Recorded backstage after closing night three of Station Street Festival 2025, this is one of the most personal and wide-ranging interviews of the entire festival. Shirley Davis — British soul powerhouse, frontwoman of Shirley Davis and The Silverbacks — sits down while still glowing from a performance that set Plovdiv on fire.

She opens by revealing she's 51, proud of every year, and that her 30-year-old daughter is in Australia. From there, the conversation moves through her first-ever visit to Plovdiv and Bulgaria, the feeling of a crowd that danced with her until the very last note, and a characteristic moment of disarming honesty: she didn't come to put on a show — she just came to share.

The interview turns deeper when Shirley traces the lineage of artists who shaped her. Growing up on Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings was what brought her to Spain in the first place. She worked with Asaka Manabe from Japan, Lee Fields, and still speaks with reverence about Charles Bradley and Tina Turner. But the name that comes up with the most emotion is Aretha Franklin — whose voice Shirley didn't even know she could sing until her first band, Grand Mizooh, showed her. When Aretha died, interviewers called Shirley for comment, and she says simply: "She saved my life."

The conversation touches on filming her band before stepping on stage, the 24 years she spent in Australia dreaming of returning to Europe, and the Tina Turner musical in Madrid she almost joined — before laughing that she doesn't speak Spanish, and that acting and singing are entirely different worlds.

Shirley closes with a vision: she believes she'll be impactful and leave something memorable. The interviewer's response: you already do.

A fourth album is on the way. 2026, look out.

Funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. Station Street Festival, implemented under procedure BG-RRP-11.016 "Presentation of contemporary European productions from the CCI sector to Bulgarian audiences".