Andy Wales Band

 ANDY WALES BAND
Musician Pub 1st November 2024

Wow... the The Andy Wales Blues Band absolutely smashed it at The Musician Pub last night with a tremendous couple of hours performance.

The band hit the stage running and with no preamble blasted into a red hot version of "Cross Town Traffic" followed by a Sonny Boy Williamson cover...

From the start Andy and the band had clearly brought their A+ game to the show and were absolutely on fire playing and singing superbly... The band are the cream of local musicianship, drummer Nick Murphy pops up in all sorts of combinations and as ever his drumming was crisp, powerful and brilliant driving the rhythm or providing delicate fills and touches as the music required. CHRISTIAN DEZELU is a class bass player, playing with great rhythm as well as power throughout and adding some great harmonies, as well as excellent lead vocal on "Life in the Fast Lane" later in the show.

The main event however was Andy's guitar playing. He is surely up there with the best and his playing was as ever outstanding... fluent, powerful or delicate as required whether rocking out or playing the blues, as well as on the more poppy material.

The gig was beautifully paced, throwing in some great covers, often surprising covers!... such as Carole King's "Natural Woman" and Martha& the Vandellas "Heatwave" as well as the Soft Cell classic "Tainted love"... and all are given cracking arrangements.

The show also had a couple of guests, in the first half the legendary Simon Honeyboy Hicklin stepped up to deliver a couple of numbers in his own inimitable style while the band powered out the accompaniment.

The second half saw Max Manning (Della Grants) join the band to deliver a bluesy soulful "Need Your Love So Bad" and "How Long" which featured some inspired guitar interplay between Him and Andy...

An encore was needed, and the band played a cracking "Heard it Through the Grapevine"

This was an exceptional gig... the band playing superbly and clearly loving it... as did the whole audience.. fabulous night... great gig delivered by a really top class band...

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