It was a horrible day in south east Wales. The weather had been awful, but let’s hope the music of rock and blues would cheer up the end of the day.
With five albums, and their latest offering on sale, the night was kicked off by Cornishmen Willie And The Bandits. The four piece is comprised of Willie Edwards (lead vocals, guitar and lap steel), Matthew Gallagher (keyboards, percussion, backing vocals). Harry Mackaill (bass) and Tom Gilkes (drums and percussion), plus guest guitar player Chris Haddon for the tour. Whilst they state influences from Pearl Jam and Hendrix, I have read reviews that also add Led Zeppelin as a sound…
Opening up with the heavy side with ‘Caught In The Middle’, it was a good start. However, the track I really looked forward to was ‘Refuge’, from the latest album ‘When The World Stood Still’, which reminded me of Blue Öyster Cult in parts, particularly the guitar riff in the breakdown and chorus. Both of these were well received by the rapidly building crowd. ‘Keep It On The Down Low’ was an opportunity to pick up the lap steel guitar and add a bit of funk to the feeling. ‘Still Go Marching In’ was dedicated to the people of Ukraine: a slower more acoustic feel added to the mood of the track and the gruff edge to Willie Edwards’ voice added to emotion of the track.
Rather evocatively this was followed by ‘Judgement Day’ (hopefully a certain man will get his all too soon) and ‘Four Million Days’, another mainly acoustically led but expertly delivered track before the build to the crescendo of the chorus. This is an outstandingly written and performed track live.
After the emotion tugging a much more upbeat track as a tribute to the musical legends of 1970 probably had the audience thinking “ah yeah, I remember that year” (I almost do!). Finishing up with ‘Bad News was a great way to end a well performed and delivered set. This was my first time to see W&TB but I’m gonna be at their headline set in Clwb Ifor Bach in February based on this. These guys would go down a storm at Steelhouse festival.
Samantha Fish is difficult to pigeon hole into any specific genre: there’s blues, rock, rap, pop rock and a load of other styles on the samples I’ve been listening to but I am looking forward to ‘All Ice No Whiskey’ as a starter.
There is no doubt that she may not look like your typical lead guitarist as she walked on stage with a cigar box guitar to rip into ‘Bulletproof’, but it shows that you should never judge a book by its cover. If you can play an instrument it doesn’t need to be a million dollar one to get great sounds. I was expecting another guitarist on stage but nope: just Samantha, her drummer Sarah Tomek, bass player Ron Johnson and keyboard player Matt Wade who added some real Hammond soul to the sound.
Kicking off with ‘Bulletproof’ with a real distorted sound on the cigarbox and adding bottle neck to add to the slide blues sound was a damn good start. ‘All Ice…’ was next up and I really like the live version as much as the album version before she ripped into ‘Twisted Ambition’ and her fingers barely stopped on the fretboard. With ‘Forever Together’ and ‘Faster’ from the last album it was a chance or the crowd to appreciate what a good guitarist she really is.
The rest of the set was a mix of older stuff and her wide variety of styles from deep south blues (as in ‘No Angels’) and ‘Chills And Fever’ (another chance to make reference to the late Amy Winehouse as it is similar to some of her music). The instrumentation was superb throughout the set but the pinnacle was the five minute guitar solo at the end of ‘Black Wind Howlin’, the last song before the encore.
This was an unexpected review for me but it is one that I will remember for a long time. In summary, I have three words: stunning, just stunning.