TENBY BLUES FESTIVAL LAUNCH
THE RUGBY CLUB, TENBY
WEDNESDAY 23RD APRIL 2008
BULLITT & THE BAND WITH NO NAME
The third Tenby Blues Festival is being held in this lovely Welsh seaside town over the weekend of 14th-16th November 2008 and on Wednesday 23rd April the festival held a launch gig at Tenby Rugby club that featured performances by Bullitt and The Band With No Name – the gig was a perfect curtain raiser for what is becoming one of the most attractive of all the UK blues festivals.
Tenby Blues Festival organisers understand that the blues is a broad church. And they are hell bent on raising its roof! Something the enthusiastic crowd who were in attendance on the night will undoubtedly testify to.
Opening act on the renowned FBM stage, The Band With No Name, featured Ollie Brindley (who will be well known to local gig goers as a former member of Animal Jack Jnr.) and they delivered a skiffle inflected good time set laced with a dusty, self deprectory wit.
Headliners Bullitt, who hail from the deep south, that is somewhere near Port Talbot, were awesome. Excellent musicians to a man, they concocted a set out of classic left field swamp rock and blues boogie that was nothing short of revelatory. Whether drawing on such signifiers of American roots music as Creedence Clearwater Revival or Otis Redding, they were stunning. In particular their renditions of classic Band tunes, such as ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ or ‘The Weight’ moved the audience if not to tears at least to dot dot dot, now read on – there wasn’t a dry sock in the house because people danced so much. Integral to their sound was the retro wash of the Hammond organ, so rarely heard these days. And their encore of The Rolling Stones ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was sublime. Who says they are not a blues band? The blues is a feeling, these guys felt it, and by extension so did we. Marvellous.
BB Skone Radio Pembroke