October 2nd 2014
This friendly little blues club always gets a good turn out when The Producers are in town and tonight is no exception. Frontman Harry Skinner kicked the evening off with old favourite New Money a song with lyrics that are still highly relevant in today’s economic climate. New Money builds in intensity with Harry’s fleet fingered guitar duelling with Ray Drury’s swirling Hammond organ and this got the gig off to a great start. Next up was the rockin’ T-Birds dancer Sugar Coated Love and the audience were now completely won over. An atmospheric Spoonful was followed by the showstopping and superbly emotive slow blues Some People Say with Harry declaiming “Some people say that I ain’t got the blues”. The audience reaction proved that Harry definitely does get the blues. The rollicking Bitter And Sweet And Blue featured a great organ solo from Ray and a jazzy run through My Babe closed out the first set. Pleasingly I won a prize in the raffle – unfortunately it turned out to be a bottle of Mongolian Shiraz. Not sweet, nor blue, but certainly bitter. Never mind, the second half opened with the rocking Coming Back For You a song recently played on Paul Jones’ show and was followed by the jumping Tell Me Why. The song Preservation Blues was the centrepiece of the band’s latest album London Blues with melodic guitar and gritty vocals from Harry and tonight this stunning slow blues was heard in total silence until the audience erupted at the end. Be Careful and Jumping The Blues soon got toes tapping again and the evening closed with You Don’t Love Me and an audience requested slide guitar driven Little Red Rooster. Four Chinese students were completely blown away by the gig and insisted on having their pictures taken with all and sundry. Maybe they would like my bottle of Mongolian Shiraz. This gig was as good as it gets. Next week The Producers are back locally with an acoustic gig and I will certainly be there.
Dave Drury
