How to pair Scottish whisky and music – as Rhythm and Booze Project launch record label

How do you pair music and drinks? Rosalind Erskine spoke to Felipe Schrieberg, co-founder of the Rhythm and Blues Project, about matching music and malt, and their newly launched record label.

Having a drink while listening to music spans centuries. Whether it’s at home, grabbing a few beers at the bar, drinks at gigs or summer festivals, many of us enjoy a tipple or two while listening to our favourite bands or songs.

But as more and more people look to spend their time and money on experiences, music and drinks pairings have become more mainstream. Last year Unusual Ingredients – Jacob Thompson-Bell, Adam Martin and Caroline Hobkinson – hosted an immersive experience performance, Sonica 2022, in Glasgow that showcased how music can impact taste and overall experience of food and drinks (to hear exactly how, listen to our Scran episode – it’s a eye-opener).

This country has also seen growth in music and whisky collaborations, with the Scotch Malt Whisky Society teaming up with DJ Vic Galloway to pair his favourite music with their whisky flavour profiles. More recently, musician and drinks expert Neil Ridley created a record with sounds from the Glen Scotia distillery, as part of their Campbeltown Malts Festival experience. This is not to mention famous names, such as Bob Dylan and Metallic, putting their stamp on limited edition bottles of whisky and bourbon.

The labels on the bottles will feature the band.

Someone that’s taken the music and drinks pairing one step further is whisky writer and musician Felipe Schrieberg. As one half of the Rhythm and Blues Project, which Schrieberg set up with friend and fellow musician Paul Archibald, the duo have this month launched Rhythm and Blues Records, and released a whisky to enjoy alongside a new song from the band.

So far, so simple, until you delve into the fact the whisky has been chosen to pair with this specific track. The record label, which will for now release the band’s songs to pair with drinks, will also look to work with other artists.

For Schrieberg, this latest move to combine whisky and music is a natural step for the band, which regularly organises hybrid gig whisky tastings, puts on blues and whisky-based theatre shows, performs at distilleries, and even built the world’s first bass drum out of an entire Scotch whisky cask.

But it’s also a way to support other musicians at a time when being one is very hard. He said: “It's tough for a musician to make a living now. Streaming is an exploitative mess. It's hard to make money off touring anymore, especially since Brexit.

Felipe Schrieberg, co-founder of the Rhythm and Blues Project, and fellow musician Paul Archibald

"The only way you can really do it is to be touring very, very heavily and finding a way to do it in a tough eco-system. Or you make it big on social media and you have to be savvy of that .And so with something like this [the record label], all of a sudden you're bypassing an exploitative music industry and that's something that is important to us, and that's why it's important for us to bring in other bands as well into this. It's a different way of looking at what music can be in these days, given the way the industry works.”

The journey into whisky and music, for Schrieberg, started in Edinburgh, where he lived for years before a move to London and now Poland. It was in Scotland he started touring with Paul and discovered Islay’s music and malts festival (Feis Ile), where the band played “some of the best gigs they’ve ever played”.

A lot of their early gigs on tour were done in exchange for accommodation, food and drams and, as Schrieberg explained, “we were living the dream”. “As the Rhythm and Booze Project, we're very much about the idea of educational spectacle,” he said. “We do all kinds of interactions in our shows. We do a whole section in the show, for example, where we make everybody sing along while we play, while we're educating them on what exactly single malt Scotch whisky means.

"As I'm turning it into a sing-along, it becomes very easy to remember what single malt Scotch whisky fully means. It sounds corny, but it actually works.”

The Rhythm and Booze Records #1: The Rhythm and Booze Project 13YO Single Sherry Butt Blended Malt.

It was in these educational parts of their shows the germ of the idea for the record label grew. “We do a bit during the last song of the show, and we're serving a peated whisky and the audience are not allowed to start drinking the whisky until we start playing the song, which is a very punchy final song,” Schrieberg said. 2All of a sudden you've got this combination of sound and peated whisky hitting that same time, which makes for something that's very, very cool.”

Schrieberg is an acclaimed whisky writer and Keeper of the Quaich, and has used his connections in the industry to select the drinks that will be paired with the music. The question on most people’s lips will be – how do you pair music and whisky?

“It’s about finding sounds that we think are going to fit,” Schrieberg said. “The whisky is sherry matured and, we’re 99 per cent sure, there is some peated whisky in that blend, which goes quite well with our music. We tried different samples and tested out what our recordings sounded like compared to when we tried with different whiskies, and we found that one just worked best – that combination of sort of white smoke and a rich slight dryness, which was our own subjective judgement on it.”

He added: “You have music that's exclusive to the spirit that is paired with the music. Or if you want to look at it the other way, you have a really, really lovely spirit that has music that's been picked to go with it.”

Felipe Schrieberg, co-founder of the Rhythm and Blues Project

Archibald said: “We create a pretty gritty, raucous sound, and in our performances we want our audience to be a part of that and enjoy it. We felt that the profile really manages to capture that in alcohol form. It’s quite rich and robust, but also surprisingly easy to drink.”

Schrieberg added: “It sounds pretentious, but I really do believe that we’re just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring the sensory possibilities from combining top quality spirits and music. We want to take this combination as far as we can, and provide an unforgettable experience to anyone that buys any of our bottles.”

For each release, the bottle's front label showcases the featured band, and on the back label there’s a QR code leading to a private link where the band's tunes are available to stream, download and to enjoy with the chosen spirit. The current release is a single cask 13-year old-blended malt matured in an ex-Oloroso sherry butt, bottled at 50% ABV with only 1050 bottles available. The next bottle release will be a rum, paired with some more new music. Rhythm and Blues Records may be a natural progression for Felipe and Paul, but it’s beating a path for more people to get into whisky and enjoy some new drinks as well as supporting musicians at a time when they need it most.

More information on Rhythm and Booze Records can be found at their website, https://rhythmandboozerecords.com/. The Rhythm and Booze Project will be performing 2 Guys, 3 Drams: The Ultimate Live Blues and Whisky Experience from August 10-26 at the Edinburgh Fringe.