Press - 2005
Blues Festival 2005
THE SECOND Shetland Blues Festival is just about ready to rock the isles at the end of the month, with a star-studded line-up once again.
Headlining this year are Nine Below Zero, a band whose reputation and credentials speak for themselves.
Nine Below Zero are brilliant live, they work so hard, the audience often go home as exhausted as the band. They have carved out a very creditable niche, a place they will be for a very long time to come because . . . who else is this good?
NBZ are the viable alternative to Alternative, a band that most definitely come to play, a band with their own genuine sound and deep understanding of their musical roots. NBZ have a tireless spirit, no regrets, no excuses, no messin’.
In support there are some more of the finest blues practitioners available today: GoGo Blues, recent winners of the Faroese Battle of the Bands contest and voted Best Band in the Prix Føroyar 2005, the incomparable Hangover Blues Band fresh from Montreaux, Tom Hanway and Delta Croft Review, who have the much-anticipated release of their second album, Fort Worth to Fort William, due for release at the beginning of July.
The Shetland Blues Festival will be at the epicentre of the album-launch tour, when the band should be at the peak of their form. This new album has a greater emphasis on western swing blues.
Claude Bourbon (a superb and unique performer), Ray Stubbs (an amazing one man blues band) and Joshua Blue complete the line-up of visiting artistes.
For local support there is No Sweat, Matt Vinyl, The Rumshack Blues Band (with a new EP, ladies and gentlemen – get it before it sells out), Red Hot & Blue.
And last but not least, making live blues debuts and never seen before are The Jillian Isbister Blues Band and Two Pot Screamer (a six-piece line-up with combined ages you could not retire on). As a spokesman for the organisers said: “Trust us, these are two acts you will not want to miss.”
A full itinerary for the festival, which starts on 24th June, and details of the venues will be available soon. For more details see the new and improved website at http://www.blues festival.shetland.co.uk.
Tickets for the two main concerts are already on sale and available at Clive’s Records, High Level Music and Moonies Wake – get yours soon, they are selling fast.
All other venues are either pay at the door or free.
The spokesman said: “We all look forward to seeing you at the concerts and would like to thank all the sponsors and all the other folks who are helping out in many ways.”
Blues Festival 2005
WHEN it comes down to it the blues is music for men, it seems, and not very young ones at that. Why I don’t know. After all it’s the foundation on which popular music is built.
Maybe us blokes find comfort in the solid predictability of its form, the familiar circular grind of the chords, the inevitable soaring solo, the weary words on life’s big issues – drink, death, hound dogs and bad women. Maybe that’s also why a lot of women find it all rather dull and unattractive.
I suppose if blues was a motorbike it might be a deep-throated, oil-spattered ‘50s Triumph Bonneville rather than some stylish Italian stallion or thrill-packed Japanese speed machine.
Yet there’s so much more to it than merely chugging away on the old 12-bar “Woke up this mornin” trick. From its solid base the blues explores every recess and pinnacle of human life and musical possibility. In the flesh and in your face it can be an exhilarating experience.
But enough of such twaddle. Let’s get down to it. Kicking off the festival at Baroc on Friday afternoon was innovative French guitarist and singer Claude Bourbon and two or three dozen laid-back onlookers. Dressed in black with flowing brown locks and battered cowboy boots, he looked the part as he perched on a barstool to strum his battered Gibson acoustic.
A few songs in and he veered off on an instrumental voyage lasting 15 minutes which gripped the bar in its spell. It was so mesmerising I could barely keep my eyes open.
This was top-drawer entertainment in a great setting and it was free. The blues festival organisers have to be warmly commended for the amount of stuff they laid on without charge.
If the artistes are up to scratch then it’s a great way of sucking people into the event. Hopefully it paid off for them in last-minute tickets bought by the newly converted. But there again, with there being no charge for 16 of the 27 gigs over the weekend it would have been easy to get more than <\n>your fill without stumping up a cent.
Paying a flying visit to the Norscot Angling Club later on Friday night to check out the Hangover Blues Band, there seemed to be something missing. The band cranked out hot and dirty pub blues and the 30-odd punters were rippin’ it up on the dancefloor. Yet I felt like I was in church. There was a distinct absence of sleaze and we headed off looking for a night that was a little less clean-cut.
On Saturday the sun shone on the pier in Lerwick and it was safe to leave the Helly Hansens home for once. The hundreds who turned out had happy summer faces on and that wonderfully positive vibe of a community day out spread far and wide, taking in the beer-drinking Norwegians relaxing on their yachts and the busy cooks grilling up gorgeous-smelling scallops on the barbecue.
Last on the back of the lorry-cum-stage to give it laldy were No Sweat, the Yell legends who broke up forever two years ago but have hardly stopped playing since. Apparently when Big Davie called it a day as drummer there was a mix-up on the bush telegraph: he might have gone over to The Rumshack Blues Band but the rest were intent on playing on. I left the pier to the riff and chorus of Bulletproof and it has been replaying inside my head ever since.
This year I was only dipping in and out of the festival here and there and with some dreadful timing, managed to catch as many breaks in the concerts or bands finishing up as I did performances in full flow. Tom Hanway spent so long flogging his wares and signing CDs in The Noost late on Saturday afternoon that I never got to hear him at all. Eventually a seasoned female blues fan got up to sing with him and brought the house down. The look of disbelief on the face of Tommy Henry, the publican, said it all.
Along the road at Baroc there was the strange sight of Ray Stubbs and his one-man band. Les Scott and a table of older blues veterans sat transfixed in the corner as the veteran long hair battered away on bottleneck guitar, moothie and assorted accompaniments ranging from bass pedals to drums. It was so loud and sometimes so shrill I couldn’t handle it and his undoubted charms largely passed me by.
While Claude Bourbon had shown moments of genius on Friday, Joshua Blue was burning hot and bright all night on Saturday. This was another freebie concert and again in the civilised environs of Baroc. Terry Leith had convinced me they had to be seen after he was blown away in Brae the previous night when his band, The Vinyls, did the support slot.
This was boisterous hard blues rock with a funky edge delivered to perfection by four guys locked in perfect synch. The drumming was exhilarating, the lead guitar crisp and edgy. Oh, it was loud but we were loving it and so it seemed was Joshua himself, the only black performer to grace the stage over the weekend, I believe.
He only turned on to the blues after he had grown up and grown out of hip hop and heavy metal. The product of a preacher mother from the Dominican Republic and blues harmonica father from Chicago, he discovered his voice in the old blues records his father had loved. As he said, he used to think blues was “a pre-historic music” but “how wrong can a man be!”
Nine Below Zero were the famous names who flew in from London and blew the British Legion away with their Dr Feelgood-style new wave RnB. When I squeezed into that dark, humid cauldron towards the end of their set what struck me was how delirious with joy everyone was. The dance floor was pinned, a sea of big grins and sweaty bodies. It was obvious this had been the festival’s gig of gigs, sold out with satisfaction delivered in spades.
Doubtless there were those who couldn’t hum any of their songs but there were some who had lived an important part of their lives to their rollicking blues a full quarter century ago. Tom GTL Gray from Skeld was one who used to cram into a tiny house in the centre of town all those years ago to bounce around the armchairs to the pounding electric blues of the band’s first album from 1980, Live at the Marquee.
It seems that the blues often doesn’t deliver quite the same when recorded in the studio – a bit like those folk bands who blow you away at the festival but fail to emulate the high when you stick on the CD back home.
As Tom and others agreed, the blues is best as a living creature. Congratulations to the committed band of enthusiasts who have made it their mission to convert us. I think we now understand where you’re coming from.
John Robertson
© The Shetland Times Ltd