Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking 2019 - Part 2

So this is Twixtmas, that twilight zone between Christmas and New Year when we all struggle to remember which day of the week it is.  Peace has possibly descended for a couple of days until the next round of celebrations, so it’s a chance to catch up with Part 2 of the Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking!

Steve Van Zandt preaches soul to the faithful

Part 1 of this review of 2019 focused on album releases, and there’s a little more to be said on that front, but let’s kick off by talking about some of the best live shows seen this year.  And for the third year in a row, one of the very best gigs I saw was courtesy of Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul.  This time it was in Milan, while I was in Italy for a lengthy holiday this summer, and once again Steve Van Zandt and his gang delivered the kind of life-affirming rock’n’roll celebration that’s a joy to behold.  Loved it, basically, and it set the bar very high for anyone else.  Here’s an example from elsewhere this year, with‘Trapped Again’.

Samantha Fish gave it a very good go though, on a run of incendiary dates in Britain and Europe.  I caught four of ‘em, greedy man that I am, and though all of them were great, the two on my home turf in Scotland were in the jaw-dropping category.  Fish’s band, sans horns on this European trip, have a terrific chemistry, while she of course adds blazing guitar, unique vocals, and knock-em-dead performance levels to the mix.  Here they are with the dreamy ‘Fair-weather’, at the Troubadour in L.A. a couple of months ago.

Both Stevie and Samantha also delivered new albums this year of course, and very impressive they were too.  Van Zandt and his soul train’s Summer Of Sorcery may have been a little uneven, but tracks like ‘Love Again’ and ‘Superfly Terraplane’ were irresistible, Kill Or Be Kind could have been a contender for my favourite album of the year, if it had had a more impactful closing track, an explosive rocker perhaps, to bookend the album with opener ‘Bulletproof’.  As it is though, with its gathering together of soul, blues, punkish rock’n’roll and down and out pop elements, it was the outstanding crossover album of the year.  And I managed to collar the lady for a pretty good interview too!

Situation normal - Samantha Fish tearing it up

and it was undeniably fun.  Meanwhile Fish’s

Getting back to the live stuff, the early months of the year produced some other corking shows.  In January, Sugaray Rayford provided a bonkers evening of entertainment, an out and out party to complement the more disciplined delivery of his subsequent album Somebody Save Me.  Here's Sugaray feeling good on, er, 'Don't It Feel Good'.

The following month King King created a communal, even congregational atmosphere at their Boiler Shop show in Newcastle, which was sadly the penultimate show to feature bassist Lindsay Coulson and, less expectedly, drummer Wayne Proctor in the fold.  I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to see their new line-up for the first time, due to other commitments, but it’ll be interesting to see for myself what the new rhythm section of Zander Greenshields and Andrew Scott bring to the party, both live and on their upcoming album.  In the meantime, here’s the new line-up performing ‘Old Love’, on this summer’s Keeping The Blues Alive Mediterranean cruise.

February also brought the tremendous double act of Blue Oyster Cult and The Temperance Movement to Glasgow.  In my view BOC are one of the most underrated hard rock acts of yesteryear out there, and this performance confirmed me in that conviction.  And while Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser may not indulge in much posturing or posing, as a guitar hero his playing speaks for itself – eloquently.  Check out this run through their old classic ‘Harvester Of Eyes’.   The Temperance Movement, meanwhile, underlined their credentials as one of Britain’s leading rock’n’roll outfits, like a modern, edgy incarnation of The Faces.  Here they are with ‘Take It Back’, from a show in July this year.

A month later my first live exposure to Wille And The Bandits was another example of a current band in a classic rock vein who manage to produce something fresh, blending both world music influences and post-grunge punch into their blues-rock core, and doing so with smiles on their faces and a very distinct lyrical manifesto.  As with King King, Wille And The Bandits enter the new year with a couple of line-up changes, but it would be good to see them continue on an upward trajectory.  Check out the new line-up on this ‘live in the studio’ rendition of‘Make Love’.

The late Wee Willie Walker

Later in the year, another live introduction was to London-based Jawbone, who impressed me hugely last year with their self-titled debut album.  And they did it again onstage, injecting rock’n’roll energy and a good-time vibe into the delivery of their top drawer, rootsy but pigeonhole-defying material.  I wanna see ‘em again, and I wanna see a bigger audience getting into their distinctive sound.  Here they are performing ‘Leave No Traces’ earlier in the year.

My summer sojourn in Italy also allowed me to pay visits to a couple of Italian outdoor music festivals, in Pistoia and Porretta Terme.  The former may have been a straightahead show featuring guitar hotshots Eric Gales and Robben Ford, albeit in the shadow of Pistoia’s cathedral, but the latter is a remarkable small town affair, which every year showcases some legendary soul names.  This time around the bill included the likes of Don Bryant, Pee Wee Ellis, and Wee Willie Walker, the last of whom sadly passed away just a few weeks ago.  Seeing performances like these, in the purpose-built amphitheatre of Rufus Thomas Park, was a singular experience.

These were just some of the highlights of 2019, but there were plenty of other artists keeping music live in terrific fashion in the course of the year.  Even if they weren’t listed here, more power to their collective elbow, and here’s to more of the same in 2020.

You can read Part 1 of the 2019 Christmas Stocking here.

Jawbone - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 24 October 2019

I have a question.  What in the wide world of sports is going on when a band as bloody marvellous as Jawbone are playing to a hundred or so people?  It’s a question that applies to numerous other artists of a roots rock disposition of course, but still – these guys really should be enjoyed by a bigger audience.

Their self-titled debut album from last year laid out a heart-warmingly good collection of songs, and I’d have been delighted to turn up for this gig and have them give me an action replay of that.  Well, stupid me.  Because it turns out that live they’re even better – more

Marcus Bonfanti amuses Rex Horan with a solo

free, more rock’n’roll, and pure and simply entertaining.  That crowd of a hundred that I mentioned lapped it up.

They kick off with ‘Leave No Traces’, with gritty guitar from Marcus Bonfanti and spikes of keys from Paddy Milner, Bonfanti ripping out a gutsy solo, and bassist Rex Horan advancing to the apron of the stage to liven everyone up.  It’s a solid statement of intent, and over the rest of the night they live up to it, and more.

‘Get What You Deserve’ lays out more of their armoury, with a really full sound featuring sumptuous two and sometimes three part harmonies, swirls of organ from Milner, and Aussie Horan serving up loose-limbed bass over Evan Jenkins’ swinging drums.

Milner doesn’t restrict himself to organ either, and in fact is even more ear-catching on piano, as on his rippling, classically styled intro to the dramatic ‘Bet On Yesterday’, which swells to a massive but subtle crescendo in the middle with Jenkins utilising timpani mallets on drums, before ending with a surprising and quite wonderful singalong, with both Bonfanti and Horan offstage, encouraging the crowd with woodblock accompaniment.

They pay homage to The Band, after one of whose songs they’re named, with a crackling rendition of ‘Rag Mama Rag’, featuring a sizzling, all action rock’n’roll solo from Bonfanti and wild piano from Milner, and it’s evident by this point that they’re not only tighter than a gnat’s behind, but they’re also enjoying it hugely, the smiles on their faces mirroring those in the audience.

The uncorked energy of some songs brings to mind The Beatles of, say, ‘Get Back’, in a way that wasn’t apparent from the album.  ‘Rolling On The Underground’ comes with crunching chords, witty lyrics name-checking London Tube stations, and a guitar-keys collision while Jenkins and Horan gets their syncopated groove on, while ‘Miss Feelgood’ is possibly the best of a clutch of new songs, a Faces-like pint of rock’n’roll which Rod the Mod would surely have been happy to grace in his heyday.  The former features an excellent bass break from Horan, and the latter a drum showcase from Jenkins, but neither is overlong, and throughout both the others keep rolling out the basic chords, so that the solos

Paddy Milner gets all deep and meaningful

still serve the song rather than offering an excuse to go to the bar.

But their sophistication continues to be evident too, on ‘Sit Around The Table’ for example, a song full of lyrical depth and musical feeling that opens with a piano only first verse and chorus before rousing itself, and with their attention to detail apparent even in the brief piano-guitar interplay of its outro.  Their sense of dynamics is clear too, on the likes of ‘The City’, another excellent new song with a mid-period Mop Top feel, which drops off to a delicate bridge before Milner’s revved up piano solo.

As they get ready to close Horan steps forward to deliver a yarn about spider farming in Australia, which turns out to be a bonkers pitch for the merch on sale later, before they finish with the thoughtful ‘Two Billion Heartbeats’, all supple groove and luscious harmonies, with another brilliant middle eight.

They’re back with more after a minute of course, and daringly offer the swoonsome ‘The Years Used To Mean So Much’ as a first encore, before bringing it home with the piano-pounding, slide guitar-stinging, dance-inducing ‘Big Old Smoke’ – and next thing they’re all in the audience, grabbing a tuba, side drum, trumpet and accordion to lead another mad singalong.

Honestly, what more could you ask for?  Great songs, great arrangements, intelligent lyrics, fabulous vocal harmonies, wonderful playing, and an easy rapport between themselves and with the audience – this, my friends, is what live music is all about.  

The Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking 2018 - Part 2

So was Santa good to you all then?  Finished all the turkey and ready for a bit more reflection on 2018 with Blues Enthused?

One of the highlights of the second half of the year was a first visit to the Carlisle Blues Rock Festival back in September, for two out of its three days.   A brilliantly organised affair, it was blessed with a cracking bill, the Saturday night topped off by a set from Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado that was a hit from the minute their guitars starting cranking out the riff to ‘If You Wanna Leave’.

Thorbjorn Risager rocks the flat cap look

Carlisle also offered a first chance for me to see the Chris Bevington Organisation, who offered up one of the most straight ahead, good-time albums of the year, with the rocked up blues outing Cut And Run.  A 9-piece outfit featuring horns, keys, backing singers, and the kitchen sink, they pulled together great songs, quality musicianship and a great sound, in an album that crackled with enthusiasm from start to finish on tracks like 'It Ain't Easy'. 

Worth noting for their willingness to do something a bit different in the album stakes were Big Boy Bloater, with Pills, and Jawbone, with their self-titled debut album.  The Bloat fella’s album may not be solid gold – there are a couple of misfires, for my money – but with his rough-edged rock’n’roll, rougher-edged voice, funny lyrics and penchant for B-Movie tales, as well a neat line in Nick Lowe-ish country fare, he’s still a breath of fresh air - see what you make of 'Friday Night's Alright For Drinking'.  And Jawbone are similarly refreshing, as they take a late Sixties Big Pink vibe and transplant it to 21^stCentury Britain, with a heap of strong songs, contrasting lead vocals from Marcus Bonfanti and Paddy Milner, and a readiness to let Milner’s piano set the tone as much as Bonfanti’s guitar.  They also have a nice way with a lyric, as '2 Billion Heartbeats' demonstrates.

Right now there are a host of great female roots music artists out there in both Britain and America, and one of the standout albums of the year came at the hands of one of them – Kansas City’s Danielle Nicole, who released her second solo album Cry No More back in March - and picked up a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the tail end of the year.  No sign of her coming to Europe for live dates in the near future though – unlike Shemekia Copeland, Ana Popovic and Samantha Fish, who are all going to be within hailing distance for me in the same week in May!  Never mind, here's Ms Nicole casting a 'Hot Spell'.

A new find for me on the female singer front this year was Tierinii Jackson, of Memphis-based soul-blues outfit Southern Avenue, who delivered a crackling performance at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in the summer.  If Vintage Trouble are your kind of band, then you may well enjoy Southern Avenue, although they also stir a spoonful of gospel into the mix.  Here they are getting funky on ‘Rock Steady’, with Tierinii Jackson in typical Little Miss Dynamite form.

Danielle Nicole has a quiet evening in

On the book front, this year I’ve been working my way through Stuart Cosgrove’s ‘Soul Trilogy’, comprising Detroit 67, Memphis 68, and Harlem 69.  The books cover a lot of ground, such as the development of Motown and Stax, and key events in black culture like the Detroit riots, the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the emergence of the Black Panthers.  But much of the pleasure is to be found in the characters Cosgrove turns up, many of whom are unfamiliar.

In the latest book it’s interesting to come across someone like Betty Mabry, who was married to Miles Davis for a time, was a friend of Jimi Hendrix, and by the sound of it was an all-round cross-cultural phenomenon.  A catwalk model, club owner, songwriter and singer, Cosgrove paints her as a forceful, networking catalyst in the emergence of jazz-rock and fusion.

Or there’s King Curtis, a workaholic sax player, band leader, arranger, musical director and talent scout, who I must confess I’d never heard of before, but whose mid-Sixties band The Kingpins at one time or another included famed drummer Bernard Purdie, and the still developing Hendrix.  Here they are cooking up a 'Memphis Soul Stew'.  It says something about Curtis’s status that for a while the Kingpins were apparently Aretha Franklin’s preferred backing band.

And with the death of Aretha earlier this year, that seems like a good point at which to close the lid on 2018.  So here is the Queen of Soul, doubtless an inspiration for some of those singers listed above, showing how it’s done on ‘I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You’.

You can find Part 1 of the Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking here.

Jawbone - Jawbone

Good tunes, good tunes. Good words too, for that matter.

If you’re thinking that Jawbone sounds like the monicker of some thrash metal band, you can dispense with that notion pronto.  This four-piece featuring Paddy Milner on keys and vocals, Marcus Bonfanti on guitar and vocals, and Rex Horan and Evan Jenkins on bass and drums respectively, is actually named after a song on the eponymous 1969 album by The Band.  Which makes absolute sense when you listen to the stew of rootsy, bluesy, Sixties rock they’ve cooked up on this debut album.

But there’s a very British sensibility at work here too, so that whatever their influences may be their sound evokes the likes of Van the Man without the spiritual intensity, Gerry Rafferty without the dense production, and Jackie Leven without the eccentricity.

Jawbone get down and get with it, sitting round the table

Pic by Rob Blackham

And in fact the peak point of the album lies in two songs just after halfway, in ‘Rolling On The Underground’ and ‘Big Old Smoke’, each of which in its own way is a paean to the foursome’s home base of London.  The first has a Kinks-meets-Beatles feel, with stabbing guitar chords over rattling drums on the intro, Milner and Bonfanti sharing the vocals, and the kind of catchy melody that you’ll soon realise is a trademark, especially with it’s descending “Down, down, down, down” chorus.  The second is a rousing, brisk affair, on which Bonfanti does the singing in a typically gruff fashion.  The most booty-shaking grabber on the record, with a slide guitar riff, honky tonk piano and stinging Bonfanti solo, it’s simple but classic rock’n’roll.

Not that these are isolated winners, because there’s plenty of quality and enjoyment to be found either side of them. With Bonfanti and Milner sharing the lead vocal duties, sometimes duetting, and with Horan weighing in on occasional three-part harmonies, there’s variety to the delivery of the melodies, Milner’s sweeter voice contrasting with Bonfanti’s semi-hoarse rasp. They alternate on the opening ‘Leave No Traces’, a piano-led, swinging and spacious arrangement that’s typical of the feel they bring to the material.  There’s a great hook wrapped around the chorus, with the lines “Heaven doesn’t want me, And the Devil doesn’t know who I am” encapsulating lyrical theme.  With a relaxed guitar solo and a clever, round-like vocal bridge – hands up who remembers “rounds” from music in school? – over shuffling drums fromJenkins, it epitomises their ability in constructing a song.

At the other end of the album, ‘The Years Used To Mean So Much’ is probably the most Band-like tune on the album.  With halting piano, sweeps of organ, and the beautiful harmonies on the chorus, it’s a song of nostalgic reflection bathed in a warm glow.  Similar musical and emotional qualities echo through the earlier ‘Sit Round The Table’.

Clever lyrics abound, whether in the sharpness of the gleefully bitter ‘Get What You Deserve’, or the reflective but hopeful ‘Two Billion Heartbeats’, with its notion that each of us arrives with a quota of heartbeats to use wisely, and “Two hundred have gone just singing this song”, to which they add a tasteful piano line, novel percussion twists, and some sparkling guitar on the outro.

I could go on, but I’ll let you discover the delights of the rest of this album yourself.  Ten tracks, forty-five minutes – this is the way records used to be, and it’s an elegant sufficiency.  If what you’re after is a load of crash-bang-wallop – “shoddy rock music”, as Ian Siegal called it during a gig this year – then this isn’t for you.  But if you're the kind of listener for whom it’s all about the songs, then Jawbone is just the job.

Jawbone is released on 9 November.

Jawbone are touring the Czech Republic and Spain during October and November.