Music and Blues

Top 5 Things To Do This Week

14 Aug 2009

Bloody Beetroot (clubs), Inglourious Basterds (film), Emergent Artists (Visual Art), Soulsavers (music), Christopher Brookmyre (books)

Barbara Morrison

Ebullient and expressive jazz singer

29 Jul 2009

Los Angeles-based singer Barbara Morrison has been a popular visitor to Scotland in recent years, and settles in to a Fringe residency via a couple of outings within the Jazz Festival programme. Raised in Michigan, she has an ebullient, wise-cracking…

Southern Fried Festival - country music comes to Perth

23 Jul 2009

Glen Lyon, 1982, is as good a place to start as any. That summer Andy Shearer, son of the local deerstalking ghillie, met Will Oldham, a young American holidaying on the estate with his family. They struck up a friendship and began to swap music…

Lost boy - a tribute to Chet Baker

A play, talk, film documentary and recital commemorate the jazz pin-up

13 Jul 2009

On 16 June 1952, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Chet Baker played together in a small restaurant club in Inglewood, California. Baker was fresh out of the army and played trumpet to both Parker and Sonny Criss’ mercurial, blues-drenched alto sax. Within…

Best of the Rest - Jazz and Blues

Highlights of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival

13 Jul 2009

Jazz on a Summer's Day, Eric Burdon and The Animals, The Hot Club of Cowtown, Martin Taylor/Sylvain Luc, Niki King, Baptiste Trotignon and Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra

New York Dolls

9 Jul 2009

Having burned brightly for just a few short years in the early 1970s, seminal glam-punk band the New York Dolls reformed 27 years later for what was supposedly a one-off gig at the Morrissey-curated 2004 Meltdown festival. A rapturous reception from the…

Profile - Stuart Staples (Tindersticks)

9 Jul 2009

Born Stuart Ashton Staples, 14 November 1965. Background Staples is the lead singer of Tindersticks, an originally Nottingham-based band formed in late 1991. Initially called Asphalt Ribbons, the band changed their name after Staples found a box of…

The Gossip - Music for Men

11 Jun 2009

The Gossip’s extravagant firebrand Beth Ditto has bagged herself stardom in bountiful guises: disco-blues diva, brawling fashionista, feminist defender, media provocateur, political agitator — and, not least, the sexiest catsuit inhabitant since…

First Word - Terry Callier

28 May 2009

First record you ever bought The first record I ever bought was ‘Crying In the Chapel’ by Sonny Til and the Orioles. Last time you were chatted up The last time I was seriously chatted up was after a concert last year at Wayne State University…

Glasgow Americana Festival

14 May 2009

Scotland in general, and Glasgow in particular, has had a long love affair with the dusty backroad heartbreak of Americana and anything with a folky bent from across the pond. In the past the Big Big Country festival run by late promoter Billy Kelly was…

Tom Brosseau - Posthumous Success

30 Apr 2009

FOLK BLUES Bobbins to the album title, Tommy B; this finger pickin’ North Dakota man won’t have to wait until his expiration date to enjoy basking in a little glory. His style has evolved from the basic one voice, one acoustic guitar set-up (as seen…

Big Ned

2 Apr 2009

POST-BLUES To say that Glasgow’s Big Ned are the first signing to the newly-inaugurated Optimo Music label (formerly Oscarr) might give some idea as to where they’re coming from. An exciting and challenging place, sure, but possibly one which has…

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - Beware

5 Mar 2009

ALT.COUNTRY Wildwood lothario Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – the alter ego of Kentuckian alt.country outlaw Will Oldham – has inhabited and advanced the guise of folk defiler, kinship analyst and hirsute, horny man-beast since his come-hither intones were…

The Phantom Band

19 Feb 2009

The Phantom Band are a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. OK, they’re not really, they’re just six guys living in Glasgow making music, but as their ephemeral name suggests there is something shadowy and unfathomable about both the…

Dave Arcari - Got Me Electric

19 Feb 2009

(Buzz) DELTA BLUES Scottish bluesman Dave Arcari has been pumping out rough-hewn nuggets of punky blues for years, and while this fifth album maintains that momentum it’s something of a one-trick pony. Slapping and picking away on his guitar…

James Orr Complex - Com Favo

11 Dec 2008

BRAZILIAN MATH-FOLK BLUES Having relocated to São Paulo, Christopher Mack’s follow up to Chori’s Bundle doesn’t immediately suggest any discernable favella-sourced inspiration. Indeed, there is nothing immediate about what might be mistaken for…

Musicians' guide: Open mic nights

27 Nov 2008

Mondays Glasgow Nice 'n' Sleazy 421 Sauchiehall St, 333 0900. 8pm. The Monday Acoustic Jam, 8pm–midnight. Free to all performers. Bring your instrument and join in the fun. Open Mic NIght - Pivo Pivo 15 Waterloo Street, 564 8100. 6pm.

Geraint Watkins- In a Bad Mood

13 Nov 2008

From the depths of South Wales via London, 50-something delivers his fourth set, nearly 30 years after his Vertigo Records debut with The Dominators. Having intermittently worked as session keyboard player with Dave Edmunds, Van Morrison and Nick Lowe…

Foy Vance

5 Jun 2008

Expect an alternative take on the singer-songwriter set up from Foy Vance, who has picked up comparisons to everyone from Van Morrison to Stevie Wonder. Counting Pete Townsend, Bonnie Raitt and David Holmes among his admirers, Vance weaves soul, blues…

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt

24 Apr 2008

COUNTRY/FOLK/BLUES (V2) Campbell and Lanegan’s Mercury-nominated debut was a one-trick pony, but it was a pretty cool trick. Campbell’s wispy whimper and Lanegan’s bourbon-soaked growl blended refreshingly over some old school folk and blues, but it…

Seasick Steve

17 Jan 2008

Grizzled hobo Seasick Steve tore it up on the live circuit through 2007. His one-man country blues is packed with uncooked honesty and impassion vocals: this is the real blues built from experience panhandling across the US. It’s hard to believe he…

The Parsonage

Choral folk country blues

29 Nov 2007

Choirs are not cool, right? Wrong. Glasgow 50-strong vocal ensemble The Parsonage have played at festivals including Indian Summer and Connect, contributed to Echo and the Bunnymen’s forthcoming new album and recorded an EP for release on Optimo’s…

The Black Diamond Express

23 Aug 2007

Like the fastest train of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, The Black Diamond Express is, at full compliment, a nine-piece soaked in poetry, myth and bourbon. Led by the enigmatic Jack of Diamonds its combination of slide, acoustic and electric guitars over…

Seasick Steve

9 Aug 2007

Every now and then pop culture throws something into the public consciousness based solely on quality. It may not be fashionable, it’s not part of a new movement, it doesn’t fit into any scene, it’s just good. This year’s phenomenal anomaly is…

Benny Golson Quartet, Al Foster Quintent, Jeff 'Tain' Watts Quartet

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival Roll with it Jazz goes back to its roots in the Festival’s ‘American Icons’ strand, as Kenny Mathieson discovers