Review by Nigel Foster Photos by Ken Jackson
The S.H.I.T – The Tuesday Night Music Club
Oh man how on earth do I distill what I have just seen and heard at TNMC?
Well I think my starting point is to say when you bring together 4 seasoned bluesman to perform a certain kind of magic happens.
Magic certainly happened tonight and the quartet of Ian Siegal,Mike Hellier, Roger Inniss and Rob Tognoni cast a spell over a sold out crowd and I swear if the guys had decided to play all night we would have stayed, it was off the scale in terms of musical ability and entertainment value and the fellas looked as though they enjoyed it as much as we did.
Modern blues is a broad church these days and we were treated to music from across the blues spectrum, traditional blues, blues rock and funky soulful blues.
The trio of drummer Hellier, absolute Ace Of Bass Inniss and guitarist and vocalist Tognoni took to the stage and exploded with a double salvo of dirty driving blues rock, Hellier and Inniss locked together pumping out the groove and Tognoni stomping over it with jagged sharp riffing and a searching vocal.
Tognoni and Siegal apparently met for the first time today so this was pretty much spontaneous and improvised but these 4 dudes can do this because of their ridiculous talent and their total self confidence in their talents.
We were already off to a flyer then the national blues treasure that is Ian Siegal jumped on stage and with his hard driving licks joined with Tognoni to create a thick dual guitar harmony that laid over the rhythm section pulses. Siegal assumed lead vocals on the strident blues rocker Working On A Building. Structured on a deep brooding groove built upon incisive riffs all under the gravelly rough hewn vocal.
Rob led from the front on the traditional blues feel of Dealing At The Crossroads, thumping rhythm section butted up against hard riffs that carried the vocal.
A blistering 1st set came to a climax with Siegal donning what we informed was a beautiful 52 Harmony Resonator style guitar that in this man’s hands produced a sharp metalised sound especially when he donned the slide bottle, the ascerbic lyric draped over the music and delivered by Rob with power and the quartet then cut to a blues boogie,accelerator pressed firmly to the floor.
Ian joined the back room duo at the start of the 2nd set, Roger pulsing out throbbing bass lines and Mike chiming in with incessant snare hits and Ian showed himself the raconteur through the lyric.
When Rob joined in soon the foursome launched into some raw improvised blues, instrumental in the main that dropped down into a filthy dirty seque of Steppenwolfs anthem Born To Be Wild then with a flick of the switch they dived into a funky but bluesy cut of the T-Rex classic Get In On of course we joined in with the words.
That funky vibe was carried into the next number that morphed into a cover of Prince’s Sign Of The Times, Ian’s voice taking on a soulful feel.
Time was moving on and recognising that the guys peeled off a virulent Tognoni tune The Sh-t I Am In. The rhythm section in sync laying a solid foundation for the 2 front men to go head to head with a guitar duel appearing as blues gunslingers.
Just when I thought it could not get any better the set ended with a rollicking version of the Irish folk song made famous by aThin Lizzy 3 piece Whiskey In The Jar, a kaleidoscope of bluesy, rocky licks. Of course I sang at the top of my voice. An ovation was deserved as was an encore.
The encore was an equally power drive version of Warren Zevon’s Werewolves Of London bringing the audience to its feet.
The last reference to magic goes to promoter Richard Dunning, how did you pull that rabbit out of the hat?
Then my final words are for Roger Inniss, we have not seen each other for so long so 2 lengthy warm friendly hugs were in order. Roger really is the Ace Of Bass but more than that he is an amazing human being.
+ There are no comments
Add yours