Day one of the festival

So, I went to the Eslöv city blues festival yesterday and I got tickets for tonight's show as well.

I am not really that into blues. I like it, but it's not a passion. It is however, the basic foundation of all African-American music and as this blog is about American culture, I think it's ok to review it here.

Friday's show started with two short plays by a free theatre group. I saw the first one and was not really that convinced it had something to do with blues, so when I discovered there was a geezer sitting in the café room playing electric guitar, harmonica and singing, I decided to give him a listen instead of watching the second play. I think his name was Christian, but I ain't too sure. I really liked his music, though. I think it had a country feeling to it's bluesiness and I got thinking along the terms of Townes van Zandt, even though this bloke first of all wasn't as good as Townes and, secondly, had his own sound. I really liked his guitar playing though.

As the clock approached 9 pm, the headliners of the night entered stage, The Big Bang Group. This group celebrated their 25th anniversary as a band this year an had, for that purpose, invited a lot of mates from throughout their career that they had enjoyed playing with. There was a few oldies, like vocalist and harmonica playing Bill Öhrström, as well as young vocalist Susanne Eriksson. All their guests were hugely talented though and even if I really liked Erikssons singing, it's unfair to say that one was better than the other.

Credit must also go out to guitarist of the day, Mange. The usual guitarist of the band had called in sick yesterday and just a few hours before the gig, they had called Mange and asked if he wanted to play with them as a stand-in and he agreed.

Together, they made one heck of a show! The basics of all the music was blues, but the band and their guests then went on picnics in jazz, as well as r&b/soul. I really liked the r&b-ish stuff. Sure, I can listen to a bit of jazz, as well, but I have a soft spot for r&B and soul, there's no denying that!

One of the highlights of the show was the Fats Domino tune Blueberry hill. Ulf Johansson Werre, who sang it, made a real crowd pleaser of a scat-singing at the end of it, which he evloved into a "Jojk", a Lapplandian singing style, that is.

Some tunes were in English and some in Swedish, but they were all good!

I enjoyed myself thuroughly throughout the show yesterday and am looking forward to tonight's show. Not sure I'll watch all of it, as I must get up early and go to church in the morning, but I'm really pleased that my little town can arrange a good festival like this one.

Big Bang Group made one heck of a great show and gets 81,3% in rate of satisfaction!

Will Kimbrough & Brigitte DeMeyer @ Folk Å Rock, Malmö

I have continuously sung the praise of the Folk Å Rock record store in Malmö and yesterday gave me more reason to do so, cos they arranged a brilliant concert in the store in the evening.

When I lived in London, the big Oxford Street record stores would arrange in-store concerts with big artists like Usher and hundreds of young people would crowd the record store to see their favourite artist.

Folk Å Rock is nothing like that. The store itself is quite small, actually, so i don't think more than 50-60 people attended the gig yesterday. This meant that Kimbrough could communicate with the audience quite easily and he did so splendidly too. I would say the setting was intimate.

The record store is located at "Lilla Torg", one of the most fashionable and trendy places in Malmö when it comes to night-life, with loads of bars and coffee houses. This meant that a load of trendies passed by the store on their way to the bar. Most of them looked into the windows and I couldn't help feeling sorry for them. They would go on to get ridiculously drunk and listen to ridiculous pop music, while they had real music just a few doors down.

The one thing which bothered me about the gig, though, was the fact that it was too small for people to dance. I wasn't going to dance even if there was space to do so, cos, frankly speaking, the problem with me is that I've got no rythm. But the music played by DeMeyer and Kimbrough is folk music and if you play folk music, people should be able to dance. Folk music wasn't made for music nerds to sit and snap their fingers to, but for celebration, dancing and fun. In old times, when the local minstrel took out his fiddle or guitar, it was a time for joy and I think that the fact that this is lost on today's folk music fan base is tragic.

The gig itself was, despite DeMeyer's lost voice, nothing but brilliant. In a few years, they'll be superstars within the genré, of that I'm sure, cos the guitar handling was brilliant and the songs were ace too.

Kimbrough seems to be standing with one foot in traditional Americana and one foot in more modern singer-songwriting and does a good job at both, as well as combining them.

I really like the lyricism too. Kimbrough combined a sense of humour with more serious stuff. In some songs you get both, in one he described, in a brilliant play on words, a teenage prostitute as "the rottening apple of her daddy's eyes".

And the cover of Hank Williams Sr's I'm so lonesome I could cry was one of the best numbers they did, do their own material was far from bad too.
Kimbrough and DeMeyer completed each other brilliantly too. DeMeyer has a very good singing voice, despite her throat problem and was good at the guitarplaying too.

I had big expectations for this concert and though it wasn't as good as I thought it would be, it was still a good concert.

I'll be checking out the music of DeMeyer and Kimbrough and I think you should too. If you like this kind of music, you won't be able to avoid them in a couple of years time and they sure won't play for theese small crowds then neither.

As I'm fairly satisfied, I'll give this concert 82,3% in rate of satisfaction!