Acoustic Jam

BLUES AT GREEN NOTE

2011-12-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 14th December 2011

Next Blues at Green Note.

Acoustic blues jam.

106, Parkway, Camden, London NW1

8.30 -11.

£4 or £2 for musicians.

If you want to play, get there by 8.

2011-05-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Wednesday MAY 11th 2011

GREEN NOTE, 106 Parkway, Camden, London NW1

Special event as part of London Old-Time & Bluegrass Week

£6 8pm-11pm

Phone the venue to book a table or just turn up. http://www.greennote.co.uk/

Note: The monthly Blues at Green Note will return as usual on Wednesday 8th June.

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MARK HARRISON + Phil Hughes, Ryan Carr, & Will Greener

Old time/New Times – a unique evening of varied roots music, spanning blues, folk, gospel and bluegrass

Mark Harrison performs exclusively his own material, songs for the present that tip their hat to the past. They take as their starting point the pre-war acoustic blues greats but they are wholly individual. Some are firmly rooted in the present and some imagine the past.

Mark plays a 1934 National Trojan guitar with a very distinctive sound. His material incorporates elements of blues and folk to produce something brand new. His CD WATCHING THE PARADE is out now. It contains 14 original songs covering a variety of song styles and instrumental combinations.

Mark’s band consists of some of London’s finest roots musicians – Will Greener on harmonica, Charles Benfield on double bass and Ryan Carr on mandolin.

www.myspace.com/markharrison

Watching The Parade:

Enjoyable and impressive collection of 14 blues-based originals from UK slide guitarist who knows his way around a resonator. Red Lick

Harrison’s own description of the contents, ‘It’s got a foot in the past but it’s all brand new’, sums up the contents perfectly.... Blues Matters

... gets nice sounds from his 1934 National Trojan Resophonic, writes simple but effective songs in a contemporary folky bluesy vein, and has gathered a talented group of musicians to back him on his debut. The music is all performed and recorded to perfection. FRoots

The evening will also feature sets by Phil Hughes, Ryan Carr and Will Greener:

Phil Hughes’s extraordinary a cappella harmonica and vocal sets have audiences spellbound and have been described as ‘jaw-dropping’. He will be performing prewar blues and gospel numbers in his inimitable style.

Ryan Carr has been foot stomping and yelling ever since he crossed the pond. A jazz geek with a bluegrass obsession, Ryan serves up his own blend of roots music.

Will Greener will be playing traditional American folk music, drawing on the work of the pre- and postwar harmonica masters and performing pieces including blues, old time, medicine show songs and spirituals.

2010-12-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

Mark Harrison

December 2010

For details of what I’m doing, tracks from the CD, photos, videos and the like, go to:
Myspace
Reverbnation
Facebook
Twitter

You can contact me at:
markharrisonmusic@live.co.uk

New type blog

Well, I think the time has come to change the nature of this blog. Instead of just doing the monthly ‘parish notes’ for the Green Note Blues Night, I’m going to widen it out to cover a variety of things.

One reason why I haven’t updated it for a few months is that two things have taken up the time that might have been allotted for it. One is the thorny business generally known as ‘earning a living’. Unless you make some key decisions at a very early age that are flukily proved to have been the right ones, the earning a living thing is likely to prove much harder and more relentless than you had been led to believe. Even if you like what you do (exit stage right a large proportion of the populace), mere survival at whatever level you find yourself is a hard slog. An awful lot of your time is spent running on the spot, while the wolves howl and whimper in the outlying forest.

The other reason why this blog has gone into abeyance is a much happier one: I’ve been spending far too much of my time playing music to leave much time for writing about other people playing music. I got my CD out at the beginning of the summer and since then have been doing quite a lot of gigs of one sort or another. All sorts of things have developed over the past year and, while they may be regarded as inhabiting the perfectly respectable area known as obscurity, they’ve put me in the category of someone who spends quite a bit of time as a musician.

So I’m going to cover a range of things in this blog, including what I’m doing musically and what’s going on in London, and in bite-sized chunks too. To kick things off, I’m going to get up to date with what happened in 2010, after which there will be much smaller postings from time to time.

Band

I’ve been playing this year with as fine a band of musicians as you could hope to find, and it’s great for me that they like playing my stuff. They are:

Charles Benfield: double bass
Charles produced the CD, meaning he did absolutely everything on it to make it as good as it is. He mixed it and mastered it, and as well as double bass and bass, he also played keyboards and percussion on it and sorted out some of the arrangements. He’s a terrific musician, who knows everything about everything I don’t know – a pretty broad field that appears to be getting bigger all the time.

Will Greener, aka Captain Bliss: harmonica
Will is an extraordinary harmonica player who is a complete individualist. He doesn’t just play brilliantly, he does things that are both unexpected and just right. He doesn’t just do his own thing, he does things that will lift all the rest of what’s going on. So he contributes both skill and thought, as well as a huge amount of energy. And a positive attitude that of course mirrors my own.

Ryan Carr: mandolin
Ryan is an amazing mandolin player and the instrument flies in his hands. He adds something to the mix that’s an integral part of the sound, and people stare in astonishment when he goes off on a mandolin break. He is also from Canada, leading to almost infinite comic possibilities based on linguistic differences, and our ribs tickle as we exploit these to the full.

And sometimes
David Atkinson: mandolin, dobro
David is a great musician, with top-notch guitar skills and a terrific understated style when playing mandolin and dobro. He played mandolin on the CD and made a major contribution to the tracks he appeared on.

At some of the events we play at, Ryan and Will also do their own sets. Ryan does material that includes murder ballads, his own songs, bluegrass tunes and the like, and he also does his legendary audience participation song Working on a Building – this often seems to me to be an act of reckless bravery but I have yet to see it die on its arse. Will does harmonica and a capella singing numbers, some drawn from the well of old blues and gospel, Both of them grab the audience’s attention and keep it.

We are therefore able between us to provide a whole evening of music, and a varied one at that.

CD - Watching The Parade

We recorded the CD in two days, an ambitious schedule that we managed to stick to, but which left Charles with a mammoth mixing task. He did it brilliantly.

Then Andy Hall and Rick Webb of wearefrank did me a simply brilliant cover and booklet containing the lyrics and photos. (Rick founded the Blues in London website and the Green Note jam, and so is responsible to a very large degree for the fact that I’m doing any of this music malarkey.)

In addition to the musicians mentioned above, Jim Ryan played drums and percussion and Beth Packer sang backing vocals.

The CD is called WATCHING THE PARADE. It’s got 14 tracks, all my own songs, and a variety of themes, styles and instrumentation. It’s way better than anything I could have hoped to produce and people seem to like it. I got it around the middle of the year and set about ‘launching’ myself and the band.

I’m trying to do something different and interesting within the general area of blues/folk/roots, and to write ‘proper’ songs that have something to say, away from standard fare. So, while the music has a firm foot in the past, it’s all brand new.

The CD is available at Amazon, CD Baby and Red Lick, its on all the download places (iTunes, Spotify, Amazon mp3, Last fm etc, etc). And you can get it from me if you email markharrisonmusic@live.co.uk , for £10 including postage.

Gigs

with The Holmes Brothers @ The Luminaire

When I got the CD, the first attempt I made to get a gig was to support the quite wonderful Holmes Brothers at The Luminaire in July. It was a great thrill to get the slot and do the gig. I did it in trio form, with Charles and Will.

Everything about it was just right. The venue had just the right attitude towards musicians and audiences, a combination of decency and professionalism, and the sound was great, with a no-fuss sound check (very sadly, it has now closed down). The audience listened, many of them coming to sit down at the front. Some good friends came along too, much appreciated.

We got on great with the Holmes Brothers, who sat through our sound check and made very complimentary comments. They also came out front to listen to the set while we were on. They are one of my favourite acts, and if you don’t know about their unique blend of blues/gospel/roots, you need to check them out pdq. Now well into their 70s, they kick ass and spread joy around them. Bass player Sherman performed the extraordinary feat of being first to the bar during their break between sets, despite giving the entire audience a head start – it was as if Usain Bolt had put down his bass and sprinted there.

It was a wonderful gig, and a great start. It was ‘proper’ in the best possible way, and just the sort of thing we should be doing, in just the sort of world we should be doing it in.

Folk in the Foyer @ The Artsdepot Finchley

We headlined at this excellent monthly event in September, and it was a fantastic evening. The sound was great, and oozed around the spaces of the venue. A good-sized audience came and a good time was had by all.

I did this in trio form, with Will on harp and David Atkinson making a welcome appearance on mandolin and dobro. He is a terrific, and subtle, musician, adding something special to all the songs.

Again, this was ‘proper’ in the best possible sense. Our set went down very well with an audience of all ages and we got a genuine encore. Afterwards, people asked me about the songs and said how much they liked them, which is very gratifying. J J Dunne, who puts the event on, deserves thanks for doing so. We’ll be back there soon, so please come along when we are.

with Doug MacLeod @ The Green Note

In November, in trio form (me, Will & Ryan), I supported the fantastic Doug MacLeod at the Green Note. Actually, a while back I gave Risa, one of the owners, a list of American acoustic blues acts I thought could (and should) play the venue and this was the first of those recommendations to turn into a date.

It was a tremendous success and a memorable night for all concerned. The place was packed, the audience lapped up Doug’s highly individualistic performance and we went down very well too. It was a great joy to meet him for us and in fact we kind of huddled together as a team for the evening. Doug is in the front rank of American acoustic blues artists, does just about all his own material and, in the best traditions of this kind of thing, isn’t like anyone else.

He was particularly pleased to play there, not just because it’s such a perfect place for that kind of thing, but because like many other terrific US artists, he never does a central London gig when touring Britain. Well, hopefully he’ll be back there on his annual trip, and it also seems possible that other US acoustic blues artists of his calibre will be playing there too.

Upstairs @ The Ritzy

I played here three times this year and really enjoyed each one. It’s an upstairs bar/cafe with balcony above the Ritzy Cinema, one of London’s oldest and recently done up. Brixton certainly appears to have changed since I lived there back in the riot days of the early 80s, when I rather liked it. Now it’s all Euro and piazzas, at least on the surface. There’s a really good atmosphere at the venue and we had appreciative audiences each time. Ryan arranged these gigs and we did the first two as a duo. The third time we played as a four-piece, with Charles and Will.

Regular events

Round Midnight
In October, I started running and playing at the Round Midnight Acoustic Sessions every Monday, with Charles, Will and Ryan. The venue is a really good one, where I’ve been one of the regulars at the Tuesday night jam. Mike and Michelle Berk have done the heavy lifting at making this a place that’s both successful and pleasant – it’s one of the three shiny new blues venues that opened up in the second half of 2009. It’s a music pub that takes the music side of that seriously and that aims to get a good thing going for punters and musicians alike. It’s good to play there.

At the Monday event, the drill tends to be that we do a set or two in band form, and me, Will and Ryan often do solo sets too. There’s a jam element to it – if someone comes to sing, an ad hoc band is formed to accompany them, and any musician who comes just to play is accommodated too. Top-notch performers such as Phil Hughes and Barry Jackson often do their own sets too.

It’s a blues & roots night and anyone in that broad musical area can come down and play. Actually, what I’d really like there is to see more instrumentalists coming along to play such instruments as banjo, mandolin, fiddle/violin, brass and woodwind. It’d be great to try out all sorts of combinations.

Anyway, it’s a good event, and always a night of good music. We’ve had appreciative audiences (and not bad size-wise either, granted it’s on a Monday). It would be good to build it into something really special.

Green Note

There’s something magical about the Green Note and long may it continue. The monthly Blues at Green Note night (every second Wednesday) goes on being good, and audience members come up and tell me how much they’ve enjoyed it at the end of each one. Some events are busier than others but none of them is ever duff. Whether it’s packed or quieter, the same excellent atmosphere prevails, and it has the not inconsiderable advantage of being a place where the people who are there are actually there to listen.

To bring up to date the school magazine type thing I was doing for this, last done in September:
The house band continues to include when available:
Ryan Carr - mandolin
Will ‘Captain Bliss’ Greener - harmonica
Dave Forristal - keyboards
The rhythm section is regularly provided by Massimo on bass and Martin on drum.

In October, November and December, regular performers (surnames where known) included:
Phil Hughes, whose solo vocals and harp renditions of mostly 1920s and 1930s blues and gospel numbers transfix the audience every time
Barry Jackson, who sings and plays a wide repertoire of blues and roots numbers with any and every combination of instruments
Rick Webb, who started the whole thing off in 2007, and made a very welcome appearance on harp in November, as well as kindly helping out with the running of what was the busiest night ever
Phil Thorne, doing acoustic blues classics by the greats, solo or with others
James Daniell, often bringing a welcome New Orleans slant, usually with Chris on guitar and Ian on drum
Simon, who grabs hold of audiences, almost literally, with a fair dose of showmanship
Julian, with his driftwood guitar and tales in the Manx language
David Guzman from Chile, sometimes with his Dad
and there were also sets by:
Ray Wallen, top-notch vocals and harp
Pete Vardigans, on an acoustic he acquired specifically for this mission
Harry, dressed like a 1930s pimp and doing an excellent reproduction of a Blind Blake song
Davide and Fabio, friends from the electric jams who fronted up to playing acoustic and did so very well indeed
Nunzio, also crossing the bridge to sing at an acoustic event

And Ryan and Will did their own high-quality sets too.

If I’ve forgotten anyone, well .... I’ve forgotten them.

We had all sorts of combinations and all sorts of styles, and as usual there was much to enjoy each time. The November one was particularly packed, at least in part because it was the night that Charlotte Street closed down, of which more later.

The Queen’s Head

Also in October, we started a monthly blues & roots night at this really nice Victorian pub in King’s Cross. We’re doing it every third Thursday. It’s a place that’s how pubs really ought to be. Owned by Nigel Owens, it’s been up and running in its current form for a relatively short time. It’s a very atmospheric room and a very nice place to play.

We’re doing this as ‘An Evening Of ...’ rather than a jam of any sort. We do a couple of sets in band form (me, Ryan, Will, Charles) and Ryan and Will do their own sets too, sometimes together. We also have guests doing sets from time to time, including Panama Dave, who comes and does his fine guitar instrumentals as well as playing bass.

This venue, and the event, both have great potential and it would be good to build it into something special too.

The Victoria

This is a very interesting and quite unique venue in Mile End, where Alfie and Ben are getting something very good going. As the name suggests, it’s a kind of recreation of a Victorian pub, and all kinds of things go on there aside from gigs – there are film nights, jumble sales and you can have your hair done there sometimes. We did the very busy and successful open mic as featured act there as a band in the summer and since then we’ve played the All-day Sunday Breakfast Blues event a couple of times.

We’ve done those gigs in four-piece band form and it’s a very enjoyable place to play. We’re now doing that on a regular basis, once a month on every third Sunday. We start at 6 and do two sets, finishing at 8.

Charlotte Street
During the first half of the year, I ran and played at the Charlotte Street Sunday Acoustic Night every other week, and also played at it on the alternate Sundays when Guy Bennett was running it. It was always a good night, though it would be fair to say that the place wasn’t usually exactly packed to the rafters. But it was a wonderful opportunity to play regular, long sets in a good venue and particularly with a fantastic sound system. When we were playing as a band, the music often took wings and flew, and the sum was much greater than the parts. For six months it was our regular fixture and we got something really good going there.

Other gigs

I’ve played a few times at Proud Camden, the photographer’s gallery at the top end of Camden market. I’ve done the Sunday afternoons there, solo and in duos with Will and Charles (and once as a trio). I also did the support slot on two occasions on Sunday evenings, at the blues nights organised by Rob Fleming of Bluesmix. The first time, I supported Phil Hughes’s excellent band, 11 Foot Sack, (who sounded like a great, authentic record from the lat 50s/early 60s out of the speakers near the Gents) and the second time I opened for Paul Garner, who has something different, interesting and dynamic to offer. There were decent audiences for both gigs and they went well (despite the fire alarms going off the second I started playing on the second occasion; I soldiered on like the seasoned pro I’m not).

Rob Fleming then asked me and Will to do the opening slot at The Troubador, the legendary venue in Earl’s Court, where all the great names played back in the 60s (Dylan, Paul Simon, etc, etc). We did that in October and thoroughly enjoyed it. There was a good crowd, the sound man did a fine job, and we went down well. Some weeks later I was back there doing the opening slot as accompanist to Phil Hughes, joining him on some of the terrific early blues and gospel numbers he does so well solo. Phil demonstrated an impressively cavalier approach to rehearsal and sound check. And so I was basically busking it, but we did a fine set and I hope I added something worthwhile to what he does.

On a wet night in the summer, Ryan and I played at The Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green, a pleasant little venue that’s a vegetarian cafe that puts on gigs as well as a range of other events. That was a very relaxed and enjoyable gig too, and we did some songs that don’t get an outing as often as others. Nobody would have guessed that Ryan hadn’t actually heard one or two of them before playing them.

The world of open mics isn’t absolutely my preferred stamping ground – to say the least they’re very variable, at least according to my limited experience of them, and some of what’s likely to be served up can require a very strong stomach indeed. There can be occasions when a person’s right to express themselves comes perilously close to breaching the human rights of the people listening to them. However, in the company of Will, I’ve had a couple of really good times at them.

One was at the Imperial, Leicester Square, an event run by Carl Chamberlain, who seems to know exactly how to run these things and make them into real events enjoyed by all. He does them with great gusto and good will, without ever straying into the area of tweeness. Will and I did a Sunday afternoon slot at the Imperial in October, and as we went along the set developed into a really feel-good one that brought the best out of the pair of us.

We also played one Sunday night at the Cross Kings, near King’s Cross station. This struck me as a truly extraordinary venue in the best possible sense. It had the air of friendly squat, and far from coming over as a commercial enterprise with an eye to the main chance, it was as if one was in a place just after some sort of polite revolution, the refuseniks having some downtime after their exertions. Outside on the summer night, a girl slept on a sofa as the cars went by. Will and I had a blast, the sound was great, and extraordinarily there was a terrific atmosphere, despite the fact that there were no more than about ten people in the whole place. The event was run by Simba, for whom the term ‘really good bloke’ could have been invented. The following week I went on the website, thinking of going back, to discover that the place had suddenly closed, courtesy of the bailiffs. Great shame, and a harsh reminder of the commercial imperative. Simba’s running a similar event upstairs at the Camden Head in Camden Town now, and we dropped in for a quick set there in October. Simba had the four of us mic’d up and ready to go in no time – he has a way with sound that also sets him apart, and we had a good time there.

On the other side of the coin, Will and I did another event, a sort of open mic, though the slots were pre-selected and pre-booked as if it was a sort of proper gig. I am ashamed to report that we giggled rather a lot during the event, like small boys at an elderly aunt’s funeral. Our two short sets were fine, but the individual running the thing had a routine of interviewing each act on stage after they had finished. His line of questioning amounted to the single entendre of asking them if they liked playing with themselves or preferred other people to play with them. This was meant to have a high snigger factor, though it was rather cringeworthy, especially as it got repeated for each act. We were last on, and as we came off, he approached me for the ‘interview’. Let’s just say that no interview took place.

Charlotte Street

Well, 2009 saw the sudden arrival on the London scene of three brand new blues venues (Charlotte Street, Round Midnight and Blues Kitchen), all opening up over a three-month period straddling summer and autumn. For those in the ‘blues world’, this was something of a sensation, blues perhaps appearing to jostle forward out of the musical crowd at least a bit (as it tends to do approximately once a decade). And the biggest and sparkliest of these new venues was Charlotte Street Blues.

It was the first of the new ones to open, and sadly but perhaps with some inevitability, less than 18 months later it closed. Indeed, it closed so suddenly that a band of waifs and strays carrying electric guitars were dispersed around the city gloomily that night, having turned up for the Wednesday jam to find that they weren’t going to be doing those eagerly anticipated solos there again. I had a lot of contact with Charlotte Street – I played at and ran the Sunday Acoustic night every fortnight for 6 months, and I played quite a few times at Sam Hare’s jams on both Wednesdays and latterly Mondays too. I went to a few gigs there too, notably to see John Mayall, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Harry Manx. That short list of artists itself says rather a lot about the ambition and variety associated with the place.

Somebody had a real go at doing something different and something worthwhile there, but clearly the economics couldn’t work. As someone who can’t see how the economics work for just about anything, I wasn’t surprised by the demise of the place, but only a churl would knock the endeavour. My view, for what it’s worth, is that it was essentially a bar that tried to double as a gigs venue. People mostly weren’t coming for a gig, they were coming for a drink with some interesting background music. But many of the acts were getting hired and paid as if it was a gig that people bought tickets for and was the purpose of their visit. This could never work financially, especially with the high overheads of the location. The people running the place and working there were unfailingly nice but there always seemed to be an absence of proper business plan.

Whatever went on behind the scenes, I had some memorable times there and very much enjoyed being a regular. To sum up: it was good while it lasted.

Electric jams

The thing that first struck me when I started out playing again in 2007 was how high the standard of musicianship was at the jams I went to, and that first impression was an accurate one. OK, I’m not keen on the sort of volume that makes your teeth itch, and OK, I am not enthralled by an endless parade of guitar solos, however good they may be, but the fact is an awful lot of good music gets played at the jams I frequent. The people are good too, and I’ve met a large number of fine human beings through playing at jams.

The jam I’ve played most regularly at is the one at Round Midnight on Tuesdays. It’s run by the guvnor of jam hosts, Niall Kelly, who wrote the book on how to make these things good. As a result, he has a large core crowd of regulars, who are good musicians and friends. It’s friendly but non-cliquy, and there’s a zero tolerance policy for any asshole that might slip through the net. Niall makes his jams into real events that everyone enjoys, and makes it look effortless too, though as I know very well, it takes a very special kind of skill and personality to bring that off. As a result, he has loyal followers, of whom I’m one, and wherever he takes his jams (previously I was a regular at The Smithfield and before that the last days of The Adelaide, which he also ran), that group of people will go.

Another good one that I’ve played at several times is the one The Blues Kitchen in Camden on Sunday evenings. This is run every other week by Guy Bennett, and it’s become established as a very good and popular night over the year or so it’s been running. Guy is also very good at running these things, and he’s also one of the more talented musicians and singers around. The jam (also fine on the other Sundays when he doesn’t run it) attracts a decent-size audience as well as a raft of players.

Many of the latter have drifted up from the Ain’t Nothin’ But bar (generally known as ‘the blues bar’), London’s longest-established blues venue and the place that seems to have really kicked off London’s blues scene. I’ve only played there a handful of times, but enjoyed it a great deal when I have, and its Saturday and Sunday afternoon and Monday evening jams are always good value.
A jam I’ve really enjoyed this year is on Thursdays at Moors Bar in Crouch End. It’s a very small bar, and it has a very fine house band, with an especially good rhythm section. When I’ve played there, it also hasn’t been simply a parade of lead guitarists; I’ve played with a number of very good sax players there, all of whom have focused on playing good notes rather than loads of notes, and had some interesting instrumental combinations that have included violin and flute. I’m particularly interested in that sort of thing, doing the songs with different instrumentation.

Before its demise, I played sometimes at the Charlotte Street jams on Wednesdays, and latterly on Mondays. The place was often rammed and I always enjoyed playing there, with its fantastic sound system. I did some good slots there and lots of people told me they liked what I did, or asked about the songs. Sam Hare also often put me with his own house band, or at least members of it, which meant I was playing with very good musicians. Volume was always an issue there, though, with everything mic’d up and that sound system being perhaps better suited to a 1,000-seater auditorium than a smallish club. Lead guitarists being what they are, amp volumes got surreptitiously cranked up and sometimes the noise emanating from the stage was enough to penetrate the central nervous system and cause the kind of discomfort the CIA might have been interested in. By jamming standards, I’m always at the quietist end of the spectrum, but I was pretty loud there too. Indeed, one time I came off after my slot and found that Charles had gone outside because I was ‘too loud’. And he quite likes what I do.

Gig reviews

Slim Chance
I guess The Faces were my last ‘favourite group’, as I got too old to have such a thing. Much as we all loved Rod-nee, at least before he went off into showbiz and celeb-land (and his early albums remain great, unique examples of roots music at its finest), it was Ronnie Lane who always seemed like the heartbeat of that band. Ronnie was wholly unpretentious, and in an era before it was de rigueur to affect or bang on about working class credentials as a kind of one-upmanship, he exemplified a genuine working class sensibility of a kind that no longer exists. The song Debris, that he wrote and sang on one of the Faces’ albums, remains a great portrayal of London working class life, minus the mawkish and bogus sentimentality that now accompanies such things.

After The Faces, Ronnie started an ambitious folk/roots/rock band called Slim Chance. It had quite a lot of members and lots of instruments, including mandolin, accordion, fiddle and sax. Ronnie wrote some excellent good-time and soulful songs for it, and they had a couple of hits as well as producing three terrific albums. I saw them once and loved them. By the end of the 70s, it was all over and sadly Ronnie got MS and died in the 90s.

In November, Slim Chance reformed with a whole lot of members of the original band present and intact, and did a killer show at the 100 Club. They delivered up the best bits of Ronnie’s back catalogue with total faithfulness to the originals, and the rollicking good-time feel of the band’s heyday. Central to this were two consummate musicians – Steve Simpson on guitar, mandolin, fiddle and vocals, and Charlie Hart on accordion, piano, fiddle and vocals. I doubt that there are two better musicians anywhere in the country, and it was a great joy to see them demonstrating just how good they are.

Ronnie’s brother, looking just like Ronnie probably would now, topped and tailed the evening with brief speeches, spending the rest of the time moist-eyed at the front of the stage. At the end, he pointed us all to his car boot sale in Romford. As the song goes, ‘all you gotta do is act naturally’.

Ian Hunter
It is my opinion that Ian Hunter is the coolest man on the planet. Now 70, he still looks the same as he did in the heyday of Mott The Hoople, the shades and curly mop still there. So is the attitude.

Lately, he’s been making totally brilliant albums, and Shrunken Heads is one of my favourites of the last few years. The songs are great and Hunter has lots of interesting things to say. Last year I saw the Mott The Hoople reunion gig, and it was an object lesson in just how good the first generation of rock musicians really were. They still take subsequent efforts to the cleaners.

I saw Hunter with his own band of wonderful musicians at The Barbican. It was a fantastic show, Hunter every bit as good a front man as he ever was. In truth, I wasn’t a massive Mott fan at the time, but I am for sure a massive Ian Hunter fan now.

Guy Davis + Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan
Guy Davis is one of my absolute favourite contemporary blues artists and I have all his albums. I’ve seen him quite a few times too, and he never fails to deliver a riveting set, full of good

humour and great musicianship. I went to see him this time at the Half Moon, Putney, a considerable schlep from where I live, but well worth it, despite the disappointingly low attendance for what was a top quality evening of acoustic blues. Guy, on vocals, 6 and 12 string guitar, rack harmonica and banjo was accompanied by Professor Louie on piano and accordion, and they kicked up a storm.

The evening was opened by a set from Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan, about the best acoustic blues duo you could ever hope to see. They focus on upbeat blues songs in the bawdy/hokum area, and they grab the attention from the first note to the last. Tom Ball is a brilliant harp player and Kenny Sultan an effortless purveyor of stunning finger-picking guitar. A lot of people missed a fantastic evening of blues that night, but the people who did show up were in no doubt as to what they were witnessing.

Tamikrest
I saw this young band of Toureg musicians from the Saharan regions of North Africa at The Borderline. I heard about them via the publicist Ilka Shlockemann, who represents a number of ‘world music’ artists. Last year I reviewed the excellent Bassekou Kouyate at the Jazz Cafe through her (a gig disfigured by the smirking and disgraceful intrusions on to the stage of Damon Albarn, gatecrashing for his own gratification an event that belonged to a band of terrific, real musicians).

I think that Tamikrest have something different and exciting to offer, and they’re a band to watch out for. The rhythms they get going are a total joy and their material is strong. I hope they get to gig over here on their own, as they light up any place they play. The gig I saw was shared with some indie rockers, who played with them and on their own, and the spark that had been lit by Tamikrest came close to being extinguished whenever the indie folk were on. Oddly enough, it was instantly reignited when Tamikrest were on.

Let the Africans play, I say, without interference from people who should be buying their records, not playing with them.

Eric Bibb

Eric Bibb is one of the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing musically, not just because discovering him got me interested again, but also because the guitar I play was previously owned by him. His latest album was inspired by a similar guitar and I saw him playing tracks from it, together with the excellent harmonica player Grant Dermody, at The Bloomsbury. I’ve seen (and reviewed) Eric many times, and I think that at his finest there is simply nobody better. He was pretty near his finest at this gig, and afterwards I spoke to him. When I reminded him that I’d bought the guitar off him, he leant back in his chair, in front of a queue of CD purchasers, and declared ‘God has answered my prayer’. Not a reaction I often get. He’d apparently lost my address and had been waiting for some time for me to come up and speak to him. There was talk of getting together for a play. We’ll see.

Dr John
Right from the classic Gumbo many, many years ago, I’ve been a huge Dr John fan, and I’ve seen him numerous times. This year he made what I think is his best album for a long long time, Tribal, and I saw him touring that album at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. The great man seems to me to be in a golden period, and his band of crack New Orleans musicians bring out the very best in him. Though he’s in the very honourable tradition of New Orleans R & B, He’s a complete one-off, and anyone who isn’t familiar with him is really missing out.

I wrote reviews of some of these shows and they appeared in the magazine Blues Matters, with photos taken by Sally Evans and Benji Taylor.

Sally and Benji took some of the other photos here, and there are also photos by Andy Hall, John Little, Emma Harley, David Atkinson and Toby Pearce, as well as the excellent sketches by Barry Jackson. Big thanks to all of them.

And finally .....

What’s it all about?

At the very real risk of sounding pretentious .....

In a world where the system is more important than the outcome, and the system is at odds with what most people would like to have as an outcome, we are making music for the soul. What we are about is ideas and feelings, not management and accountancy. We don’t tick any boxes but our own. And we’re about craftsmanship, not charlatanry dressed up in the latest design of the Emperor’s new clothes.

What all of us involved in the areas of music I’m in are doing is trying to feed the soul. This we do through certain rhythms, sounds, combinations of notes and attitudes. We are about shared attitudes and an atmosphere that links people who have soul, regardless of their age or economic status.

Personally, I think it’s about being an individual as a musician, finding your own voice and using it. In a conformist age, it’s vital that there are non-conformists.

Well, something like that anyway ....

Mark Harrison

2010-09-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

August & September

I’m going to make a confession here, which is that I’m not totally nuts about every sort of blues music or every sort of acoustic music. A barrage of earnest, yet oddly loud, singer/songwriters pummelling scratchy-sounding electro-acoustic guitars in a strumfest is likely to find me shifting uneasily in my seat. A remorseless onslaught of loud lead guitar solos, however good they are, is likely after a while to present me with will to live issues. It’s the sort of situation where you like everything about the music except the music itself.

Some of this is about variety. At a multi-act event, and I guess a jam or an open mic should be considered that, variety can turn what might otherwise be background music or an ordeal into a memorable event. The performers in question have to be pretty good of course, or at the very least interesting, however you define those things. But if they’ve all got something just a little bit different to offer, that helps too.

This doesn’t mean that everyone has to be doing their own material. What is generally known as roots music tends to encourage variety, especially in the acoustic department, because it encourages individuality. That’s got a lot to do with the fact that most of it is about songs – songs with tunes and memorable hooks and the like. Coupled with the fact these songs are essentially pretty simple musically, the individual performer can put their own stamp on them, turning their version into something different from others.

Take a staple like ‘Stagger Lee’ or ‘John Henry’. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the number of versions of these I have in my collection is well into double figures, and then I’m probably just scratching the surface. I’ve got pre-war versions, 50s versions, Dr John’s in the 70s and Eric Bibb’s this decade. Each one is different from the other in a way that covers of pop or rock songs never could be. This is a measure of the variety possible with this kind of music.

We get a lot of variety at the Green Note. Maybe one time we should make everyone do the same standard in their set and see what that throws up. Maybe someone could suggest a song we all know or have access to and we could try that out to see if I’m right. Would, say, six or seven versions of the same song done by six or seven different singers and instrumental combinations get samey?

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We had good audiences for both nights and the event continues in its rather special way. As people who turn up know, or find out, it’s a jam and it’s not a jam. It’s a jam because people play together in ad hoc instrumental combinations without prior rehearsal, so spontaneity is the key. But it’s not like other jams, because people do short sets that sound like ‘proper’ acts that have been more or less sorted out beforehand. So it’s a cross between a jam and a gig and might best be described as ‘an evening of spontaneous blues/roots music’.

The ‘house band’ isn’t a clearly defined ensemble, again unlike at other jams. Instead, it’s a number of fine musicians who I invite along to play with me at the start and finish and to be available to play with whoever asks them during the course of the evening. The number of these musicians can vary according to availability, and often reaches the dizzying heights of being 8 in number. The whole evening is improvised – nothing’s sorted out until I see who’s shown up.

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In August, unsurprisingly, the number of ‘house’ musicians was reduced, mostly by holiday, but this had no impact on the quality of what was laid out. I kicked off with a few of my originals, aided by Dave Forristal on keyboards and Phil Hughes on harmonica. I kicked off solo, did a couple just with Phil and then a couple with both Phil and Dave. This trio format wasn’t one we’ve had before, I don’t think, but again it worked really well, proving yet again that you can cook up all sorts of interesting things with any combination of people who can really play, as of course those two can.

We again had a mixture of stalwarts and first-timers. Barry Jackson was next up, with another excellent set, and he was followed by Phil’s mesmerising solo vocal and harmonica numbers, that never fail to hook an audience. There are two reasons for that: one, it’s highly unusual to see such a thing and two, it’s of the very highest class.

Next was Mark (failure to note surnames is another thing I need to address), a first-timer at the event. He provided yet another first in the history of the event – ukulele, which went down very well. He was followed by another ‘plough your own furrow’ merchant, Julian, whose set included an original that drew on the to most of us hitherto unknown dialect of the Isle of Man. Neither of the above sets is the sort of thing you tend to see very often but happily it’s what you get at Blues at Green Note.

Two more first-timers at the event, the guitar/harmonica duo of Ed Hopwood and Murray Hunter were next up, with their gentle and atmospheric takes on standards such as ‘Make me a pallet on your floor’ and ‘Sitting on top of the world’. Barry got up again then, with Stephen on harmonica and Mark on ukulele for a fun set and I then rounded things off with Barry on guitar and Phil on harp.

It was another excellent evening, a pretty packed house enjoying the typically varied fare, and this was followed by another fine, but again very different night last week.

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In September, the house musicians included David Atkinson on mandolin, and it was a very welcome reappearance from him. He got to do a lot of playing, and very good it was too. Mandolin has become one of the distinctive features of the night since we started and David’s really the reason why that started to be the case. He’s got a terrific style, sitting in behind to complement what’s going on up front when that’s required, and taking the lead in the most effective ways too.

Aside from David’s playing, there was another major highlight too. Phil Hughes and Will Greener got up for a harmonica and vocal duet, a quite breathtaking version of Jaybird Coleman’s ‘I’m

gonna cross the river of Jordan some of these days’.

This is not to detract from the rest of what we had that night, in what was a very nicely varied evening’s entertainment. Barry Jackson kept the bar high with a set that included a solo number and two with mandolin and Dave Forristal’s constantly excellent keyboard playing. Graham Hinton kicked off with a Keb Mo number on his own and then numbers with Phil on harp, David on mandolin and Dave on piano. Graham’s set included an ambitious number of chord changes, which were professionally dealt with by the house musicians, ie they got most of them and ignored the others.

Peter Vardigans made a welcome return, again first number solo, then two with the ‘band’, playing a Kay that would romp home with the ‘oldest guitar’ in the room title at most jams, but may not have got on the podium at this one. Phil Hughes did his unique set next, including the aforementioned duet with Will, and then James Daniel and Chris, regulars at the event, put in another of their rousing appearances. Joined by David and Dave, they once again chose excellent, non-standard numbers to cover and covered them really well.

Will did a solo number and then I got up with him, David and Dave to round the evening off with ‘Hard Work’, which it hadn’t been. I’d also kicked things off, solo and with David, Dave and Phil with a few originals, including a duet with David on ‘Big Mary’s House’, where the National and mandolin combination sounded pretty damn good from where I was sitting.

Another fine evening, good audience, everyone listening and a serene atmosphere for this one. As in calm and enjoyable, that is .......

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The next one’s on Wednesday October 13th.
Musicians show up by 8 please.
Bring your friends, everyone.

Mark Harrison

2010-08-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

NEXT EVENT: WEDNESDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER
Be there by 8 if you want to play.

Wednesday July 14th 2010

2010-07-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

A very good crowd indeed showed up for this, the first anniversary event. The fact that it was the first anniversary was among a raft of things I forgot to mention on the night, not that anybody’s life is the poorer for that. The truth is that I’m not only no good at so-called multi-tasking, I am also bitterly resentful of the existence of it. I happen to know that there is compelling research evidence that multi-tasking greatly reduces the efficiency with which you do any of the multi tasks.

In this case, the multi-tasking involves working out what I’m going to play, who’s going to play it with me and how that’s going to work, watching Charles set up all the mics and sort out the sound, sorting out who’s come to do sets, when they’re going to do them and who they’re going to do them with, being on or making sure someone’s on the door, and dealing with anything else that may come up, such as people who’ve shown up to play but mysteriously not brought an instrument. There was, unusually, a fair bit of the latter on this occasion.

It isn’t a big deal in itself but it gets to be a thorny issue when the people in question can’t seem to deal with the response. In essence, they appear to expect you to magic an instrument out of your ear and the information that they will have to ask someone if they can borrow theirs is often hard to get through. This seems to strike them as a very confusing response and they look at you as if you have told them to build one themselves.

What made it even harder to solve on this occasion was the fact that there wasn’t one single ‘normal’ guitar in the room, by which I mean a six-string steel-strung acoustic. There were numerous other kinds of guitar, but not one of those. And, curiously enough, the offer to play washboard instead wasn’t taken up by any of the instrumentless musicians.

Lots of multi-tasking then, right up until the end, when I was being followed around by a bassless bassist who’d shown up at 10.30 expecting somehow to be accommodated. As I was at that point dealing with a broken string prior to doing the evening’s closing set, some of my politeness systems may have broken down at that point.

Anyway, among the things that I failed to mention while doing my compere impersonation was this very blog, thereby ensuring that its readership does not expand beyond the smallish inner circle that (I’m guessing this) scrolls down to see their names mentioned and then heads off elsewhere. And I didn’t mention that it’s OK to talk at a normal volume but not to bellow and shriek – not a major problem by any means, but some people were getting annoyed with others on that front early on and then I had to try and deal with it without being rude. Multi-tasking? Not a box I can tick.

Anyway, it was great to have such a large audience (i.e., people who’d come to listen not play) and that’s what we need every time. So the instruction to musicians to bring at least two people with them each time stands – add them to the people who come anyway and you’ve got a full room and a great atmosphere. And while you’re about it, if any of them want to play but don’t have an instrument, under no circumstances say ‘Mark’ll sort you out’.

I did the first set as usual, starting off with the 12-string for a couple of numbers and then onto the National for a couple more. After the first one, I was joined by David Atkinson on mandolin (he walked in the door and within a minute was on stage just about being told what key we were in) and it was a welcome return for his fine playing. I was also joined by Charles Benfield on double bass, Dave Forristal on keys, Mick Paley and Dave Johnson on various percussion, and Martin Holloway on drum. Among the evening’s highlights was Dave Forristal’s playing, this time on a smaller keyboard than his usual one – not only did this sound great, particularly the organ, but it also allowed on-stage musicians to be a whole lot less intimate with each other than they care to be.

Dave and Mick then did a fine duo set, Dave on a nylon-strung guitar and Mick on harp. They’re really good musicians and performers, with great non-standard repertoire and they’re a boon to any event they play at.

Next up was Graham Hine, playing at the event for the first time. Now Graham Hine’s a notable name in the blues world, as he is the main man in the legendary Brett Marvin And The Thunderbolts. For those of you who don’t know, this band was (and indeed still is from time to time) one of the more individualistic bands on the late 60s/early 70s British blues scene, with a wholly distinctive sound based to some degree on a pogo-stick sort of device that provided a unique percussive sound. Graham is a fine solo act in his own right and he proceeded to demonstrate that to an appreciative audience, who stayed quiet and attentive throughout. He did a couple on his own on a battered resonator and was then joined by Dave Johnson on washboard and Rick Webb (also making a welcome return) on harp. This was a fine combo. Hard to imagine too many other places where a kind of impromptu Brett Marvin And The Thunderbolts could be formed and it was a pleasure to hear it.

Simon was on next for another of his quiet and reflective sets. An assortment of house band musicians joined him during the course of this, and Danno Sheehan was on harp. His typically animated set went down well, grabbing the audience’s attention, at least partly by the simple expedient of shouting at them. There’s always something happening when Simon’s on and afterwards people feel like they need a bit of a lie-down.

Phil Thorne was next up, for another set of typically excellent country blues, this time on a 12-string. He played solo to start with and then with various house band personnel. It was good stuff and much enjoyed.

Graham Hinton did the next set, joined by various band members and I think on Goodnight Irene by Guy Bennett, former host of Blues at Green Note, on piano. Nice to see him back for a visit. Danno played on this, and David, getting plenty of mando action. I’m not 100% sure of the line-up as I was out back attending to my string and the bassless bassist.

To round things off I got up again, and here my maths fail me. How come, with two regulars missing, I ended up part of an 8-piece band? Double bass, mandolin, drum, two percussionists, organ and harp, plus me. Pretty damn good sound it all made, to my ears anyway. The harp was played by a visiting American called Harry, who slotted right in. And in the final number, I managed to remember my gravest omission from earlier, .......

..... jug. Yep, Dave Johnson, having introduced the washboard last month, followed it up with jug. I threw it a solo in the last number and it acquitted itself very well. Now this is what should be regarded as experimental music, not some twee poser fiddling about on a synth.

So, a good time was had by all.

Next one: Wednesday 11th August.

Mark Harrison

NEXT EVENT: WEDNESDAY 14TH JULY

2010-06-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

FIRST ANNIVERSARY

The next one will be the anniversary of the Green Note all-acoustic jam. Let's try to pack the place out for this. If you're coming to play, bring at least two people with you.

Remember, one of the exceptional aspects of this is that, unlike at other jams, you aren't likely to get put on stage at no minute's notice with a bunch of unknown quantities that could lead to humiliation in front of people you know. Not only are all the musicians excellent, but as far as possible, you get to choose the combination you fancy. Who knows, if you bring people along, they may even get to see you in a whole new light!

It was in February 2007 that Rick Webb announced on his Blues in London website that a new jam was to start under the 'Blues in London presents ...' banner, at the Green Note. Rick ran it with his excellent band The Velours until Autumn 2008, and there were many great nights during that period. Guy Bennett then took over with his fine Vulnerable Things band until last summer. At that point, David Atkinson and I stepped up, and we decided to make it all-acoustic. We kicked off in some style, the idea of an all-acoustic jam being vindicated from the start with some great evenings of music.

Prior to that, it had been a mostly electric jam, with an acoustic slot somewhere in the middle. Often that slot was just me, though David and Graham were regulars too. On a personal note, it was Rick starting this event with the specific aim of including an acoustic slot that got me started after a very long period of doing nothing musically. Indeed, on the very first night, a nervous lead guitar player told me as he waited to go on that he was apprehensive because he hadn't played for five years. 'I'll see your five years,' I said, 'and raise you twenty'.

From the very first one, it was clear that the event attracted some excellent musicians and fine human beings. I was struck from the off by how good people were, and I suspect a part of this was down to Rick's clear stipulation that the jam was not to be like other electric jams, in that people who played 'sports guitar' were not encouraged.

For quite some time, the monthly Green Note was the only playing I did, and it was a pretty special event each month for me. I started to go out and about a bit more after a year or so, but the Green Note has always been the one to really look forward to. When I started co-running it, I recruited people to be in the house band that I thought would make for the best kind of acoustic night, and I think everyone would agree that you couldn't beat them. It would be good to build on it, and make sure the place is packed for every one.

Well, I went in a couple of years from doing my acoustic bit on my own in a state of great nervous tension to making an album. Andy and Rick did the totally brilliant cover. Charles produced it, engineered it, mixed it, mastered it and played on it. Other people I met at the Green Note, such as Will and David, play on it. Most of the songs first saw the light of day at the Green Note.

So there you go. We've got something very good going at this thing, and Risa and Immy at the Green Note are very supportive of it too. Let's make sure we can keep it going and the best way of doing that is to make sure there's a good turnout every time. So tell everyone you know and get them to come along. One very noticeable thing about this is how many people who don't have great interest in all this before they come end up saying what a great time they had and how much they enjoyed the music. Spread the word.

And now, a report on the last one .....

Mark

2010-06-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

Wednesday June 9th 2010

Should anyone be in any doubt about the rather special nature of Blues at Green Note, and certainly its differentness from other musical events, there’s just one word that needs to be said to them: washboard. Yep, Dave Johnson, getting right under the skin of the event, showed up with one and it got a good outing throughout the evening. It was in pristine nick, suggesting that they are made and sold as musical instruments, which I guess I hadn’t known. Well, they’d hardly be sold as domestic products, I suppose.

Dave got right on with playing it in my opening set, as well as playing conga with me and the rest of the house band – Charles on double bass, Ryan on mandolin, Will on harmonica, Martin on drum and Dave Forristal on keyboards. Yes, that makes 7 people and some largish musical instruments all crammed more or less on the Green Note stage, which is approximately the size of the balcony of a studio flat. This, it must be assumed, is testimony to the svelte nature of said musicians, a result obviously of the peak physical fitness they maintain and their constant workouts. If there were just one or two beer guts among them, the whole evening would be torpedoed.

Well, this did answer a question I’d pondered before – what would happen if all band members showed up on the one night? Well, now we know. Magically, they are all able to play together. Charles may have had to get a bit too close for comfort to his bass, Ryan may have had one knee in his ear, and the washboard may have put itself in places it shouldn’t, but we managed. And managed to kick off what was generally regarded as possibly the best night musically so far.

About the right number of people showed up to do sets and there was a decent, and as usual, receptive audience. I started off, with this extraordinary seven-piece band, and did a few songs, mostly from the CD I’ve just put out. If there is actually anywhere else at all on the planet where that particular line-up can be seen, let alone joined, then I would be very surprised.

Owen Houlston was up next, with selected band members, and he kicked up quite a storm with what was a very popular set. Dave was giving that washboard some serious gyp at this point, and there was a moment in the last number when the ensemble was doing a pretty surreal kind of skiffle. Personally, I’ve always felt that skiffle was better as an idea than as a reality, but this wasn’t really skiffle as we know it. It was more like what Captain Beefheart might have come up with if only he’d done a washboard album, which is to say it was the kind of skiffle that would be considered good therapy for the patients on a psychiatric ward.

Phil Hughes got up and did his stunning solo thing next, the room totally silent as he did his a cappella and harp numbers, including a version of Skip James’ Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, a song so great that a thousand totally different versions of it could be done. No nattering while Phil was on.

Barry Jackson followed him, again with various band members for a set so laid-back it should be in the training video for Laid-Back Music-Making. Barry was playing a rather nice Guild, and some of us are now getting so old that we’ve seen Barry play some of his extensive collection of guitars at least twice.

Dave Johnson did his own set next, accompanied on slide by Barry Jackson, and the two of them gelled really well, very firmly in the category of ‘it sounds like they must have rehearsed this quite a lot’ – we like to think just about everything we do on these nights is in that category.

Then it was Graham Hinton, with selected band members for another fine set of his now familiar numbers, delivered with the usual polish. The washboard was now taking a well-earned rest, having made its point, but another first for the event was about to be unleashed, in the shape of a baritone sax, played by Robert.

The arrival of this monster created something of a stir, especially as it looked as if it could only be played by means of a complex pulley system. There was also discussion of which keys it would be prepared to co-operate with, as if it needed to be pacified. Having settled that issue, Robert got up with me and the vast majority of the band for a couple more of my numbers. The baritone fitted right in, and yet another interesting combination of instruments was formed – this of course is one of the main points and great joys of the event.

Another impromptu combo was then formed for the evening’s final set – Ryan on guitar and vocal, Will on harp and Robert on baritone sax. A whole new set of moods was established, from the atmospheric slow opener, with Ryan’s sweet (in the best sense of the word) vocal sound complemented wonderfully by the harp and sax, to the final audience-participation song, which drew even more enthusiastic than usual participation from the audience. With this, the entertainment ended on a high.

A washboard and a baritone sax? A six-piece house band for people to choose from? An array of musical combinations and styles? Top-class musicians in a terrific venue? A listening audience? As the Cockney comedian Tommy Trinder’s catchphrase went: ‘You lucky people!’

Next time: Wednesday 14th July

Mark Harrison

ALBUM OUT NOW

2010-06-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

2010-05-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

NEXT JAM: WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE

Wednesday May 12th 2010

The ‘house band’ at Blues at Green Note is quite a luxury item. Where else can you turn up and expect to be able to add your talents to an array that may include all or some of the following: mandolin, double bass, keyboards, harmonica, and a three-piece drums and percussion section? What’s more, where else can you get up and say that you’re going to do something that isn’t a 12-bar, without house band members pulling faces as if someone has just waved a freshly minted turd under their noses?

We have, I think most people would agree, a pretty good and in my experience unique thing going musically at the Green Note. And the above are the reasons why. In fact, such is the core of excellent and varied musicians on hand for people to play with that we were on this occasion able to manage with three men down and still produce a fine evening of varied music. For various reasons, Dave, Charles and Martin couldn’t make it, but there was still a wide variety of instrumental combinations on display.

Quite what will happen if all the above mentioned musicians show up on the same night is anybody’s guess. So far, we’ve not had quite the full complement on stage at the same time (with such numbers, someone is more or less bound not to be there). The full band would number something like eight people, and include some rather large instruments (oh, Matron!). This raises the spectre of musicians having to be off stage and blocking the way to and from the loo. Any advice on handling the repercussions of that will be welcome.

Anyway, we had a decent turnout and just about the ideal number of sets to make for a pretty relaxed evening. I kicked off with a slightly longer than usual opening set as Will couldn’t stay long and so I did all my stuff straight away. I played the National and the 12-string, and in addition to Will, was joined by Ryan on mando and Mick and Dave on percussion.

There were 8 more sets. Justin popped in to do one number on his own first up and Phil followed him, playing both solo and with percussion for some excellent pre-war acoustic numbers. He was followed by Simon with a typically rumbustious set. He had brought harmonica player Leroy with him, who he introduced as ‘the worst harmonica player in London’. Needless to say, Leroy was very good.

Ryan got up next for his own set, taking time out from the house band. For this he was joined by David, who gave a debut to his new dobro, played lap-slide way. We get quite a few ‘firsts’ at this event (how long till the eagerly awaited first appearance of a washboard, for example?) and this was perhaps the best so far. Those there would agree that David’s dobro playing in combination with Ryan was a highlight.

Mick and Dave did their guitar-and-harmonica set next – they always choose really good material and deliver it with polish. Julian followed them, playing in a folkier style on some sort of electronic guitar (exactly what it was did get explained to me but I have been unable to retain the precise information). Anyway, it sounded good and, in combination with various house band musicians, contributed something quite different to the evening.

Next up came Paul and Chris, doing their own material, their set also involving very effective use of one of those drum/box things you sit on and play by hand (another bit of gear ignorance there on my part, sorry). Their stuff comes across really well. The evening was then rounded off by regular James Daniel on vocals and harp, joined by the house band. James is always good.
So there you have it for another month. Another good one, enjoyed by all those present. No photos this time – anyone is welcome to take them and send them to me for any of the events by the way.

We’re getting decent turnouts but would always welcome more audience members. Now, if everyone brought two friends to see them play, we could pack the place out and make for an even better atmosphere when you’re playing ......

Finally, I might have my CD ready by the next one. At the moment it’s still delayed at the printers, who appear to be marginally slower than Caxton. But anyway, it includes songs and musicians familiar to regulars at Blues at Green Note and it’s called Watching The Parade.

Next one Wednesday June 9th.

Mark Harrison

2010-04-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

NEXT JAM: WEDNESDAY 12TH MAY

Green Note, 106 Parkway, Camden. London N1 7AN

Wednesday April 14th 2010

Photos by Andy Hall

Running a jam is an interesting thing to do. It can be an oddly high-intensity thing, with all sorts of people and their needs and wishes to be accommodated over a pretty short space of time. To do it well requires the sort of management and people skills that are normally associated with fat-cat bonus scandals in major corporations. Perhaps some of the newer universities should be running degrees in Jam Running Skills. Graduates of these courses would all be knocking themselves out to emulate Niall Kelly, the doyen of jam runners in my experience, and discovering that his lines are mysteriously only funny when he utters them.

Actually, there are other analogies between this music thing and corporate life. How far up the executive ladder would Muddy Waters have got, for example, if he’d been given a shot at it and had had the inclination to pursue it? The leadership, the people skills, those things now called ‘vision’ and ‘emotional intelligence’ and the like – he had the lot. They should be doing his band as a case study on MBA programmes, and if they did, the calibre of management in this country might shoot up from subterranean to something approaching efficient.

I’m not of course making any claims for myself here – I’m just a civilian who does this once a month. But that experience shows me just what goes into being really good at running jams on a regular basis. So what does the job description include and what exactly does running a jam involve?

It is tempting to think that when you run a jam all human nature is laid before you, but this is not strictly true. As one mainstay harp player once observed to me outside a jam, the proportion of arseholes on the blues jam scene is extremely low in comparison to the number of them in the populace in general. It’s true that one might encounter the odd ‘difficult’ person, and the odd straight down the line prat, but these are very much the exception. And whenever they appear, everyone else closes ranks and mutters about them and makes damn sure they remain the exception.

With just about every electric jam, the set-up is that musicians have little or no say in who they play with. It’s of course true that regulars at various jams may be able to request musicians to play with, and may even get what could be regarded as preferential treatment – right and proper if you’re a regular I’d say. But even this isn’t always the case, because the jam host’s primary role is to make sure that everyone gets a go. And so the norm is that musicians wait for their name to be called out and they don’t know who they’re going to play with until that moment.

This event has tended to differ from the norm in that regard. Because it’s an acoustic event and not awash with guitar slingers, the attempt has been to ask the person leading a set who they’d like to play with and let them choose the ensemble for their set. However, it isn’t always possible to do this all the time, especially when a number of instrumentalists show up, and isn’t a cast-iron guarantee. So sometimes people play with who they’re put with, and the busier the evening, the more likely this is.

At the same time as getting everyone who’s come to play onto the stage, a decent jam host is trying to make sure that all the musicians get to enjoy themselves as much as possible. Even this isn’t always simple – you have to keep an eye on timing, hoping someone doesn’t go on for too long so that it’s hard to fit everyone in. Plus you’re trying to get combinations of musicians that will work and mean that every set sounds OK (and that at least some even sound brilliant).

Which brings you to the audience, who actually aren’t by any means at the bottom of a jam host’s list. At the Green Note, for example, the primary aim is to serve up an excellent evening of varied music for the people who have come to listen. This is of course largely dependent on who shows up to play and I’d say we’ve managed it every time, proving that there’s no shortage of really good acoustic musicians in a wide variety of styles in London (and visiting).

This time was no exception. It was a pretty busy evening, and another very good one indeed, with a good turnout of musicians and audience. It was characterised by two firsts – the first appearance on congas, bongos and other percussion of Mick Paley and Dave Johnson, and the large number of newcomers to the event aside from them who played. As Seasick Steve has been saying remorselessly for the last couple of years ‘It’s all good’.

I kicked off as usual and started with a solo instrumental. Then I was joined by Charles Benfield on double bass, Ryan Carr on mandolin, Will Greener on harmonica, Martin Holloway on drum, and Mick and Dave on percussion for two of my originals – Big Mary’s House and Hard Work. The three-piece percussion section sounded pretty damn good from where I was, and added a whole new dimension to the evening in general.

Next up was Barry Jackson for another solid set, the house band slotting in very nicely with Barry’s polished delivery. I’ve said quite a bit about Barry’s sets over the past few months and there’s nothing new to add here – it was high-quality business as usual.

Phil Hughes was next, a welcome first visit to the event from this highly respected and well-established London blues artist. The room got quiet and put its full attention on Phil’s two solo a cappella voice and harp numbers – the original Sonny Boy Williamson’s Welfare Store Blues and a Tom Waits number whose title escapes me. Several people had told me about Phil’s solo set before but I hadn’t seen it; now I could see what they were raving about, and it was certainly a highlight of what was another excellent and varied evening.

Then came Marsha Mellow, another newcomer to the event. She was accompanied by Danno Sheehan on harp, Phil on acoustic bass, and the percussion section. Danno was to the fore in this set, on what was becoming something of a harp fest, and the whole thing came together as a decent ensemble.

Mick & Dave did their own set next, Mick on harp and vocal, Dave on guitar and vocal. Their electric sets at other jams are always excellent – varied, nice choice of material, interest in playing as a band rather than endless loud soloing. Accompanied by Charles and Martin, they did a fine set that was exactly in keeping with the spirit of this event. Fine musicians both, they fitted right in.

Julian, another first-timer at this jam, then got up and did a couple of solo instrumentals that added further variety to what was on offer during course of the evening. His set included Angi, the seminal Davey Graham piece that could truthfully be said to have changed the face of English folk music, and certainly folk guitar playing. The audience got quiet, keen to hear the something different he was doing. This people listening thing is one of the many good aspects of the Green Note as a venue.

Will Greener got up for his own set next, starting off with an excellent voice and harp solo piece that had the audience’s full attention and went down extremely well. It was delivered with Will’s trademark compelling style, and followed by an equally compelling duo number with Phil on acoustic bass. Ever up for spontaneity and thinking of interesting combinations, Will does just what this event is about, trying out new things on the spur of the moment and making them happen with total success. This voice, harp and bass combination rightly went down really well too, everyone sucked into the atmosphere created.

I got back up with the full band then and did some more of my own numbers – Sneaking Away, Highgate Hill Blues, Early In The Morning and Easy Does It. Well, everyone else had had their go by then, apart from .....

Laine Hines, good friend of Blues at Green Note but sadly not able to come and play all that often due to other commitments. But he showed up for the last slot, this time bringing with him some gizmo that distorted the guitar and vocal sound to emulate the authentic sound of pre-war acoustic blues recordings. It was very effective and Laine again showed why he’s one of the most interesting acoustic artists around, as well as almost certainly the best performer of this brand of acoustic blues in London.

So all was well. The Green Note, as we have observed before, is a terrific place for an event such as this. The people who run it (Immy, Risa) and the people who work there like the event and are very supportive and helpful when it’s on. This is another way in which it differs from some (though by no means all) jams, where the beleaguered soul running it is battling against venue management who seem to think an event they requested in the first place is an annoying inconvenience. So running this is a perfectly pleasant thing to do.

Nevertheless, on a busy one it’s possible for me to see just what goes into running ‘normal’ electric jams well, and fills me with admiration for the people who do that. It may look effortless to most people who are there, but they’re like the proverbial duck - paddling like hell under the surface. And utilising an exceptional set of skills that could earn them fortunes in other walks of life.

So there you have it – blues jam hosts and band leaders in key executive positions, in the Cabinet, heading up corporations, running the show. That would bring about a real recovery in this bankrupt, shoddily-run country, I reckon. If Niall Kelly ran for high office, he’d be a shoo-in, I’d say.

Spare a thought for the next political party canvasser who rings my doorbell.

Mark Harrison

Next Jam Wednesday 14th April

2010-04-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

The Green Note Cafe, 106 Parkway, Camden, London, NW1 7AN

Wednesday March 10th 2010

2010-03-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Before we started playing, some very nice people asked me about the history of this kind of music and I tried to tell them as briefly as possible something about acoustic blues. It occurs to me that this might be something worth doing on this blog, as it’s wrong to assume that everyone who comes, or indeed everyone who plays, necessarily knows a huge amount about the subject.

Add to this the fact that it’s come to my attention since I got involved in all this after a lengthy hiatus that a number of people think that ‘blues’ automatically means formulaic electric music with lengthy loud guitar solos. So I’m going to attempt a potted history. Musicologists and ethnomusicologists need not leave comments about the yawning gaps in this, or its oversimplification. So here goes.

The music known as ‘blues’ really began in the first decade of the 20th century. People in the rural parts of a couple of southern US states, principally Mississippi, performed for the entertainment of the locals on plantations and in towns and cities. Their repertoire consisted of their own takes on various songs, including work songs and field hollers sung while working in the fields and while in prison work gangs. The songs contained elements of all sorts of what we might now call folk music, country music, ragtime and spirituals. Learned people have written books about how African influences exist in the scales and general feel of the music.

Along came recording, for the story of popular music evolves alongside the arrival of ‘gear’. In the 1920s, the newly formed record companies decided there was a market for the music these people were doing, and they sent people out into the rural areas to record them, often in hotel rooms. These records were marketed as ‘race records’ – they were cheap, available in local stores and aimed solely at black people. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the ‘great names’ of the blues recorded, often prolifically. For one reason or another, some are better known to us now than others. The Premier League of this period consists of Charley Patton (probably the first ‘bluesman’), Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Skip James, Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie McTell, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie Johnson and of course Robert Johnson, among others. If you don’t possess music by all of these, you need to rectify that error sharpish.

These pioneers weren’t wedded to the 12-bar pattern by any means. It evolved fairly early in proceedings, but was by no means followed rigidly by these artists. A lot of their repertoire was based around the I, IV, V three-chord menu, but there was considerable variety in how they used this, and plenty of material following the more complex patterns of ragtime.

It is worth pointing out too that none of these people were remotely famous by any serious definition of that word. They eked out a living playing on street corners or at local parties in juke joints or at fish fries. They were itinerant, roaming the area playing from place to place and living on their wits. There were no venues to hustle gigs at for this kind of musician, and nothing resembling session work. The action, and the greater fame, lay in a whole other thing known as blues at the time, which tended to involve female singers, big bands with jazz-type arrangements and something resembling hit records. The solo male bluesman, travelling around, recording for nickels and dimes, wasn’t really on the commercial register. Hardly anyone at the time had heard of the now legendary Robert Johnson. That all came later.

People left the land during the 1940s with the arrival of mechanised cotton picking. They went up north to the industrial cities, mainly Chicago. At this point comes another development in ‘gear’ – the electric guitar. The guys who were still active (some of the originals had died, others had given up) turned to the louder, beefier sound of the electric, and with that came developments in the music itself. It got more rhythm based, and it started to be played by bands rather than solos. The band set-up still standard today was first adopted by such artists as Sonny Boy Williamson I in Chicago and of course by Muddy Waters. These electric bands were playing what became known as ‘urban blues’, as opposed to the ‘rural blues’ or ‘country blues’ played by one man and his acoustic. ‘Country blues’ should not be confused with ‘country music’, the ‘country’ means rural and the term actually means ‘acoustic blues’.

The big names in the electric blues in the 1950s were in Chicago and recording for the Chess label. They include Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson II. They played in clubs, people danced. It’s worth pointing out that very little of what they did was in strict 12-bar formula, and none of it had lead guitar solos as the centre piece. They were doing songs; there were guitar and harmonica breaks, but there weren’t any guitar players wincing and pouting as they appeared to be trying to extract particularly stubborn pieces of fluff from their navels. And these guys, in the great scheme of things, weren’t really famous and certainly didn’t make a heap of money.

This electric blues morphed into rock’n’roll, which is essentially electric blues in double time and employing just one of the rhythms of blues, that irresistible chugging thing. Chuck Berry’s the man here, as he (and Bo Diddley) invented the popular rock’n’roll song. British kids growing up in the second half of the 50s and in the early 60s lapped all this up. The Stones were in the Muddy/blues camp; The Beatles were in the Elvis/rock’n’roll camp. The Stones led to rock music; The Beatles re-invented pop music. They both were, in the great scheme of things, famous, and they certainly did make a heap of money.

The ‘original’, ‘authentic’ acoustic blues was by now gone, but not forgotten. In the 1950s and early 1960s, educated white folk, usually students, started to get interested in the roots and heritage of American music. One or two influential compilation albums came out (another influence of technology – the birth of the LP). These contained recordings by the original acoustic bluesmen of the 20s and 30s, and they caused a bit of a stir. Some people then had the bright idea of trying to find these artists, who had recorded decades earlier but not been heard of since. And so it was that well-intentioned people went down South and found Son House and Mississippi John Hurt and Reverend Gary Davis and Skip James and a host of others. Through the 60s, these now old men were feted at festivals and on the college and coffee house circuit, and they got to end their lives with a bit of money for their unparalleled musical talents.

One unfortunate effect of the ‘rediscovery’ period was that acoustic blues became associated in the popular imagination with old men. This is nonsense and merely reflects the lack of attention these people got when they first recorded. The fact of the matter is that the music was young people’s music when they did it – they were young themselves and so were most of their not huge audience. By and large, they were performing songs in the/their 60s they had first recorded in the/their 20s. It’s just the same as if The Stones had disappeared totally in 1972 and were now being brought back to perform Honky Tonk Women.

The Stones are quite relevant to this history, for one reason because they had the only number 1 hit record of all time that was a blues standard – Little Red Rooster (by Howlin’ Wolf originally) in the mid 60s. This was around the time of what the Americans called The British Invasion and also of, over here, the British Blues Boom. The former enabled Americans to hear of people like Muddy Waters for the first time (a US interviewer at the time asked where that was). The latter featured the likes of John Mayall and Fleetwood Mac (Peter Green incarnation) but it only lasted for a very short time and quickly gave way to a whole new genre of popular music – rock.

Up until this point, there had been no white people in the story (other than on the business side, of course). They arrived in the mid 60s, as blues was swiftly elbowed aside by rock. Rock came out of blues, particularly in the shape of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. All started out playing blues, and all of them moved on from there to create ‘rock’, which was chiefly characterised by riff-based songs and lengthy instrumental passages, mostly lead guitar solos. Blues was the starting point but the outcome wasn’t anything really recognisable as blues music. Cream’s version of Robert Johnson’s Crossroads is a good example – the acoustic, one-man original is a song with some wonderful, dextrous guitar picking; the Cream version is a riff and a long guitar solo, with a bit of a song tacked on at the beginning and end. This laid the pattern for much of what was to follow under the name of blues.

The inventors of rock had been much influenced by the blues they heard on LPs in their teens. In particular, there was a double LP of Robert Johnson that had some commercial success in the 60s. John Hammond, head of CBS in America, went through the company’s archives and found the original Robert Johnson recordings from 1938. He’d tried to book him for a gig at the Carnegie Hall in 1939 only to discover that he’d died (a death witnessed, it would seem , by at least 400 other bluesmen, who told their story to gullible white folk for decades after). Johnson’s songs found a whole new audience, they were lifted out of utter obscurity to become the seminal influence on a whole lot of white boys who went on to fame and fortune with Johnson’s songs ringing in their ears.

These chaps, however, didn’t pick up acoustic guitars and attempt to play like Robert Johnson or his peers. Instead, they took some of the songs and used them in the rock music they were creating. Technology comes in here again – by the late 1960s amps were getting bigger and more powerful, making the loud lead guitar solo de rigueur. Brilliant acoustic songs such as Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues got mangled into electric rock workouts, the song itself a sort of inconvenience that had to be compressed between guitar solos. Acoustic blues went under the radar.

Well, after this, rock disappears up its own backside when the working class boys are replaced by chaps who had had piano lessons, and in the 1980s blues makes something of a reappearance in the person of Stevie Ray Vaughan (I gather, not knowing much about this). Generations of people come along thinking that all blues is loud electric music. They don’t know about the acoustic origins and probably not even of the pre-1960s electric origins. They are therefore missing out on absolutely all of the good stuff.

Technology again now. As CD making gets cheaper and more easily available in the mid 1990s, a torrent of artists can get their music out there. Among them are blues artists, both electric and acoustic. The best-seller lists for blues (a relative term) indicate that electric rock/blues form is the most popular, even though it has not changed at all since it first arrived in the mid 60s. Its fans seem to like the idea that it is something from the past. The acoustic scene, however, is more varied. Among the people to seek out in that field are Eric Bibb, Guy Davis, Steve James, Paul Rishell, Paul Geremia, Doug MacLeod, Corey Harris, Hans Theessink, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Mary Flower, Keb Mo and Rory Block. Special mention too for the great Taj Mahal, who has made great records from the 60s till now and carried the flame more or less alone through the 80s and early 90s. And you should definitely seek out Samuel James, the best young American acoustic artist. A mention too for our own Ian Siegal, Britain's best all-round blues artist, whose acoustic material more than holds its own in any company.

OK, we’re done now. Not perhaps an exactly ‘potted’ history but I have covered an entire century. Meanwhile, back at the Green Note, there we were, adding our own bit to all this history.

And it was another excellent one, with a good turnout both of audience and musicians. We had 8 different ‘acts’, in addition to me, as well as a number of instrumentalists.

I kicked off with the 12-string instrumental Primrose Hill Street Rag, and then did Long Long Way To Go, bringing in band members as the song went along. The band featured Ryan Carr on mandolin, Charles Benfield on double bass and Dave Forristal on keyboards (drummer Martin was ill). That’s the house band and we were joined by the very welcome presence of Will Greener on harp. Will set the harp-playing bar very high, as he always does. The five of us then did two more of my originals, Your Second Line and Sneakin’ Away.

Owen Houlston followed us, various house band members joining him on his distinctive versions of pre-war acoustic blues songs. Owen is dusting off some of the gems to be found in that mine and putting his own imprint on numbers from that era. This is a noble calling. He was also joined by Will on guitar, making his first appearance at the event and playing acoustic at a jam for the first time. He can now tick that challenge off the list as successfully overcome.

James Daniel on harp and vocals, with Chris on guitar, they delivered their now regular high-quality set, with Dave on piano an integral part of their sound as they do non-standard, often New Orleans based material. Another fine set followed as Simon threw himself with wild abandon into some excellent good-time stuff, starting with a solo number and then being joined by Dan Sheehan on harp, Dave on piano and Phil, making his debut at the event on his new acoustic bass. The major challenge for Phil was to get enough room on stage to play the thing, a problem caused partly by the size of the stage and the number of musicians on it, but mostly by the fact that Dave’s keyboard is of a size that would normally require planning permission.

Two newcomers came next, Paul and Chris, and very good they were too, operating as a duo (guitar/vocal and harp) and doing material that again showed what variety is possible under the umbrella of acoustic blues/roots. Phil came next, joined by Charles, Ryan and Dan on harp for a fine set of pre-war style acoustic blues, during the course of which I think I heard the name of Sleepy John Estes get mentioned, always a good sign I think.

Ryan did a couple of his own numbers next, going down as well as ever. He’s a big part of the success of these evenings. Finally, up got Barry Jackson and Will for a joint set, with Ryan on mandolin, Phil back on bass, and Dave. Barry was on excellent form and between them they cooked up a whole variety of excellent stuff, and people would have been happy to hear a whole lot more of that had time permitted. It was particularly good to see Will back and the thing is always the better for him being there.

There was just enough time for me and the band to round things off with one last number (Easy Does It). It was pretty late by now and next time I think we’ll have to say two numbers each to start off with so that we don’t overrun and cause the Green Note folk to have to stay later than is reasonable. That’ll depend of course on how many people come to play, and if we do that, we can try to get at least some people back up for another number later.

So it was another fine evening at this fine place, and now you all know how it all fits in from a historical perspective. Next time, I shall set a test on the history in this blog. The winner, as Spike Milligan used to say, will receive a free burial at sea.

The next jam is on Wednesday 14th April.

Mark Harrison

No Barry Jackson sketches or photos this time. If anyone took photos, they can send them and I’ll add them.

Wednesday February 10th 2010

2010-02-17T06:42:00.000-08:00

Having been around a long time before blogs were invented, I can’t help wondering exactly what their function is. For all my life until the arrival of email, the internet, the mobile phone and assorted other questionable toys, I felt that communication was more or less covered. There were phones (albeit broken public ones), in extreme circumstances there were letters, and there was, above all, the now almost extinct act of speaking to other people. If you wanted to know stuff, there were newspapers, the telly and even books. I felt like I knew as much about other people, and what was going on, as I wanted or needed to. In many cases, that included knowing nothing whatsoever about them.

Recently I read that the forthcoming election will be the first one ‘decided by bloggers’. The organ informing me of this then cited a handful of bloggers, of whom I had, needless to say, not heard. I’m willing to wager that nobody but a small coterie of people who pride themselves on being ‘opinion formers’ and their own close families will have heard of these people. And so, rather weirdly, we have yet another example of this great global tool of communication, the computer, having made the world mysteriously smaller, enabling a small number of arrogant nobodies to feel (and for all I know actually be) important.

This leads to the question: what are blogs for? Or perhaps more importantly, who are they for? Are they simply a modern and rather risible version of the parish magazine? In which case, should I be reporting faithfully on what Dave Forristal is currently growing on his allotment or the failure of Owen Houlston’s resonator to win ‘Biscuit Of The Year’?

Or is a blog just another version of one of those awful ‘family newsletters’ that poncy folk used to send around with their Christmas cards not that many years ago? You know, ‘Roger has finally become a partner at Lickspittle & Crawler .... Annabel’s salmon terrine remains the talk of Belsize Park ..... Magda has been invaluable to us and we will miss her terribly when she returns to poverty in Romania ... Piers this year became the youngest pupil in his school to pass advanced accountancy exams ....’

Well, this time I’m going to avoid both the above approaches and write this for people who don’t know anything about the event and don’t know us. So here goes.

A room full of people gathered at the very congenial venue that is the Green Note, and were all there by 8 or so. The purpose of the event was for people to play and listen to acoustic blues music in various instrumental combinations. There is a view that perhaps the most interesting music currently happening in blues is acoustic and this event gives people a chance to hear this kind of thing done (hopefully) very well, in a relaxed atmosphere, impromptu but not at all shambolic.

house band

There is a house band, comprising double bass, mandolin, keyboards and percussion. These musicians, together with any instrumentalists such as harp players who turn up on the night, accompany people who play and sing and therefore ‘lead’ a short set. Those people can request which musicians they want to play with. The scary unpredictability of being put with unknown quantities just about never happens.

The sound is nice and clear, you can hear what everyone’s doing. You can also hear a very wide variety of music, the acoustic side of things being much less samey that the standard electric fare. The music may veer at any given point from prewar blues, to folk/blues, to countryish songs and any other area that might loosely be described as ‘roots’ music. The norm is three songs each, though if it’s very busy (as it was on this occasion) this might go down to two.

Ryan, Charles, Mark, Martin
The evening started with event co-host Mark Harrison kicking off with some of his own compositions, playing his ancient National. He started with a song with mandolin maestro Ryan Carr and double bass genius Charles Benfield. They were then joined by brilliant keyboard player Dave Forristal and percussionist par excellence Martin Holloway for three more numbers. The well of enthusiastic adjectives has now run dry.

First ‘act’ of the evening was Owen Houlston. Owen’s doing his own individual take on prewar blues songs and doing it very well indeed. Nothing standard issue about Owen’s gruff vocals and impassioned resonator playing, which went very well with the house band. The key word here is ‘individual’. Blues at Green Note likes individuals.

Owen

Previous, and welcome, performer James Daniel was up next. He played harp and sang, accompanied by Chris on guitar and Ian on percussion. Charles and Dave joined them too. It was a fine set, Dave’s piano to the fore. James chooses interesting material to do that never gets an outing at a blues jam, and this time he pulled out the great New Orleans song ‘Junko Partner’, definitively done by Dr John on Gumbo.

James & Chris
Good friend of the event and regular Barry Jackson was up next. Another great set, relaxed but tight, the whole house band following the lead and going to all the right places, even if those places are sometimes quite unexpected. Ryan’s mandolin tore the place up, not for the first time.
Next came a newcomer to the event, Simon. He started by declaring that he’d been expecting to play solo and was surprised to find himself wedged on a tiny stage with more people than you can squeeze into a minibus. Dan Sheehan played harp, Ben played guitar for the first time at this event, more or less the whole house band stayed up. It was a rousing set, Simon hitting the bottleneck playing hard and generating great good humour. The audience got involved.

Hayley got up next and sang, very well, a standard. I think it was Love Letters In The Sand, I was a bit busy sorting out how to get everyone fitted in on what was a very busy evening. We had a record 11 ‘acts’, and regular Justin couldn’t get on. He took this very well, in stark contrast to what was going on at probably exactly that point in time at a well-known electric jam not too far away, where the host was in the process of offering what used to be called a ‘knuckle sandwich’ to a stroppy bloke who’d just been told politely that it was too busy for him to get on and do his guitar solo. Blues at Green Note doesn’t encourage stroppy.

Next on stage was event co-host David Atkinson, with bandmate from Dry Bones, Steve Deller. David played his quite wonderful Fraulini 12-string, Steve played a tiple. No, me neither. It’s a rather delightful mini-guitar with 10 strings (I think) that looks a bit like a ukulele but doesn’t sound at all like one, having a very bright sound and lots of poke. David and Steve are top-quality musicians (sse their band Dry Bones if you can) and they divvied up an excellent and really interesting set, one highlight of which was a version of Woody Guthrie’s classic Deportees.

Another newcomer to the event, Phil, was on next, and his was another high-quality set, utilising the skills of various band members, especially Dave, to back up his excellent singing and playing. He was followed by yet another first-timer, John, who played and sang with his wife Jenny also singing and his son on percussion. James Daniel played harp with them, Charles was up there too. They did a version of the blues standard Motherless Child (rather in the Richie Havens mould I’d say) and a song by The Subdudes (great band, check ‘em out). A good time was had by all. And John won the Longest Beard Competition by a country mile.

Now past our usual finishing time, we still had a good crowd and so there was time for Ryan to get up and do one of his own compositions, followed by another of his audience participation numbers. Once again the audience did indeed participate without too much coaxing (nothing worse than a performer sulking because you won’t join in, but this never seems to happen to Ryan).

Ryan
Graham Hinton, regular and fine performer, rounded things off, with most of the band and with Owen also there on his resonator. It was a good way to end the evening, the quality not having taken a dip at any point, and a huge variety of music having been purveyed by all 10 acts. That’s a record, as was the number of people still there right at the end.

Charles, Owen, Graham, Martin

So, a very good one. There was a very good turnout indeed, and the usual excellent atmosphere. Some very fine music was played by some very fine people. Nuff said.

Well, that’s another blog done. I guess the answer to my question about the point of them is that there are all sorts of genres of blog, and that probably none of them matter all that much. But what about the event described in this one? Does that matter much? Hell, yes, by any reasonable measure of what’s important in life.

Mark Harrison

Next one: Wednesday 10th March

Tell as many people as you can.
Bring as many people as you can
Come and play if you want to.
Come and listen and enjoy.
Put a comment on this blog.

Big thanks to Barry Jackson for the sketches and photos.

Wednesday January 13th 2010

2010-01-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

Not for the first time in recent months, your correspondent is obliged to report that it was ‘another quiet one’ at the Green Note. Prior to that, we had some packed houses and doubtless we will again – hopefully next month.

Attendance seems to be unpredictable, but what it depends on is anyone’s guess. I’ve never been entirely convinced by the football on TV theory, but in any case that doesn’t seem to have applied this time. Certainly, the Green Note isn’t (happily) suffering any great general downturn in trade (a couple of gigs early in the new year had seen the place rammed). Could it be the recession? The ‘January is quiet everywhere’ school of thought? Who knows? Maybe it has something to do with the Green Note being an eating place – if people book tables to eat and form an audience, it doesn’t take many to fill it up, and they just haven’t happened to book them in masses of the second Wednesday of the month. Maybe it’ll be packed next time. Just to make sure, maybe everyone concerned could try to get some folk along for the next one. We’re due a decent house.

Another point here is that, because it’s not weekly, people often forget when it’s on. Lots of musicians find anything more complex than ‘every Tuesday’ quite hard to process, even if they hold down highly responsible jobs in real life. So if you’re out and about at other jams, mention the next one to anyone you think might fit in playing-wise, or enjoy it audience-wise. Truth is, it’s not a fixture on the scene the way the weekly ones are, so a bit of effort on telling people may not go amiss. Plus, it seems to me lots of people on the ‘scene’ (or off it) who might well come haven’t heard about it.

I’m not going to bang on about what everyone played this time – I not only didn’t make a note of that, I also didn’t make a list of who was going to play and who they were going to play with; this is not dereliction of a jam host’s duties so much as not a requirement at this event. People get to go on and do their slot and they get to ask for whichever members of the bevy of alluring musicians on hand they want to play with. All of this contributes to the uniquely relaxed atmosphere of this jam, not least because there is no need to ensure that a platoon of chaps bearing lethal electric weapons can be accommodated (the churl in me would say, thank God I don’t have to work out who might spoil someone’s perfectly good act by fouling the air with a hideous pile of unwanted and very loud notes; but I don’t wholly mean to be critical of all that as I quite like making a loudish noise at other places myself, and there are plenty of guitarists out there who do know how to play with other people).

Back at the jam, we had a slightly different set of house band personnel from the last time. David couldn’t make it this time and so mandolin duties were taken up by Ryan Carr. How did anyone ever contemplate playing this sort of music without a mandolin? It is now a welcome fixture and in many ways the star of the show. This time it was Ryan’s turn to cop the ‘you only get a break when you’re bursting’ role, and throughout the evening he played quite brilliantly.

Ryan

Dave Forristal on keyboards also shone, and for my money showed the way home on how to play just the right things on a keyboard for this kind of music. The sound balance was just right, with everyone clearly audible, so at any moment your ear might have been taken by a sudden burst of mandolin genius, a terrific keyboard solo or a bit of magic from Charles on the double bass. The variety of possibilities for really good moments and really good passages of playing is great.

Mark

I kicked off on the 12-string for three songs, being joined by Ryan and then Dave and Charles as I went along, eventually switching to the National. We were joined in this set by Danno Sheehan, putting in his first appearance on harp at the Green Note and having a pretty busy night on stage. The harp being in the mix added yet another colour to the picture and a welcome one it was too. So, for large parts of the evening the line-up was guitar, mandolin, double bass, keyboards and harp. To which can usually be added drum/percussion – Martin got the dates mixed up.

Danno

After me came Barry Jackson for another fine set in his inimitable style, everything he did with the band fitting neatly together. ‘Class act’ remains the most appropriate description of Barry and everyone concerned thoroughly enjoyed his set.

Ryan did his own set next, and he’s at least partly from the bluegrass/country/folk wing of things. He’s got a very good voice indeed and some crowd-pleasing songs. For one of these, he required a fair bit of audience participation, a brave request I always think, as there is always the distinct possibility that an audience (especially a small one) will simply stare you out, leaving the artist with no hiding place and the ghastly feeling of having soiled their underwear in public. But Ryan more than carried this off, getting an enthusiastic response that made the number a riot. People with fewer crowd-appealing skills have been elected to high office.

A newcomer, Anna, came on next, and did two numbers very well indeed, backed by an assortment of the house musicians. Not having done this sort of music in public before, she was a bit nervous, but seemed to gather confidence as she noticed that it was all actually sounding pretty good. People climb over obstacles at this sort of thing, and feel the better for it.

Graham Hinton was up next, demonstrating his excellent picking and singing skills again. Quite a bit of what he does might look a lot easier than it actually is (this is true of a lot of good music of course – the stuff that looks really hard is very often rubbish).

I went back up with the full band to round off the evening. After two songs, I was wrapping things up when someone in the audience asked for another number. They had just arrived, right at the end, quite liked what they’d stumbled in on, and wanted to hear some more of it.

Now, if they could show up at the start, and bring a couple dozen friends with them ........

Mark Harrison

Sketches by Barry Jackson

Next one: February 10th

Wednesday December 9th 2009

2009-12-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

Sketches by Barry Jackson

Well, we’re six months into the new-style all-acoustic Green Note jam and things have settled down nicely. We’ve got some permanent fixtures, we’ve got some regulars, we’ve got some semi-regulars and we’ve got newcomers. We’re turning out the kind of music that doesn’t get anything like enough of an airing, and we’re serving it up to an appreciative audience. It’s all calm but it ain’t sloppy; it’s laid back but it ain’t lazy. We could do with a few more people showing up sometimes, it’s true. Quite why the numbers vary from pretty packed to pretty quiet is a bit of a mystery. But anyone who ever shows up seems to go away pretty glad they did.

Green Note

The blues, like any other kind of ‘roots’ music, often calls into question conventional notions of the gap between an amateur and a pro. In other forms of popular music, the lines are blurred because of an equal lack of talent either side of the wire. That’s because there’s no notion of a craft, of skills to be learned and worked on, of genuine passion for a musical style, of wanting to do justice to the music. Those folk are proudly and intentionally part of the ‘anyone can do it’ culture. In that culture, it’s all about luck as to which people poke their heads out of the pack.

But in the blues and related fields, this is of course not the case. The pros just about always do something that anyone can’t do. It’s skill and a dedication to craftsmanship that separates them from the rest, as well as talent and individuality. That’s why it’s a joy to see them – they’re doing something you can’t do and that’s one of the things that excites. You see them and you know why they’re earning a living (albeit probably not much of one) doing it.

However, what the blues also has is a fair share of people who aren’t doing it for a living but, in a just world could be. Maybe they preferred to get ‘proper’ jobs and throw themselves into it as a serious hobby; maybe they had a go at doing it for money and couldn’t make a go of that (very few people ever have, in real terms); maybe they’re young and trying to work their way to do it for a living (and hopefully some of those at least will achieve their aim). Whatever, within these categories can be found some seriously good people, who could be said to bridge the gap between the amateur and the pro. There are quite a few people on the London jams scene of whom this could be said. Let’s call them pros who don’t do it for a living.

The reason for this poncy digression is that I was reminded yet again of this at the last jam, because a number of people in that category play at the Green Note acoustic jam. And unlike at electric jams, it’s entirely possible for everyone who’s there to hear how good they are. And so it was, on a quietish night audience-wise, that a small band of people, who can play a bit, sat up front listening to what their comrades on stage were doing and muttering to each other things like: ‘Christ, he’s really good, isn’t he?’ One of the nicer features of this whole blues thing is the pleasure that people take in each other’s skills and talents. And they don’t fake it for politeness either.

Anyway, what exactly was served up? As usual, I kicked off, firstly with David on mandolin for Early In The Morning and then with Charles on double bass and Martin on drum for Sneakin’ Away, Easy Does It and Highgate Hill Blues. A person in the audience asked me if they were my own songs. When I said that yes they were, he told me I should say something about them, why I’d written them, that kind of thing. It was the kind of night where people on stage just had chats with the people listening. Well, I thought of saying that explaining songs kind of takes away the point of writing them, but decided to settle for adding this to my own, not short, list of inadequacies.

Mark

Barry Jackson came on next, and Barry has a style that suggests he’s so comfortable doing this he could be in his pyjamas. Playing a Guild resonator from his seemingly endless collection of enviable guitars (haven’t seen a gleaming Strat anywhere near Barry yet, and the sight just wouldn’t seem right), he launched, with the band, into Walking Blues (in the style of Son House), Fred McDowell’s great You Gotta Move, Junior Parker’s much covered (but surely seldom like this) Mystery Train and Ry Cooder’s Crazy ‘Bout An Automobile. The latter brings me back to the previous point. Ry Cooder’s early 70s albums are among my favourites of all time, and they haven’t been diminished one iota by time. But Barry’s renditions of the material lose nothing in comparison.

First-timer Steve Lyons was next up and he did three originals – There’s A Place For The Blues, Can’t Be Satisfied and Out On The Road, with David on mandolin for the first and Martin and David for the last. For the second number he brought in a welcome first for the jam – violin, in the person of Mary. Steve had clearly got exactly what the jam was about, ringing the changes for accompaniment, doing originals and widening the range of instruments. His was a fine set and fitted right in.

Steve

Then came the much mooted and eagerly awaited acoustic debut of jam luminary Pete Vardigans. Demonstrating admirable guts in doing something that can fill the electric player with dread, he did an excellent set on Barry’s guitar. Kicking off with an instrumental version of When The Saints .., , he then played and sang (very well) the staple See See Rider, Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven (a nice twist on a familiar electric number – acoustic versions of such material can come over really well) and I Need To See You. The odds on Pete turning up soon with a rather nice new acoustic guitar have now been slashed by the bookies.

David then did a set of his own. I think it would be fair to say that David was, not for the first time, the star of the show. Indeed, with the exception of one number, when he had to exit for a ‘comfort break’, he was on stage the whole night, showing just how good a mandolin player he is. The house sound we’ve now got going has evolved largely due to his mandolin, and it’s now an integral part of something rather special. Now he switched to guitar for a couple from his own repertoire of terrific covers of prewar blues. First came Furry Lewis’ Judge Harsh Blues, and then a rendition of Charley Patton’s Jinx Blues (or at any rate, a variant on that strand of Charley’s stuff). The other musicians purred their admiration of these numbers and there were murmurings at the many bits of wonderful guitar business David was divvying up. Great, if brief, set from a top-notch musician.

David

There was time for me to get up for a couple more of mine – Five Thousand Days (I was actually able to say something about this one – see, that thing was gnawing away at me) with Charles and David, and Hard Work with Martin joining us. The latter took flight in that ‘more than the sum of the parts’ way that gives a musician a real kick – you think you’re listening to a really great band and then you remember that apparently you’re in it. Lest we forget, it’s worth repeating just how good Charles and Martin are too.

Barry rounded the evening off with a couple more, the last being a Mexican-type song about going to Tijuana. This featured a chord sequence way, way beyond the remit of any jam. Undaunted, Barry called out the changes for the Charles and David as he went along, and undaunted they made those changes. It was a master class in real musicianship (and I have to add that anything like this would have induced a fit of the vapours among the vast majority of electric jammers). ‘Now the minor 7th .... now the 3rd’ said Barry as asides, while rendering the actual public consumption bits of the song. With little more than the odd slight furrow of the brow, the band went right along. If there’s a better bass player than Charles around, I’d be seriously surprised, and here he was demonstrating once again what a fine all-round musician he is.

The band

It’s that sort of thing that put me in mind of the point I was making at the beginning of this gibberish. The line between the pros who don’t do it for a living and the pros who do can be a very thin one indeed.

A few years back I spent some time talking to the terrific American acoustic blues artist Paul Rishell. Talking about guitar skills, he pointed out that what separated him and the likes of me was time spent doing it. I, he suggested, could easily play like him if I hadn’t spent so much time doing the earning a living thing. The difference was time available to hone the skills. Well, I’m not sure he was right in my case, but the point is a valid one generally. Paul’s definition of success was that he had managed to go all 40-odd years of his adult life earning a living from music. He counted it as a triumph that he’d never had a ‘job’ job. So do I.

So there you have it. The pros who don’t do it for a living are only not pros in that sense. When they’re doing it, they think, act and play like pros. It’s just what they do the rest of the time that’s the difference.

Mark Harrison

Feel free to put a comment on here. I and a sense of futility are old pals, but it would be nice to think that someone was actually reading this swill.

2009-11-29T05:24:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 11th November (ctd)

In addition to the exciting report below, here are some excellent sketches Barry Jackson did on the night ....

Mark

Graham

Charles

2009-11-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 11th November

Well, the general consensus of this one, from audience and musicians alike, was that it was a wonderful evening of music and possibly the best one yet (in what is already becoming a tight competition for that title). From start to finish there was a great vibe and there can be no doubt that the event is showcasing some of the highest quality, and most original, blues music of any kind in London.

The thing about acoustic, or acoustic-ish, stuff, as I keep saying, is that it brings out the individual. There’s no volume to hide behind, no mass of sound to form a barrier between you and the listener. You can be yourself – in fact, you have to be yourself. That’s why it can be a scary prospect for some, and a big challenge. That’s also why it’s so good. There’s just about no such thing as a standard issue acoustic blues artist, and there was certainly no such thing as that at the Green Note, where every artist had something a bit special, and a bit different to offer.

As has become usual, I kicked things off with my own material on the National, starting with an instrumental and then bringing on David Atkinson to join me on the mandolin for Big Mary’s House (a juke joint in 30s Mississippi). Then the band – Dave on keys, Martin on percussion and Charles on upright bass, came up for Itch That Can’t Be Scratched and Hard Work. For both of these we were joined by the very welcome presence of Rick Webb, demonstrating again just how good a harp player he is.

This band set-up, squeezed onto the stage like the people crammed into Groucho’s cabin in that Marx Brothers movie, stayed up to play with Barry Jackson. Barry made himself right at home from the off, and set off on a journey through a marvellous set, the music stretching out in various directions, everyone getting a good go in the foreground, all parts of each song thoroughly examined. A high spot was How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?, delivered in an extended version that might have got Ry Cooder a bit worried about his own excellent version in comparison.

Next up was the always welcome Laine Hines, surely a prime contender for best solo acoustic bluesman in London (prewar division). Kicking off with a solo version of Robert Johnson’s Come On In My Kitchen, for which the adjective ethereal was invented, he was then joined by various elements of the band for the rest of his predictably fine contribution to the evening.

James Daniel was next, joined by the band, with David moving from mandolin on to my National. Again, James’ set provided a contrast with much of what had gone before, a slightly, louder and harder edge, with his harp and Dave’s piano coming to the fore very effectively. He was followed by Justin for another of his excellent sets on 12-string, reminding us (not that anyone needed it), that every change of set would bring a change of style and atmosphere, keeping musicians and audience from assuming that anything would get samey. Indeed, one feature of this event is that the interesting music going on actually cuts down the amount of musician chat going on at the bar – rare praise indeed.

Graham Hinton and Owen Houlston were next, for another polished set, this time Graham’s fingerpicking skills complemented by Owen on my National (fearing it was on the way to becoming ‘house guitar’, it decided to retaliate by presenting Owen with some unpredictable behaviour tuning-wise). Their set covered a range from the rollicking to the smooth and went down very well indeed. The band and myself then went on to close the evening with a couple more of mine.

There was a very good-sized audience, and response and comments afterwards indicated that again the whole evening was much enjoyed. You often get a sense of people in the audience at the Green Note discovering this music for the first time and being quite thrilled by the discovery. And then there are people not discovering the music, but thrilled at discovering that it exists in London, played by very good people indeed.

I think it was generally agreed too, that the single most important ingredient in the evening as a whole was David’s mandolin playing. At how many blues jams do people ever say, ‘Hey, I can hear the mandolin really well’ and get a smile on their faces because of it? David’s playing in the band, and in the other combinations, raised the music to another level.

So, men and women of the London blues scene who do the electric jams but have yet to test yourselves at The Green Note acoustic night? Are you person enough for the challenge? If so, come down some time, sip of the atmosphere and be yourself on a stage. If not, come down and watch the rest of us being ourselves.

The next one's on 9th December. Don't miss it.

Mark Harrison

Photos by Rick Webb

(only a couple this time but they're good ones. Future blogs may not have any, unless someone wants to put their hand up for taking them ....)

2009-10-23T05:42:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 14th October

No two of these nights is ever the same, as has become clear since we started them up back in July. The acoustic brand of blues perhaps lends itself more to individuality than its electric sibling. So each time, the flavour of the evening depends on who comes to play and on the combination of those people. Once again, the standard was extremely high and the variety great, and once again we had a mixture of regulars and first-timers at the event. It was an evening of very good music indeed.

It was also a very laid-back one, especially as the Green Note was pretty quiet on the night. For some bizarre reason I will never be able to fathom, this apparently has some connection with a football match on telly. Well, anyone who didn’t show up because they preferred to watch that can send me a written explanation.

Nevertheless, we had a good atmosphere and a room of people enjoying the evening. This has a lot to do with the Green Note’s unique vibe, and I very much suspect that all concerned would have had a good time even if there had only been three people in the room.

David & Mark

David Atkinson and I kicked things off with a number of mine, Early In The Morning, with me on the National and David on mandolin. Personally, I’m a great lover of the mandolin and particularly like it played in the blues style, which David is very good at indeed. Mandolin became a main feature of this particular evening, and it was the better for it.

David

David then did a couple of solo numbers on my National, Furry Lewis’s Judge Harsh Blues and Blind Willie Johnson’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine (later to get another outing in a wholly different form), showing just what a great musician and interpreter of pre-war blues he is. Top-notch picking, slide and vocals were all on display.

Charles, David, Martin, Dave & Mark

The band came on then, with David going back on mandolin, and we did three of my originals (Sneakin’ Away, Highgate Hill Blues and Your Second Line). Dave Forristal played organ on these, Charles was on his double bass (minus one string – he is currently selling whatever valuable possessions he can find to raise the funds required for a new one, they ain’t cheap) and Martin was on percussion. The combination of those with the National and David on mandolin made for the kind of sound you don’t come across that often. And the chance to play in such combinations is what the evening is all about.

Next up was a welcome first appearance at the event by the excellent Barry Jackson, who played a rather nice Gibson and did terrific versions of songs from the canon of the greats, including Muddy’s She’s Nineteen Years Old. He had Charles’s bass and David on mandolin with him, and this ad hoc trio, with Barry’s accomplished playing and vocal delivery, served up a terrific set.

Barry

Laine Hines was next and his was another predictably high-quality set. Laine is a very good example of the individuality I was talking about – he sounds like himself and nobody else sounds like him. He’s got his own vocal and playing style and he takes listeners along with him to wherever he’s at. He was joined by Charles on bass and (literally) a visitor on mandolin – Chris, an Australian passing through London on his way to Canada, as far as I could follow the complex narrative. He showed himself to be a very fine player, leaning towards the bluegrass side of things. He and Charles acquitted themselves very well in keeping up with Laine’s not-always-predictable chord changes and this trio’s set was another very fine one indeed.

Chris & Laine

Another regular, Justin, came next and he did another excellent set on his 12-string, Chris staying up with him on mandolin and Charles and Martin providing rhythm section. Justin’s take on all this seems to be to corner the market in acoustic versions of uptempo numbers usually done electric, and he does this very well. Numbers the blues fan might be very familiar with are turned into something quite different in this acoustic rendition.

More first-timers at the event came next, in the form of James on vocals and harp and CJ on guitar, backed by the full house band of Dave (on piano this time), Charles and Martin. This set was completely different from anything else on the bill all evening, one of the great joys of the event. Blues and boogie piano took centre stage, working very well with James’ very strong vocals and harp playing, CJ’s guitar and the rest of the band. This was a barrelhouse set, a really interesting version of what would elsewhere be an electric set, except that with this you could hear everyone.

The final set came from Graham Hinton and Owen Houlston, in duo form for the first time at this event. Owen played his resonator with a combination of great skill and wild abandon, complementing Graham’s subtle picking very well indeed. Joined by Charles and Martin as rhythm section, they swapped lead vocal duties – Graham’s polished singing contrasting with Owen’s vocal style, for which the word’ gruff’ may very well have been invented. It was excellent, fun stuff, relaxed but tight (well, tightish). Their set had pace and life and closed the evening on a high.

So, another good one. The next one’s on 11th November. If you want to come and listen to what must surely be the best acoustic blues on offer in London, get yourself down for the next one. If you’re coming to play, bring your mates. And doubtless, the next one will be different from the last one.

Mark Harrison

Wednesday 9th September 2009

2009-09-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

Another excellent night for what must surely be one of the best events on the blues and acoustic scene in London. A big turnout of quality musicians once again showed just what variety this kind of music can offer, and it was enjoyed by another good-sized audience. All kinds of styles were in evidence and they were served up with a wide range of instrumental combinations.

The house band of myself, Charles Benfield on double bass, Martin Holloway on snare/percussion and Dave Forristal on keys kicked off with a few of my originals – Early In The Morning, Thinkin’ About Nothing, Changes Coming Here and Your Second Line, and I played my oldish Yamaha 6-string and very old National Trojan. The rest of the band were then gainfully employed with the vast majority of performers, adapting to everything asked of them and proving yet again just how good they are. Special mention here perhaps for Charles, who was giving his double bass a debut, and terrific it was too.

Mark, Charles, Martin and Dave

Then came regular visitor Laine Haines, with a predictably top-notch set of his versions of songs by the greats – Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Easy Rider Blues, Pete Wheatstraw’s Preacher Blues and Ishmon Bracey’s Cherry Hall Blues. Laine was joined throughout by harp playerJohnny Appleyard, who gelled instantly and served up some terrific playing.

Laine and Johnny

Johnny stayed up to join Clayton Denwood and the rest of the band for a rousing set comprising Tough Town Blues, Got It Bad For You Baby and Runaway Train. By the time everyone had got to full steam in this set, it was possible to believe my brash suggestion at the start that listeners might not realise that everything was unrehearsed.

Clayton

Established blues artist Big Joe Louis came on next, kicking off with two solo acoustic numbers,Tailor Made and What’s The Matter, and ending with a nice version of the venerable Catfish Blues, for which he was joined by the band andPaul on sax. Big Joe (nice to see such an established artist braving an acoustic set), was followed by first-timer Simon, whose two numbers, one solo and one with the band, kept things going just fine. In what was a packed night, next came Laura Castle, who was joined by the house band, Will Greener (of whom more later) on harp and Tom on a resonator forMovin On and Mighty Tight Woman, Damian Green taking the drum role on the second number. Laura’s set motored along and was much enjoyed.

Big Joe

Simon

Laura

She was followed by another newcomer, Ryan Carr, a Canadian who dropped by to serve up two terrific murder ballads, Butcher Boy and Darling Corry, delivered with panache and humour. This accomplished musician and performer then announced that he had a mandolin concealed about his person, and was instructed to get the thing out and play it in the next set, which he duly did.

Ryan

Good friend of the jam and unique performer Will Greener (aka Captain Bliss) was next up and his set was a real highlight, showing just what the event is about and the heights an acoustic jam can reach. Together with Charles, Martin, Justin on keys and Ryan on mandolin, he led a wholly spontaneous but totally together set that was hugely enjoyed by everyone present. Will’s just the right kind of showman, and he led from the front with Louisiana Red’sWhose Ol’ Funky Drawers Is These? (not the tender love song you might expect from its understated title), Elmore James’ Must Have Did Something Wrong, and the second Sonny Boy’s Bye Bye Bird. Ryan showed that he could play the ass off the mandolin and at one point the interplay and unison thing he got going with Will’s harp was about as good a blast of music as you could hope to stumble on.

Will

Justin followed this with the welcome sight of a 12-string and his highly effective and very individual take on that very same Sonny Boy’s classic Fattening Frogs For Snakes (one of the great blues lyrics) and the much-heard-done-electric but really-good-done-acoustic Messin’ With the Kid, Junior Wells’ signature number. The band joined him on these and together they cooked up something rather fine.

The closing performer was regular and good friend Graham Hinton, who, as it has been remarked before, is a class act. He was exactly that again, running through excellent versions of Robert Johnson’s Steady Rollin’ Man and Driftin’. Graham’s set proved yet again just how good this music can be when a very good singer and player gets together with a very good band of musicians. There’s no doubt that the band and the various configurations of instruments available on the night make for all sorts of great things.

Graham

OK, everyone’s been name-checked now (I might abandon that in future!) and how long it’s taken me to do that is a measure of how popular the event seems to be getting. We had no fewer than 9 sets aside from mine at the start, and it’s great to see how many good people are showing up. This time we had a nice mixture of regulars and first-timers, and long may that continue. We definitely seem to have got something a bit special going here.

A slight downside of that was that I had to cut some sets to 2 instead of 3 numbers to fit everyone in, so we’re looking into maybe starting at 8.30 instead of 9. Another factor this time was that a number of people had left before the end to get their trains to the various far-flung places where they live. This happens at every live music venue in London of course, though it doesn’t always happen at the Green Note. It’s maybe another reason to start earlier, as it’s a shame for things to go off the boil before the end. Maybe we should ask for a show of hands at the start (‘Who commutes from Belgium?’, that sort of thing – I’m not sure I’m joking) so that we can work out the best schedule.

Anyway, it was another terrific evening, with another feel-good vibe and many appreciative responses. A lot of this has to do with the venue itself, which is ideal for this sort of event, and the support and input from Risa and Emilia is much appreciated. Big thanks too to Agneta for doing the door and taking the photos on what was a pretty hectic night.

See everybody at the next one, on 14th October.

Mark Harrison

Wednesday 12th August

2009-08-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

A big thanks to all those who came down for the second all acoustic jam at the Green Note last night and helped make it such a great evening - specifically Charles, Martin and Dave who provided most of the accompaniment for the night and to Helen for looking after the sound and the door.

Professor Forristal and I kicked things off with some guitar and piano versions of Howlin' Wolf's Shake It For Me, the gospel standard Walk With Me, and Save That Money, a current favorite of mine originally by Rufus Thomas. We were then joined by Steve Van Deller on mandolin and tore through a couple of Mississippi Sheiks tunes and a tasty original of Steve's, for which he swapped to a Puerto Rican cuatro - surely a first for a blues jam!

Matt Milton provided some dark and wryly humorous originals and a great reworking of the Leadbelly classic In The Pines on guitar and banjo, making the most of the ambiance and the rapt audience. Then Dan Raza played and dropped in a great versions of Hank William's I Saw The Light and Leadbelly's infamous Goodnight Irene. You wait years for some Leadbelly songs and then two show up at once. I might bring my twelve-string next month... Anyway, it showed how versatile and broad the scope of the new acoustic jam can be.

Graham Hinton, good friend and long-time supporter of the GN jam barely had chance to take his coat off before we pushed him on stage. He was joined by holidaying scandinavian Jacob on harmonica who had walked past, saw there was a jam and dashed off to buy a harp especially for the evening. I then accompanied Graham on my National for a tasty Robert Johnson tune and - I think - a Spencer Davis Group number!

Down to two guitars on stage now, which allowed Lane Hines to do his idiosyncratic selection of delta blues, invoking Son House and Bukka White with his free-flowing style and haunting voice. I tried to keep up on slide while thinking we sounded as good as a recently unearthed Paramount 78 record...

The night rolled on and most people made it back on stage for another number or two. We romped our way through Charley Patton's mercurial Screamin' and Hollering The Blues to end the night and it was immensly gratifying how many people made a point to say how much they had enjoyed listening to everyone who played.

So far so good then. Next month Mark Harrison will be back from holiday and we shall continue to welcome players and listeners who are disposed to this sort of sublime mix of bluesy music. It was wonderful having banjos, mandolins and harmonicas plunking, chiming and tootling along respectively to such a consistently high standard; and with the piano too, it was definitely the vibe we were after. It would be nice to hear some violin or accordian, or even a washboard...

See you next time - on the 9th September.

David Atkinson

PS - I'm toying with the idea of introducing a theme song - probably based on Big Bill Broonzy's tune Saturday Night Rub.

Wednesday 8th July 2009

2009-07-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, we kicked off the new-look Blues in London jam at the Green Note on Wednesday 8th July. As acoustic jams are not exactly thick on the ground and we’re keen to start something new, it was anybody’s guess what would happen. In the end, the evening was something of a triumph, showing that the idea of an evening of acoustic blues has lots of good possibilities for both players and audience.

I kicked off with an instrumental on the 12-string and a solo number on the National. Rick Webb (Blues in London founder) came up next for a duo number and then the house band joined us for three numbers, all originals. The house band comprised Charles Benfield on bass and Martin Holloway on drums/percussion – one of the fundamentals of the evening is that the drumming isn’t full-volume full kit, but brushes, snare, some bass drum and some things to shake and hit with the hand. It was also meant to include ‘Greasy’ Dave Forristal on keyboards (and hopefully it will in the future), but an injury ruled him out this time.

Six singer/guitarists came to play, four of whom were not familiar faces at previous jams. They each did three numbers. First up was Clayton – nice voice, good player, interesting repertoire. He gelled well with Charles and Martin from the off. Then came Dan (pictured above with Charles and Martin), again excellent, with rack harmonica adding something to the mix and again playing with the house rhythm section. Justin came next, with the band and on a 12-string, doing his own take on the blues and augmented by Lindsay on electric guitar. Lindsay played sparingly and tastefully through the very small amp, showing that the idea that electric players can fit in as sidemen with the main acoustic fare can work.

The excellent Graham Hinton was next, a class act doing traditional blues songs with polish. The house rhythm section and ‘Harmonica Phil’ blended very well with him. He was followed by Made Jay, a newcomer to the venue, who brought the house down thrashing the hell out of a metal National and doing Son House and Robert Johnson songs with every bit as much passion as the originals. He was a compelling act, breaking two strings such was the seeing-to the guitar was getting, and carrying on regardless like a man possessed. The standard didn’t take any kind of dip at all when he was followed by Laine Hines, a terrific, quieter performer with a fine voice. The house band were back on now, having had a brief break and together the three of us rounded the evening off with another couple of my originals.

The venue was full from the start, with a listening audience that responded very well to the music dished up. The sound was nice and clear, and people could talk at a normal volume, without having to bellow over the music. But the evening put paid to any idea that acoustic means quiet or twee. There was just as much power and presence as with electric blues, just not as much volume. Everyone could hear everything.

So we uncovered some very good people and we kind of proved a point. There was a feel-good air to the evening and it was agreed by audience and players alike that it had been a great success.

No disrespect to any of the electric jams all over town (and we’re all participants in those too). But what we’re trying to establish here is something different, where acoustic players can do their thing, which is every bit as valid as anything with lead guitar solos in it.

If this takes your fancy, come down to the Green Note every second Wednesday of the month. And bring your friends. If you want to hear something different in the blues, including some people doing original material, come and listen. If you play and sing, the only thing to remember is: keep the material reasonably simple for people to pick up straight away – you’ll be with some fine musicians, but too many chord changes are going to end up with furrowed brows and reduced audience enjoyment. At its best, people playing a number together for the first time can sound like a tightly-rehearsed unit, as we had on this opening night. And one final thing – it would be good to have as wide a range of instrumentalists as possible joining in – mandolin, fiddle, banjo, hand percussion, accordion, flute, sax as well as harp and guitar would be more than welcome.

I won’t be here for the next one, 12 August, which David will be running. I’ll be back for September 9th.

Mark Harrison

Your hosts for the evening...

2009-07-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

Mark ‘Made in 1934’ Harrison

David ‘Seaside Dave’ Atkinson