. There’s still lots going on. This year we played 3 of the biggest festivals we ever played. We did Rock Am Ring, Rock The Park and we did Rock For People with Guns N’ Roses as well. There’s still so much going on. I’m writing a new album at the moment too. The thing is, we did a lot off the back of the Halo Effect album. We probably did more headline shows in the UK than any other rock band and I just needed to have a little bit of a step back. We did a lot of shows and sometimes you’ve got to go away for a bit in order to come back, you know? KBB is firmly in the rock world now as a hard rock band. I still love playing the blues and things but there’s much more to me than being like one-dimensional. I’ve always played lots of different styles of music throughout my life and I’ve been playing guitar for 35 years now. So it’s important for me just to be able to grow in different ways and not stick to one thing as a performer, songwriter and a player. I wanted to do something more in the bluesy world. I was doing a lot with Supersonic Blues Machine, an American-based band, but it’s been really hard to get stuff going with that over the past few years. So I want to see something a little bit different, and I’m always writing stuff. I had a whole heap of riffs and chord ideas and different things. When I first started jamming with the Hollow Souls I wasn’t really sure what it was going to end up becoming. I got together with some friends, obviously Josiah (Manning) – Hollow Souls is both our band – he plays with me in KBB, he’s my long-term producer and best friend, and we got together and jammed. We got some friends of ours, like top session players, together and we just kind of jammed out, and we weren’t really sure what was going to happen. Who’s going to be singing? Are we going to get guests involved and if so which guests? But we got together and jammed out rhythm section stuff and we literally recorded everything live. Everything you hear on the EP, or at least a couple of songs, it’s only like the second or third time we’ve ever played it all the way through. We were literally just in the studio jamming and then it was a case of ‘right, hit record and let’s see what happens’. There is no overdubs at all other than some keyboard parts and guitar solos. Then we were working out other stuff like who are we going to get to front it? I didn’t personally want to be the lead singer in this. I do sing a couple of songs but Phoebe Jane ended up becoming our first choice. I’ve been friends with her for a long, long time and she sang backing vocals on my early albums as well, she toured with me on the Light It Up tour. She’s an incredible vocalist but she’s not really done much in the original music world so it’s good to give an opportunity to come up front. Everything just kind of fell in place and then I got in touch with a few different friends of mine in the music industry about doing some special guest slots. It just came from there really!

The wonderful thing about Hollow Souls for the fans is that there are, as you have suggested, strong connections to the Kris Barras Band that go beyond just yourself. You mentioned your former backing singer Phoebe Jane there. She has a phenomenal voice and I love the fact that this is something that you wanted her to be a part. How important was it for you to give Phoebe the spotlight and for the world to see her incredible talents front and centre?

I always think that she’s almost been like a wasted talent. There’s lots of people like that out there like that and it’s very hard to make it in the music industry and to get anywhere, and it’s not always down to how good you are. But she’s an incredible vocalist and probably not really had the chance to do much in the original music world. She plays in a lot of function bands and different things like that and I’ve taken her on tour to do backing vocals for me, but someone with her level of talent deserves to be seen. It’s great to be able to give her a platform to show what she can do and maybe she can build her own career off the back of it which is great.

I think the wonderful thing about this new record is how it’s a hugely collaborative affair and it’s a record that sees you bringing in artists that collectively represent a fantastic snapshot of what’s great about modern rock music, and I’d just like to explore some of these. On the debut single Borderline you brought in Power Blues legend Jared James Nichols who provided some wonderful plectrum-free lead lines and fills. What were you specifically looking for from a guitar perspective on this track and what made you choose to contact Jared?

When we recorded the song, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen with it, whether I would just end up doing the solo parts and we weren’t even sure who was going to end up singing it and whether there was going to be a guest vocalist or not. But once I’d sent the track to Phoebe and got her singing on it, it sounded great. And then I was looking for a guitar player. I toyed around with maybe getting a slide player because I thought that could be quite cool, but then Jared has just got this really unique style. Like you said, he plays without a plectrum and some of his licks are almost like slide licks in nature anyway. I just felt like his style fit perfectly. We’ve never actually met but we both knew of each other and we’ve got a lot of mutual friends in the industry, so I literally just shot him a message on Instagram and sent him a demo version of the track and I asked him if he fancied laying some licks down. He said yes, absolutely that he would love to, and what he sent back was absolutely amazing! We didn’t have to touch it or chop anything up or change it. It was just phenomenal! He was the perfect choice really.

The sheer class, power and excitement of this record is beautifully demonstrated within the track shotgun which features John Harvey who many people will know from the band Monster Truck. It’s an absolutely incredible track and it was wonderful to see all the amazing feedback from the fans who said things such as ‘this tune kick some serious ass, another Banga, this is bloody amazing, mind blowing’, and the list of incredible comments just goes on and on. I know that you’d been talking about writing a song with Marv for a long time. When you and Josiah were working on the music, did you write Shotgun specifically with John in mind and if so what sort of key ingredients were needed to press the right buttons and secure his involvement?

None of the songs were written with any guests in mind. Like I said, we just got the rhythm section down and Josiah and I had an idea for a chorus that actually included the word ‘shotgun’. We sent that over to John and said “Look, this is what we’ve got, we’re not precious about anything, if you want to come up with your own chorus or anything like that, we just wondered if this was something that you wanted to be involved in?” And then he was like “I love this, I’ve got lots of ideas let me get something down and I’ll get back to you. And then he didn’t take long – within a few days he sent like a voice note back of him singing over the track and we just absolutely loved it! So he ran with what we did with regards to Shotgun but he actually came up with his own chorus, his own verses and ended up writing all that side of things. We just absolutely loved it and he’s a phenomenal talent! I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time. We met when he played at Wembley with Black Stone Cherry back in 2018 and then we just loosely kept in touch via social media and stuff over the years. It was just perfect. What he sent back we just absolutely loved. When you get people like this involved, I don’t want to give them directions. I want them to put their own stamp on things. If there was something particular I wanted, I’d probably just do it myself. When you’re getting people like this calibre involved, you want them to have their own stamp on it and their own character, and that’s really important for me. What he came back with was nothing like I could’ve ever imagined. That’s not how I thought the song would go but we absolutely loved it. He took it to a whole other level!

Your latest single Bad Things see you joining forces with Chris Tapp, the driving force behind acclaimed band The Cold Stares. You’ve talked in the past how you’ve been waiting for the right track to work on together to drop out of your head and you knew that when you sent it to him he would take the song up 10 notches. For me, he just brings this incredibly passionate but cool vibe to Bad Things, but tell me how it felt when you heard his amazing contribution and also how you feel he has transformed this track.

Bad Things was the first song that I kind of finished for this project. I had lots of different ideas and lots of scraps but Bad Things was one of the first. The idea was to have a Phoebe singing the whole track and I was playing around with a few different verse ideas, but then I wanted to get Chris involved. Again, we’ve been friends for a few years, we met on Joe Bonamassa‘s Blues Cruise, and again we kept in touch on Instagram and stuff and I love what he does. Like you said, he’s got such a cool vibe. His vocal tone and his style of singing is just a really, really cool modern blues style. So though I had a few ideas for the verse and things with Phoebe, I wanted to get a guest involved. I sent it over to Chris with some loose ideas for the verse, but again, I said “Look man, there’s no pressure, the chorus is there but we need something for the verses, if you want to put your own stamp on it? “. He loved the track and he loved the chorus as well. He didn’t want to touch the chorus. He came up with some verse ideas, he wrote the lyrics with that too in line with the meaning of the song from the chorus. So it was a great collaborative effort. He sent it back and it was completely different to what I originally had in mind. I absolutely loved it! And as I said, it’s about them putting their own stamp on the song. There’s no point getting someone involved to sing like I would sing. I want him to seeing how he sings.

I mentioned earlier that this record is one that is, in terms of the collaboration and who’s involved, wonderfully representative of the incredible talent of the music rock music scene of today. But I also think it’s one where the results are so incredibly strong because the built not just on musical talent but also friendships and mutual respect. For example, Elles Bailey has always talked about what a hugely supportive and active friend you are, even quietly supporting her in the background in the creation of her music videos, so it was wonderful to see Elles featuring on the track Burn It To The Ground, and of course she has done an absolutely incredible performance. To what extent would you agree that such friendships can create even stronger results and what does it mean to have Elles Bailey feature on the Hollow Souls debut EP?

Yes I think it’s great. Music brings people together, right? These are all people that I’ve met through music and these collaborations are a great thing to do. With Elles, there’s been a thing online where we’ve got a lot of mutual fans. She’s opened up for me on tour quite a few years ago now back when I was more in the blues rock world, so we’ve got a lot of mutual funds, and there’s been lots of comments online where people have said they would love to see us do a track together. Obviously people know that we worked together with me producing videos for her and I did a mini documentary for her on her the last album (Beneath The Neon Glow – Ed) . With the way the Kris Barras Band is now, it just wouldn’t work and it’s not suitable, so when Hollow Souls came around she was one of the first people I thought about contacting. Again, I didn’t really have a song in mind at the time. Burn It To The Ground was initially going to be probably Phoebe singing it. But as the song developed, I’d written a chorus and had a few ideas for the verse, and I sent it to Elles and asked if this was something she’d be interested in. She really liked it and I gave her the option where I said I could either write it for her or if she wanted to get involved and if she had the time then we could get together and co-write it. And that’s what we did. We got together on a Zoom call and we worked on it together. I had the main chorus written but we did change a few words but that’s what came out. It was a great thing to do and an honour to have her involved. It’s also great to see the progression of her career over the past few years. She’s really excelled and she’s done really well because she crosses a lot of different genres. She’s done really well in the UK blues scene, the Americana scene and maybe the softer end of the rock scene as well. She’s just done a great job and it’s really good to see.

Let’s talk about Hollow Souls in a live setting because throughout October and November you will be playing 20 dates across the UK, most of them without even having a day off. How do you prepare for and survive a tour of this magnitude?

I’m very used to it now. When we did the My Parade tour, it was like 28 dates in around 32 days. For me, this tour is going to be pretty easy because I don’t sing that much! (Laughs!) I always find that it’s the singing that’s the hardest bit, because if you get a bit of a cold or something like that, it gets it a little bit stressful. With KBB, I write a lot of songs that are at the top of my vocal range so if I get a cold, it can get a little bit stressful on certain songs and I have to do a lot of voice rest and I have to take very good care of myself. With this tour, I’m only going to be singing a few songs so I will be able to relax a bit more! It’s Phoebe who is going to be up against it! (Laughs!) She hasn’t been the lead singer on a tour like this before so all the pressure is going to be on her. I’m just going to be able to chill out, play a bit of guitar and have a bit of fun! But that’s what the tour is about. We’re going to be jamming out and having a lot of fun. The band are all incredible world-class players and it’s got just going to be a lot of good fun!

As if things couldn’t get any better fans also get to enjoy Troy Redfern who will be joining you on all dates. What does it mean to have Troy out with you on this tour?

I’ve known Troy for a long long time now, in the early days, coming up through the UK blues scene and he’s a great guy! It will be really good to have him out on the road and it would be good to get him up and do a bit of jamming. I haven’t spoken to him yet but it would be good to get him up and do a little bit of a jam with us. So we’ll see if we can make that happen! But he’s a great guy whose career has had some fantastic progression over the years, and it’s great to have him on board!