Sherman Robertson at the Bronte Blues Club

Arriving early to avoid the forecasted Pennine blizzards, ickledot was lucky enough to catch the closing bars of the Sherman Robertson Band’s soundcheck. I knew then that we were in for a special night. As the audience gathered, the sense of anticipation grew.

I know I’ve said it before, but the house band, BBC5, were in particularly good form. Apparently singer Michael Ford had been suffering with a head cold for a number of days and whatever it was that lingered in his nose or throat gave his voice a pleasingly gravelled edge.

And then came the whirlwind that was the Sherman Robertson Band! Having heard their session on last Monday’s Radio 2 Blues programme with Paul Jones, I knew what to expect in terms of style, but nothing could have prepared our little gathering for the performance that followed. From Beaux Bridges, Louisiana to Laycock Village Hall! It never ceases to amaze me that such a quality of music can be heard at this tiny venue high in the hills.

Sherman Robertson is a truly wonderful guitarist and showman. To me, the sound was vaguely reminiscent of Robert Cray and a number of others confirmed the validity of such a comparison. I saw Cray a few years ago (at Manchester Apollo: an inferior venue) and to me Sherman has the edge. More grit in the voice and guitar style. The supporting band were superb. Loud, but so clear, tight and obviously having a great time. Unfortunately a quick trawl on the old internet has not revealed any names, but I think I heard that the bass and keyboards players hailed from Leicester and the drummer from Birmingham.

Thanks go also to the organisers for managing to capture this rare talent for the Bronte Blues Club. If not thought of as an essential venue on the British blues scene before, it truly is now. A magical night. And it didn’t snow.

Bit Guilty …

… not been blogging enough recently. Soz. Over the last few days I’ve kept hearing about various things and thought ‘I could write a blog about that’ and then days pass and the chance has gone.

I was very pleased about Obama. Whether you like him or not you have to agree it’s good to have a politician elected without having to ‘dumb down’; appear less bright than he is in order to pander to ‘the common man’, whoever that is. Same with Gordon Brown really. He recently seems to have got the plaudits by being serious, being himself, rather than pretending to be something he’s not.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time updating another site I run. I first designed it using Freeway about four years ago. Now I’m attempting to bring it into the Web 2.0 era using Rapidweaver. Trouble is, it has grown to be huge and so is taking forever to transfer.

Also been using Twitter a lot. I’m enjoying it more and more. There’s a huge variety of people out there and it is truly amazing what can be said in the space of 140 characters.

OK. I’ll try to write something on a more regular basis from now on.