The Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking 2016 - Part 1

'Twas the night before Christmas, and time to concoct a winter warmer of blues, as a thank you to everyone who’s found their way here to Blues Enthused, and to all the bands and artists who made it possible.

Stevie Nimmo gets gallus in Glasgow

So let’s start by giving it up for Stevie Nimmo, who delivered my favourite studio album of the year with Sky Won’t Fall.  It’s got variety, it’s beautifully produced by Wayne Proctor and his House O’Tone chums, but above all it’s emotionally real.  The Stevie Nimmo Trio also delivered the goods on the road, and it was a delight to catch them in Glasgow and later Edinburgh, where they were joined at the end of the night by Stevie’s brother Alan.  Check out this performance of the mesmerising 'Running Back To You' from his run of Spring UK dates.

Another top drawer album this year was Dust And Bones, from Gary Hoey.  To be honest I’m not sure I gave Dust And Bones enough credit when it was released, because in retrospect it stands up damn well alongside the cream of 2016 albums.  Hoey sure as well knows his way around a fretboard, and his album does due diligence on a range of blues styles.  And as luck would have it, he also likes a festive ditty, so here he is a few years back giving big licks to ‘The Twelve Days Of Christmas’.  (We’ll forgive him the haircut.)

There was lots of good stuff going on in the middle of the year, not least the visit of Joe Louis Walker to these shores.  I was lucky enough to be able to do a short interview with JLW, before seeing him deliver a belter of a show at Dingwall’s in London – it was a privilege to see such a premier performer of electric blues, accompanied by his crack band.  From the same set of UK dates, here they are playing ‘Young Girl Blues’ during a soundcheck for their gig at The Convent.

The summer also gave us the first Edinburgh Blues’N’Rock Festival, one of the highlights of

Joe Louis Walker delivers day-glo blues!

which was the set by the Bernie Marsden Band, who rocked the joint good and proper – check out this version of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Oh Well’, complete with Bernie’s typically humorous introduction.  Not content with that, Bernie formed an alliance with fellow Festival performers Safehouse, and returned to Edinburgh for a unique night of Southern rock meets blues-rock under the banner of 'SnakeHouse' that was a blast for all concerned.  Here they are doing ‘Trouble’, with Safehouse vocalist Chris Peebles demonstrating that he could give a certain Mr C a run for his money.

Let’s hear it for the ladies too, with a nod to American vocalist Sari Schorr.  Having paid her dues over the years, Schorr got together with producer Mike Vernon and guitarist Innes SIbun to deliver her impressive debut album A Force Of Nature.  They’ve followed up with a lengthy stretch of well-received gigs by Sari Schorr & The Engine Room, which will hopefully reach venues near more of us in 2017.  Meantime, here’s a snippet of the album, and some chat from the winning Ms Schorr.

Let’s close for now by taking a look forward to the New Year.  I didn’t get round to reviewing Chicago blues man Toronzo Cannon’s album The Chicago Way, but it’s an up to the minute take on the classic Chicago seam of the genre, ranging from social commentary in ‘The Pain Around Me’ to relationship humour in the likes of ‘Bad Contract’.  Cannon is coming to Britain for the first time in the humour for a short run of dates – catch him if you can.

That’s all for now folks, except just for a festive laugh here's David Coverdale reading 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas' - honest!  Part 2 of the Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking will be with you soon.  Meantime - Merry Christmas!

Toronto Cannon's UK dates are:
19 January - Edinburgh Blues Club
20 January - Goin' Up The Country, Overton, Wrexham
21 January - The Great British Rock & Blues Festival, Skegness

Stevie Nimmo is touring France in February and the UK in March 2017.

Sari Schorr is touring Europe and the UK in early 2017.

Bernie Marsden - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 28 September 2015

Anyone rolling up to Bernie Marsden’s current round of shows anticipating him weighing into the likes of ‘Fool For Your Loving’ with a four or five piece band should recalibrate their expectations.  This could be billed as ‘An Audience With Bernie Marsden’, as the former Whitesnake man, ably assisted by Jim Kirkpatrick on guitar, harp and a share of vocals, delivers a largely acoustic set of songs interspersed with stories and audience Q&A.

Avuncular and affable are adjectives that could have been coined for Marsden.  He’s self-deprecating about his roly-poly shape and his aged dad’s lack of trust in him to change a plug, but less self-effacing about his guitar-playing and writing ability and the quality of the classic Marsden/Moody Whitesnake line-up – and rightly so.

Bernie Marsden - a talented little sod

He eases into things with ‘Linin’ Track’, a field holler inspired blues that also opens his latest album Shine, and follows up with ‘Till The Day I Die’, which he points out is a David Coverdale composition – throughout the evening he’s as happy playing others’ songs as his own.  And it’s a never-released Rory Gallagher track, ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ that provides one of the first highlights, with Kirkpatrick’s vocal hinting at Rory’s singing style and a measured, tasteful solo from Marsden.

‘Time Is Right For Love’ is hauled out from the nether regions of Whitesnake’s first album, Trouble, a song that Marsden says was dismissed by the whole band after one outing.  But he’s right to suggest that it’s an unfairly overlooked little gem, which in this light but warm incarnation feels like Bernie is channelling his inner Van Morrison.  It’s a good example of how songs can realise their potential in different styles.  He introduces ‘Is This Love’ with a tongue in cheek suggestion that Coverdale should have given him a writing credit for it.  Like Robben Ford, say, Marsden has a light voice that lacks the oomph and personality of truly great singers, but he’s tuneful and has a decent spoonful of soul, and not for the last time delivers a vocal that probably does the song more justice than ol’ DC could do these days.

He takes the piss out of some of Coverdale’s pretensions in the way only a mate could, doing a fair imitation of his Redcar-gone-AWOL accent, but at the same time gives him credit where it’s due.  Peter Green’s monosyllabic chat is similarly mimicked in the intro to ‘Dragonfy’, an old Fleetwood Mac song penned by Danny Kirwan and covered by Marsden on Shine – Green agreed to collaborate on the song but then no more was heard from him for months.  It’s another standout though, as Marsden demonstrates a lovely tone and produces a wonderfully relaxed solo very much in the spirit of Green.

He plays ‘Dragonfly’ on a twin-neck electric, having already made use of its 12-string option in the service of ‘Ain’t Gonna Cry No More Today’ – again, acknowledging that the song came from Micky Moody rather than himself.  Nevertheless, his playing highlights the lightly ringing chords to which the song owes much of his appeal.

A spare, earthy acoustic blues heralds the closing stretch, in which Marsden comments on the explosive success of ‘Here I Go Again’ in the years since he left Whitesnake.  Interestingly, in this twin acoustic rendition, with Jim Kirkpatrick supplying harmonies, the song sounds like something that could easily have been recorded by the Eagles rather than going global in the heavily-coiffed 1987 version of David Coverdale’s outfit.

Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love (In The Heart Of The City)’ is a temptation for a soulful singalong, before Mac’s ‘Oh Well’ brings the night to a rousing end.  Marsden introduces it by recalling how he was bluntly informed by Peter Green that he was playing the riff wrong.  Not an observation that would often be made of Bernie Marsden, I imagine.  He is, as Jon Lord apparently put it, “a talented little sod”.

Flashback #4 - David Coverdale

It must have been early 1976 when I got hold of Deep Purple’s Made In Europe.  It was the first Purple live album I got my ears around, and something of an epiphany – this was the real deal.  And listening to it now, it’s still a damn fine hard rock album.  What brings it to mind now though, in a blues context, is ‘Mistreated’ – interpolating, as the sleeve notes put it, ‘Rock Me Baby’ – and the way that I particularly identify the track with David Coverdale.

"Ere's a song for ya!"

It’s a great performance on Made In Europe, but it went on to become a mainstay of the Whitesnake repertoire, and you might say a template for their especially bluesy brand of rock in the Marsden/Moody line-up.  I dare say Coverdale had performed it live during his solo spell before forming Whitesnake, but my key recollection of it making an impression with the latter was when they did a tour of small UK clubs on the back of the Snakebite EP released in 1978.

There was a review in Sounds of a gig at, I’m pretty sure, the Redcar Coatham Bowl, probably written by their then North East of England correspondent Phil Sutcliffe.  As I recall, he was a writer was of eclectic interests, fair minded, but not someone whose tastes I would ordinarily have expected to run to an outfit such as Whitesnake.  But their performance of Bobby Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City’ got his attention, and next thing he was gripped by Coverdale gulping his air into his lungs, the better to bawl “AH BIN MISTREATED!”  Or something like that.

Anyway, spot on I reckon.  I’ve always thought of it as a song that, vocally, Coverdale “owns”.  Back then I was an even bigger fan of Rainbow, both for Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar and Ronnie James Dio’s vocals.  But their version of ‘Mistreated’ on the live album Onstage somehow never did it for me in the same way.  Whatever else I might think about David Coverdale, his blues-belting vocals made this his song.  Check out this performance by Purple at the California Jam in 1974, with both Blackmore and Coverdale giving it plenty!