John's immense experience of the British
blues scene, dating back to the early days of Alexis Korner and
harmonica virtuoso Cyril Davies, led me to expect a cracking gig and
so it proved! John is a great harp player, displaying lots
of technique but never in a showy way. His solos seemed to grow
naturally from the music and his unhurried delivery served the songs
beautifully. The Paul Butterfield comparison is obvious
and on Born In Chicago he even sang
like Paul. The band hit their stride early,
which was nosurprise with the master of funk Dave Clarke on bass,
talented newcomer Jules Fothergill on guitar and the versatile
Joachim Greve on drums. Highlights from the first half were a
passionate Early In The Morning, a suitably raucous treatment
of Muddy’s She’s Nineteen Years Old and a sweet and
affectionate version of Lowell Fulson’s Little By
Little.
The second half had Butterfield’s Look On Yonder’s Wall, The Thrill Is Gone, Rock
Me and Black Cat Bone, to name the more
familiar songs. Numbers were tightly
arranged but the band often achieved a loose jamming feel, with
jazzier directions reminding me of the spirit behind the seminal
Butterfield East-West album. Jules
Fothergill is a better guitar player than Mike Bloomfield though,
laying down some adventurous and eclectic solos, each one
apparently better that the last, with some stuff that sounded
like Roy Buchannan - I loved it, but wasn’t quite sure if it quite
fitted the song. Never mind, I’d rather have this
wide-ranging, thought provoking stuff than lumpy pub British
blues-rock any day.The blues can often be beautiful and tonight it
certainly was!….. Dave Kingsbury, Nottingham