If you can get tickets for Funke and The Two Tone Baby’s gig with Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer this week for the Maidstone Fringe Festival, you’ll be glad you did.

Medway-based Funke - real name Dan Turnbull - is on the up and admits it’s a welcome surprise for him.

Having started out gigging in pubs around Margate it was the fringe’s organiser Clive Austen who first got him a gig in Maidstone. Since then, he has played the festival every year, but tours across the UK and Europe and at festivals all over.

Funke said: “I have grown up very publicly doing what I do. This has been my full time job for seven years. But it is only in the last two years I have really started to take off. In the last year I have attempted to take it to the next stage. I have people coming to my shows from Newcastle - it’s ridiculous.

“It just goes to show how time and progression can help audiences. When I first started playing there were one of two people. Now people can’t get in! It has been a fascinating couple of years.”

So how does he define the music he makes?

“I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I am kind of genre-less,” he said. “My act incorporates a vast array of stuff. Elements of funk and blues, drum ‘n’ bass It has energy and a groove. My music is groovy and funky and I play six instruments at once.”

So what about the name?

“I just came up with it,” he said. “I thought ‘it’s ridiculous enough to work’.

“People find me very hard to pin down. They ask about my name. ‘So Funke and the Two Tone Baby... you play funk and two tone?’ ‘Well, no not really’. Then they say ‘what music do you play?’ I say ‘I don’t really know’.

“I love the confusion it brings up. It is intriguing.”

Funke’s latest album, Denizen, which was released last year, was his third.

He will be playing a range of music, including some of his latest, at the Music Room on Thursday, May 2, when he will support UK chap-hop pioneer, Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer. Also on the bill is Maidstone artist Clea Llewellyn. Tickets cost £12.

DETAILS

Maidstone Fringe Festival runs at a range of venues across Maidstone until Bank Holiday Monday, May 6. To book for the ticketed events go to pizzaexpresslive.com or by calling 0207 4394962. For more details go to maidstonefringe.com

Read more: All the latest music news across Kent