Hi and welcome to Blues Live. This is my first ever blog - exciting eh!- and I've chosen to dedicate it to one of my passions in life - live blues music. In particular I'm going to focus on artists appearing at smaller venues, pubs and clubs etc. Having spent years going to gigs and seeing plenty of legends at big venues, I've recently come to appreciate just how much amazing talent there is playing at much smaller, local venues.I hope that by sharing my experiences it may encourage more people to go and see these artists, many of whom really do deserve a bigger audience.
I live in Kettering, Northants, and we've got a great local venue called Sawyers. It has a Blues Club most Sunday nights. It's normally free and the standard of the artists is very high even if some of the names may not be that familiar. Most of my reviews will come from Sawyers although I do wander down to London and across to the West Midlands for gigs from time to time.
Okay. So what are the recent highlights. Caught a guy called Kris Dollimore a couple of weeks ago. Plays a stompin' Delta blues with more than a hint of John Lee Hooker. Fantastic stuff. Played plenty of his own stuff which went down really well. After two sets the audience was still demanding more... the poor guy was only allowed to leave the stage when he told everyone he'd got a long drive back to Kent that night and it was already past 11! Thoroughly recommended. Picked up a copy of his album called 02/01/1978. A great listen. If you want to find out more about him he's got a website where you can listen to some of his music at www.krisdollimore.com. Check it out.
Right, I need to get back to work now. More later...
