Bristol's Blues Events

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Bristol's Blues Scene

Is blues music under-represented in Bristol?

While other American-originated music like funk and soul enjoy a huge number of acts and dedicated venues, where is the home of blues in Bristol? With its roots in the oppression of the black peoples of America, blues was transplanted over to the UK via white rock acts like the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. A quick browse of blues played on the BBC recently and tyhe Guardian’s list of the best blues festivals show some support for nearby Bath, but nothing for blues in Bristol. This begs the question: who will lead the new blues revival in Bristol?

Blues gigs in Bristol are found in pretty consistent venues with places like The Prom and the Thunderbolt popular live blues spots. Generally blues-rock seems more prominent in Bristol than traditional rhythm and blues bands or delta blues singers, although there is some really interesting stuff out there. Other venues to check for blues include the Cori Tap in Clifton and the Blue Lagoon on Gloucester Rd.

It's always worth looking at what's on at the Canteen in Bristol whose listings vary in style but are usually consistently high in quality - some potential blues gems there...

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Our recent blues recommendations

Sell out warning! The Orcutt Shelley Miller trio tear through an avant-rock outer world, as Bill Orcutt’s iconoclastic outlaw shred interlaces with Steve Shelley’s mad percussion and Ethan Miller’s writhing bass. On support: electroacoustic composer Cole Pulice untethers sax and synth into boundless, dreamlike arcs. A fugitive voyage in sound FFO: Jim O’Rourke, Sonic Youth, Nala Sinephro, Pharoah Sanders. Orcutt Shelley Miller + Cole Pulice at Strange Brew.

Sell out warning! The majestic trad/not-trad fiddle of Mikey Kenney is a real treat: giddy strings steeped in 1,000 years of rich UK ballads, peppered with Mikey’s own urban Merseyside compositions and influences from bluegrass to Italian folk and beyond. Plaintive delights FFO: Tommy Peoples, Aidan O'Rourke, Aaron Catlow, Band of Burns." Mikey Kenney + Âellin at The Jam Jar.

A globe-spanning, brain-expanding double billing crammed into the Micro-est of plexes! Luck and Czyżyk’s hallucinatory practices of docu-collage + live improvisations using stones, shells and more of nature’s non-instruments meld together with Tehran-born composer Rojin Sharafi’s genre-splintering electroacoustic worlds. If it ain’t borderline incomprehensible to the uninitiated, it just ain't Tough Sell! Neil Luck & Monika Czyżyk + Rojin Sharafi at The Cube.

The true heirs to the Can / Faust crown of collectivised kosmische chaos convene for another cultish Cube transmission! Kulku’s Suzuki-worthy bilingual psycho-babble spirals around hypnotic locked grooves, reaching a kind of trash symphonic rapture via timpani, scrap metal and xylophone riffing. Throw Rachel Musson’s avant-sax soundscapes in the mix, and you’ll be QWAKing at the moon. Kulku + Rachel Musson at The Cube.

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What our editors say

“One of blues rock’s most exciting breakout bands of recent years, Hutchinson’s power trio have been praised for ‘turning a club show into a primal scream’. Packed with hard hitting riffs and gritty guitar solos, his songs bring audiences together with choruses that soar.”
From: Jack J Hutchinson

“Having played bluegrass festivals in England, the Netherlands, France and the USA the band have honed their own take on American music from the 1950s to the present day. With various combinations of the four voices, expect to hear interesting harmony and subtle instrumentation as they play their way around festivals, pubs, Arts Centres music venues and local markets.”
From: The Hogranch

“Those whispers became Where the South Winds Wail. The record doesn’t unfold like a traditional collection of songs so much as a séance with an unknown past. Surf twang draped in shadows, blues exotica wandering into humid night, psychedelic cumbia tangled with echoes like an Afro-Amazon juke joint — each track a ghostly transmission, pulled from the air and reanimated in the present.”
From: Gitkin

“Growing up in between the deserts and refugee camps of Algeria, Ibrahim was regarded as a wanderer and a loner – he was nicknamed ‘Abaraybone’, meaning ‘ragamuffin child’. One day, he remembers, he was watching a western at a makeshift desert cinema and was struck by a scene in which a cowboy plays a song on a guitar. Inspired, he built his first guitar using an oil can, a stick and a bicycle brake wire. He started to learn to play, practising old Tuareg melodies, modern Arabic pop tunes and the Malian blues music of Ali Farka Touré.”
From: Tinariwen

“With a shared passion for modern bluegrass, The Charlotte Carrivick Band brings together four of the most exciting musicians in the UK today. Charlotte Carrivick is a flatpicking guitarist of international renown, sought for her inventive lead playing and regarded as an expert fiddle tune interpreter on the guitar.”
From: The Charlotte Carrivick Band + Erika Olson