Digeriblues

Seems the brief run of regular blues acts at Perth’s “Blue to the Bone” is coming to an end. Thursday has already become a karaoke night, Friday was already rockabilly, Saturday still has the excellent John Meyer (and Lindsay Wells) I believe, but last night was the last of Rick Steele’s “industry” guest nights. Rather than the quality of the musicians, the failure seems mainly due to the awful winter we’re having and the lack of any promotion (other than giving away free drinks at the drop of a hat ?), but audiences drawn to Northbridge on weeknights clearly haven’t matched the costs.

(Rick is part of the blues furniture in Perth and continues to host the Tuesday night “Perth Blues Club” at the Charles Hotel, great night again this week, with horns too, as well as appearing Thursdays and Sundays at the Dianella.)

Last night was a feast – As well as Rick on guitar, harp and vocals, we had his usual cohorts Travis on keyboard, vocals, drums and bass, Marc on bass, vocals and lead guitar, and Ace on drums, together in various combinations with Cat (McKineally ?) on keyboards and vocals, Dave Brewer on Lead and vocals, Zak, Kenji, plus half a dozen others on guitar , vocals, drums, flute (no euphonium last night) and digeridoo. (Nice to hear the sustain of a Gibson amongst the wall-to-wall Strats, who was that guy with the pre-hensile little finger on his left hand, and who was the chick with the voice and the delayed reverb Roy Harper / Jon Martyn style electric-folk guitar ? All too brief, but great sounds from Zak’s “gypsy” guitar again too.)

However, the digeridoo accompanying the blues guitar and vocal is really something to behold – novelty value clearly – but a mesmerising range of rhythms and layers of beating resonances driving the groove along. Worth the admission fee alone – what was it again ? Ah yes, no charge.