Friday 22 May - and we are at a different venue tonight, The Grand Opera House in York to see one of my all-time guitar heroes, Johnny Winter. The problem I have with the GOH is the fact that it's an all-seated venue so this is starting a bit strange and I realise that I'll probably be in for a 'numb-bum' by the send of the session. Still, we are in the Dress Circle so should get a good view. Support was from Ian Siegal a British blues singer/guitarist very much on the roots side of the genre. He has a voice like Tom Waits and writes lyrics with a strong sense of humour. Currently touring with Andy Graham (bass) and Nikolaj Bjerre (drums) I think everything he played/sang were his own compositions as I didn't recognise a single song. The lyrics were a bit indistinct, possibly due to the acoustics of the GOH, I've not sat in the Circle before, but I certainly enjoyed the Mortal Coil Shuffle off his 2007 album, Swagger.
During the interval The Druid and I caught up on recent music purchases while 'A' wandered around the building admiring the architecture. Then it was on to the headline act, John Dawson Winter III, the cross-eyed albino Texas blues legend. We kicked off with an instrumental by Johnny's band; Paul Nelson (guitar), Scott Spray (bass), and Tony Beard (drums) which was very well executed. Then Johnny himself came on stage and I have to say that my heart went out to him. He looked every day of his 65 years, barely able to shuffle onstage unaided. Apparently he suffered an injury to his hip back in October 2000 following a fall. The damage was severe enough that he had to undergo surgery to correct the problem, but he seems to be suffering the effects of that injury to this day. He performed the entire set whilst sitting on a chair and using a vintage dew drop-shaped 'headless' Steinberger guitar switching to a 1963 Gibson Firebird V for the encore. For me, the Firebird has a much nicer tone, the Steinberger sounded very shrill.
He has an exquisite voice but the lyrics were once more lost in the acoustics of the GOH. To be brutally honest he didn't really seem to hit his stride until about half-way through the set when he played Hendrix's Red House. After that things definitely improved with his own Mojo Boogie, Derringer's Rock 'n' Roll, Hoochie Koo, Ray Charles's Blackjack, Larry William's Bony Moronie, The Rolling Stones' It's All Over Now, and finally Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. As was pointed out to me later "so we've just heard an old bloke play a bunch of covers?" and I guess that's about the size of it, but it's the manner of his playing that makes it special, It's All Over Now was practically unrecognisable.
It almost seems like sacrilege but we left the GOH and immediately headed across town to the Roman Bath where Storm were playing and just kicking off the second half of their set. Storm are a 4-piece rock covers band from Huddersfield whom we've seen before. They played; Van Halen (Jump), The Jam (Town Called Malice), The Darkness (I Believe In A Thing Called Love), Prince (Purple Rain), Bryan Adams (Summer of '69), Wilson Pickett/The Commitments (Mustang Sally), Madness (Baggy Trousers), Whitesnake (Here I Go Again), Lenny Kravitz (Are you Gonna go my way), Green Day (Basket Case), and Alvin and the Chipmunks (Let's Do The Time Warp Again). The last being their nadir, a song where they insist on a female in the audience naming a rude body part for us to "put your hands on...". I really wish they would drop this from what is otherwise a pretty decent act.
No comments:
Post a Comment