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Blues Festival: Full day of blues to be had in the
town
A FULL day of blues was to be had in Lerwick.
Starting at the pier and the sun starting to come out caught
Delta Croft Review, no strangers to Shetland.
They played a fine mixture of blues, western swing and folkabilly
from there new album Fort Worth to Fort William which is well worth
a listen. A fair sized crowd on the pier showed there appreciation
and I even saw some dancing going on which was a good sign.
Next on the agenda was Tom Hanway and Mike O'Conner in the Noost.
Tom is from New York but is now based in Ireland, originally a banjo
player he was playing blues from his Badbelly album. Tom took the
audience through a musical journey around America explaining where
the blues he played came from and a little history of the players.
Mike O'Conner from Limerick has been playing with Tom for over a
year now and provided excellant accompaniment on harmonica. Tom's
pickin on the acoustic was everything you want to hear on an
acoustic guitar.
GoGo Blues from Faroe are a young blues band and play electric
blues in the style of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix. With
extended guitar solos and a solid rhytm section this was good music
to start an evening moving from pub to pub to catch the various
bands on offer.
GoGo Blues won the Prix Føroyar 2005, which is a music
competition in Faroe in March this year, just over a year after
geting together as a band. They released there first album in
December 2004. Check out the website www.prix.fo to see and here
GoGo Blues in action. Their own website is at www.
gogoblues.com.
Next up was Joshua Blue at Baroc, although they suffered with
microphone problems during the first set the guitar playing was
again the best I've seen in a while. Joshua Blue was trading licks
with Paul Garner they played a stormer of a first set. And according
to reports I heard later on the second set was even better.
Joshua Blue originally played heavy metal and moved into hip-hop
untill he discovered his voice was more suited to singing the blues.
I did feel sorry for the family that was waiting for there meal and
were sat next to the band who were blasting out the blues fine style
to an appreciative crowd.
Claude Bourbon and Jamieson's Big Pockets at Moonies Wake for the
last gig of the night. Claude Bourbon played acoustic blues with a
gypsy/classical feel to it. Using a delay pedal on his guitar he
made a marvelous sound and some truely inspiring guitar
workouts.
By this time Moonies had filled up considerably with a crowd
eager to see Jamieson's Big Pockets play there first gig. I wasn't
sure what was going to happen but boy what a way to end this night
of blues. Singer Denis Jamieson belted out a mixture of covers and
humorous original songs based around local subjects. There choice of
covers ranged from Al Green, Canned Heat and Captian Beefheart. One
of the originals was about being born in the annex rather than the
Gibert Bain. The crowd danced and whooped there enjoyment right
through the set. I think that this band are a worthy successors to
Peatstack and the Rayburns.
Roll on next year for another Shetland Blues Festival.
Jimmy Carlyle
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