Blues in Bigton ?

Blues in Bigton? I immediately declare an interest here as having experienced quite a few on many a grey day, even one or two in the local hall’s former incarnation, but we won’t dwell on that.

The crowd was disappointing, probably only between 50 and 60. Even more so when you consider a third of that was made up of the organisers and the performers them­selves. But it was a night of excellent music and full marks to those who did bother to turn up.

Al Hughes is no stranger to the isles, having been on the bill in 2003 when the Shetland Blues Festival first began and making many subsequent appearances, either as a solo performer or with the band Lights Out By Nine.

With his easy humour and laid-back style Hughes is the kind of artiste you could listen to all night, whether belting out a Robert John­son standard such as Kind Hearted Woman or one of his own compos­itions, such as the wonderful All This Time or Never Never Land, written respectively about the war and his early experiences in London.

His finger-picking was the real deal, with some cunning riff changes on songs like Comes Out Blue, and the overall sound he creates has been compared to the late, great Rory Gallagher. I would second that.

Local outfit the Donald Anderson Band were up next and treated the audience to songs from their newly-released album, including the title track Passing On, the impressive Weathering and the harmonious In The Morning.

There was a favourable cover of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and, sticking with the same subject, Anderson’s new song The Road could have been straight out of the famous Delta bluesmen’s repertoire. The steady bass playing of Rick Nickerson, “feeling a bit nervous in his home town” but definitely not showing it, and the lead guitar skills of Alan McKay are the core, while young drummer Murray Arthur did a capable job standing in for regular sticksman Duncan Kidson.

One thing worth mentioning here, which is usually evident at blues festival gigs, is the way the visiting musicians watch, listen to and applaud each other and also the home-grown talent, not always the case at other comparable events.

Petite Welsh songstress Cherry Lee Mewis was an example, the little girl with the big voice having been bopping to the music long before her band got their turn.

Cherry was making her second appearance at the festival, and her raunchy vocals have got even better. She puts her “whole self” into the songs, she says – “I feel like I’m inside of them” – and that is quickly evident. Easy on both the eye and the ear, Cherry, whose voice is an interesting mixture of the raw power of Janis Joplin and the cultured skills of Doris Day, is a dynamic performer.

Two slick guitarists (Max Milli­gan on acoustic and Nicky Slater on steel), Robbie Mathews on upright bass and drummer Flow all contri­buted to a thunderous Midnight in Memphis, while Wade in the Water and Early in the Morning were both equally entertaining.

In her explanation of some of the songs it was at times difficult to make out what Cherry was saying, but we just about got the gist of her tale about being stuck 11 hours on the ferry between Aberdeen and Kirkwall and the consequent amount of drink consumed.

She ended in style with a superb version of [Another Little] Piece of My Heart, originally recorded by Erma Franklin (sister of Aretha), covered by Dusty Springfield and subsequently made even more fam­ous by Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company. Splendid stuff.

The only downside of the night was the raffle prize which came my way – dried pasta, a bottle of olive oil and some kind of wooden fork contraption! The first two number-holders called who were outside having a fag didn’t really lose out. I tried to change it for an Al Hughes CD but was politely told that was not possible.

But regarding the organisation full marks to Jimmy Carlyle and his willing band of helpers for making all this possible. The blues festival, completely contradicting its name, is a real feel-good weekend.

Ending a memorable evening in a place where half a century ago an odd tinkling of the ivories was as loud as music used to get were Gerry Jablonski and the Electric Band, who threatened to tear the former school down to its very founda­tions.

The little front man, who someone likened to a cross between Joe Pesci and Dudley Moore (perhaps with a bit of Ronnie Wood thrown in), was all over the place, the 1970s mop on the top of his head shaking as he stomped around the stage. Harmon­ica player Peter Narojczyk went even further, standing on a chair in the middle of the hall while belting out The Thing You Got.

Cold Outside may have been the song but the heat and intensity inside the building belied the modest num­ber in attendance, the applause at times deafening.

Shaggy-haired, bespactacled bass player Grigor Leslie was an absolute sensation, while the fact that Dave Innes called off sick made little dif­ference – they just called on the drummer from the Cherry Lee
band and he fitted seamlessly into proceedings.

With a voice that had shades of Paul Rodgers of Free, Jablonski was on rip-roaring form, and his lead-guitar/harmonica duelling with Narojczyk was a thing to behold.

“It’s our first time in Shetland,” explained Jablonski, to some mys­tified people who had been reading the programme notes. “Of course I was here in 1987 with Mojo Pep,” he quickly added.

“At the Simmer Dim Rally,” shouted a female member of the audience. Yes the oldies were out, and very appreciative they were too.

Jim Tait

Originally printed in The Shetland Times on 16 September 2011

The highs and lows of promoting live music in Shetland were very much in evidence on Saturday as the Shetland Blues Festival brought four top-quality acts to the stage of the Scalloway Hall.

The highs came in the exceptional quality of acts that the festival once again managed to secure to travel north, coupled with a local band that has fairly recently come to promin­ence and never fails to please. The lows came from the low numbers of people who attended, a difficult situation to explain, but more on that later.

The evening began with the laid-back style of the pertinently-named Sleepy Eyes Nelson; one man and his guitar, picked, plucked and bottlenecked. The minimal, low-tech struc­tured style of Nelson’s country blues tunes, mostly self-penned, and his faux-American singing style would be familiar to locals in its similarity to the sound of the late Thomas Fraser.

Delivering his music without exuberance, his lyrical content bears a strong root in the dust-bowls or river deltas and one could easily be mistaken in believing his own recent material had been around for a century. A genuine and likeable performer, while also being a well-honed professional from the Glasgow pub circuit, Sleepy Eyes hails from Ayrshire and enjoyed his time in Shetland sufficiently to plan a return at the first opportunity.

The Blue Melts were delayed in taking to the stage by that timeless rock ailment of the missing drummer. They are a local band with an exceptional stage presence and each member a great performer in their own right. Without overplaying their hand, they punch out a heavy, uncluttered, bass-heavy sound that is warm, personable and fills any venue.

Front man and bass player Ian Perry has a strong and expressive voice for the style of rock and blues they churn out, many of them 12-bar classics. Joined or replaced by guitarist Iain Malcolmson on vocals and, on this occasion, the solid lead guitar talents of Arthur Nicolson, The Blue Melts are a guaranteed quality act and worth watching out for.

The real delight of the night came from the whimsically named Earl Grey and the Loose Leaves. It’s hard not to gush about an act with this level of style, charisma, talent and and instantly likeable stage persona. Front man Corey Gibson deserves to become great, or greater than he already is, and the chemistry within the band is a pleasure to watch.

With boundless energy, character and expression, Gibson is a natural on vocals and harmonica, using both to a world-class standard. He apologised for the damage he’d done to his voice in three gigs in Shetland, deferring to guitarist Andy Stockdale to cover some of the set, but what he did sing was brilliant.

It is really refreshing to see a performer throw themselves headlong into their music and to clearly enjoy it this much. With howling, screaming harmonica lines, Gibson matches this instrumental extremity with an enviable gravel-driven rootsy voice, used with volumes of expression. Their material too warrants the highest praise, laden with emotion and musical progression. The mark of a good tune is one that takes you on a journey and that is what the Leaves achieve in abundance.

The Ramon Goose Band could best be described as technicians in this context. They launched into a set featuring prolonged guitar solos that were a showcase of technical skill, but perhaps lost the energy that the previous act had built in the sparse audience.

As the act continued, with vocals only coming three songs in, it could only be viewed as symptomatic to see a neighbour following the big tennis match on their smart phone during the early part of their performance.

As their set progressed, however, the Goose band wandered from this showcase set of tunes into classic Duke Ellington and then Jimmy Hendrix numbers that seemed to fit them more comfortably than what came before and brought out a bit of character in a previously flat display.

The donning of a 1960s wig by the drummer for the latter track was perhaps unnecessary but went some way to revealing that the band didn’t necessarily take themselves as seriously as it had come across thus far. The other influ­ence that came across as the set progressed, more so than the blues theme, were heavy jazz elements, exemplified by a minute-long drum solo that was similarly technically proficient, but may have been better received by a different audience.

There is no question that the Ramon Goose Band were expert musicians in every aspect, but not necessarily the best act to headline of the four on offer, with their playlist similarly not necessarily in the best order.

As to the limited crowd: well, the darts was on in Lerwick, perhaps a few more adverts and a bit more hype may have drawn more in. But it was good to see a wide range of ages in attendance in a venue that offered what one of the artists described as “the best sound I’ve ever had”, as he positively likened the crowd of around 40 people to “a good pub crowd”.

Hopefully numbers won’t deter the Blues Festival from including Scalloway on their programme in future, and Scalloway will draw the audience figures that this level of performers deserve.

Mark Burgess

Originally printed in The Shetland Times on 16 September 2011

Sunday night’s blues festival concert at the Lerwick Legion, billed as a celebration of Robert Johnson and the music from the Mississippi Delta, was originally intended to feature all the visiting acts.

Sadly the weather, or rather the supposed impending weather, put paid to that with Cherry Lee Mewis, the Ramon Goose Band and Gerry Jablonski and the Electric Band all deciding to leave on the boat 24 hours earlier than planned.

Maybe the influx of social net­working sites played a part, with scaremongering now a huge issue as Facebookers and Twitterers work each other into a jelly-like state over what may or not happen.

Whatever the case, everyone knows that Mon­day night’s storm never materialised, with the only thing resembling the back end of Hurricane Katya taking place in the Legion the previous evening.

The place was fairly well full as Sleepy Eyes Nelson took to the stage, his stripped-down brand of country blues being the ideal way to open what was still a hoped-for excellent night of top-notch music.

Sleepy Eyes, a young guy hailing from Ayrshire who sounds like he should be about 50 years older, went down well with the kind of appreci­ative crowd which the venue is well known for. Al Hughes was next up, doing most of the songs he did in the Big­ton Hall on Friday but this time adding the fabulous Candyman/Cincinatti Flow by the Reverend Gary Davis.

We may not have had the Ramon Goose Band but we had the Grey Goose Blues Band, a newish Mid­lands-based outfit featuring Welsh singer-songwriter and guitarist Frankie Williams, bassist Rufus T Watson and drummer James “Chuddy” Mitchell.

They treated the audience to a range of material from legends such as Mississippi John Hurt, T Bone Walker and Robert Johnson himself, along with a particularly poignant Mudslide, written by Williams about the Aberfan disaster which occurred when he was a boy growing up in South Wales.

Earl Gray and the Loose Leaves were led by singer and harmonica player Corey Gibson. Gibson, from Dumfries, was complaining that a weekend in Shetland had ruined his vocal chords, but no-one would have guessed as he forced his gravel-laden voice through a set list which had most folk on the edge of their chairs straining to get on the dance floor. Guitarist Andy Stockdale was also a stand-out.

The evening was rounded off with a jam session featuring most of Lewis Hamilton and the Boogie Brothers, joined at various stages by Frankie Williams, Al Hughes and Nicky Slater, guitarist from the Cherry Lee Mewis band. The whole evening was a resound­ing success, with as friendly and down-to-earth a selection of visiting artistes as has ever visited these shores, and a fitting climax to a festival which the organisers can be proud of.

Jim Tait

Originally printed in The Shetland Times on 16 September 2011

Online ticket sales are now available from the Shetland Box Office based in Islesburgh Community Centre in Lerwick.

Sorry for the delay in getting this together but hope that this makes it a bit easier for folk without a cheque book to purchase tickets.