When? Sun 11/05/2008

Where? CC Luchtbal Toon mij een kaart

What a weekend! On Friday we saw Kathleen Vandenhoudt & Tomboy (with Luc 'Luke Alexander' Jansen, René Stock and Arnout Hellofs, a genuine super group) at Aalter Statiekermis (East Flanders, between Gent and Bruges) The new material they recorded in December in Café De Buster in Antwerpen before a live audience, like Framed My Dad and Don't Ever Stop, is clearly becoming familiar stuff, but older songs like Never Forget also get a new lease of life in this combination. Kathleen as usual gave it all she got and what Luke Alexander oozed out of his guitar has a refinement and a finishing that's truly rare. Singer-songwriting but with Kathleen the blues is never that far away.

Saturday there was the birthday party of inmates Filip and Pat from and in Café De Blauwe Wolk in Zottegem. We were especially interested to see Liz Mandville, but her concert was so late we had to leave before the gig even began. Instead we saw Dutch band Bugaboo Tang, classical blues and old skool rockabilly, played with a lot of drive, love and passion for this job and with great dexterity by clearly experienced musicians (guitar player-singer Roger Corneille, guitarist Pleun 'PeeVee' Vermeulen, slappin' upright bass player Tattoo Jaakoo Buchholtz -a band in his own right, what a sight- and drummer Jeroen van der Linden), much more than a warm up alright.

There it finally was, the much awaited Belgian Rootsnight # 15 with Johnny Winter. Last year we missed him at Labadoux Festival, but we heard a lot of good things about the gig. In the nineties things went wrong for the albino. Health problems, having lived too fast, both ends of the candle burning…That was the general opinion anyway. Too much of the good stuff, hey? In Ingelmunster very little was to be seen or heard of these problems, at least not on stage. So we drove courageously through tropical damp to that well known overheated venue in Borgerhout. It would become the finest Rootsnight we ever saw, as everything before Winter proved to be of high quality.

Rusty Roots presented their second CD, Electrified. They did that through their own songs like It's Yours To Spend and covers as the closing Come Back Baby (by Walter Jacobs, A.K.A. Little Walter) However short their set and despite the early hour (between four and five in the afternoon), they succeeded in winning the handful of viewers. Many people actually stayed before the venue, due to the radiant sun. The band's playing was supple, flexible and relaxed, giving space to the music. The catchy, infectuous rhythms, the warm sounds of the hammond and the vocals of Mr. BeeJee did the rest. This man's a songster with an original technical ability. He leaves the gratuitous shouting to others. Actually Mr. Beejee closed the set with a vocal hat trick. Refreshing!

sAMMYcUBA has filled the spot Durango had left open so sadly after their split. Singer-guitar player Filip Casteels (formerly of El Fish), bass player Wim Janssens and drummer Pol Geusens carefully avoid in their rootsy approach the kind of clichés that gave the blues a bad name and produce music with influences that stretches over a few decades and various musical styles. We hear echoes from the (early) Rolling Stones (Guitar Sitar Man) and ZZ Top, but why not play Soundgarden? They have indeed a nice cover of Rusty Cage, ,,Johnny Cash style'' as they stated themselves, with that remarkable change of tempo and mood in the middle. It's the kind of blend Bjorn Eriksson (from Maxon Blewitt) recently was experimenting with. In How Would I Know Casteels shows his outstanding vocal capacities. Of course there's still some mileage ahead for this young band, but it all sounds very promising and in essence this really is blues, no doubt about that. The trio was reinforced with, yes, him again…Luke Alexander. Then you know that guitar fireworks are in the making: in I Ain't Got Nobody the magician once again pulled out all the stops. This band is no cliché, we said. To prove that we can mention the…cliché that Filip inserted into this last song. It had nothing to do with the song and his words were barely audible: ,,I woke up this morning, suitcase in my hand''. People like this should get all the credit they can handle.

People kept strolling in by now and mainly thanks to Rusty Roots and sAMMYcUBA those present were in the right mood when Dutch band Barrelhouse took the stage and cut Skin And Bones. Barrelhouse is nothing less than a blues legend, in the early seventies as sidemen to Oscar Benton, later as a solo band and as accompanists with a impeccable live reputation (their record with Albert Collins testifies this) After a period with Benton, again, the band reunited in '93, not only to play and promote the blues like they did in those early days, but also to engage in projects with other kinds of artists and even cross-overs that reputedly are interesting and aristically succesful. Barrelhouse won Hof Ter Lo over thanks to the always excellently singing, good-humoured Tineke Schoemaker, the formidable keyboard playing Han Van Dam (the piano solo in If You Really Wanna Leave Me and the boogie woogie part in Let Me Love Ya!) and the fiery solo's by guitar players Johnny and Guus Laporte, who play lead in turns. The relentless rhythm twins Jan Willem Sligting-Bob Dros laid a firm basis. Fiesta! But it doesn't always have to be this jumpy: they played an awfully nice Irish kind of ballad, about the last glass of the evening, with Jan Willem playing the accordion: an appreciated Celtic pause, the kind Barry McCabe likes to bring.

Some fears accompanied the concert of The Cowboy Angels: what would country have to offer amidst soaring guitars and boogie rhythms? Well, then you don't know Gram Parsons. The man died exactly 35 years ago, but his influence on Americana is still enormous, practically impossible to overestimate. Yurek Onzia, who took the initiative for this tribute, wanted to show what a great songwriter GP was, despite his short life (he didn't get to be 27), but also what a performer he was, mixing rock, prominently, and blues in his genuine country. Iris Smithuis held the role of Emmylou Harris, the inevitable pedal steel was in the golden hands of Jef Marinus, himself kind of a legend on this magnificent instrument (Jef is no less than the Belgian Sneaky Pete Kleinow!) Pete De Houwer, yeah, the tall guy from the Seatsniffers, stole the scene with his enthusiastic and expert style drumming…as usual. Raf 'Lazy Horse' Temmerman, known from his stints with Flip Kowlier, but to be heard in a lot of Americana bands (a.o. Kat'lee Jones), is also part of The Cowboy Angels, not surprisingly. Do we have to say that Lazy was amazing on everything with strings, in this instance mostly the electric guitar and the mandolin? The harp of Big Dave Reniers was featured a few times (in replacement of fiddler David Buyle who's currently playing in the States) After Devil In Disguise, with incisive slide work by Raf, Return Of The Grievous Angel came by, thus very early in the set. Onzia told the audience that it is one of the signature songs of Parsons, but didn't mention that the group's name stems from the lyrics of this tune. We got to hear songs by the Byrds (One Hundred Years) and the Burrito Brothers (High Fashion Queen), two of the bands GP was once a part of. But there was also room for tunes by Gram's own influences, like the Louvin Brothers and the Stanley Brothers. From these last ones, Yurek, Iris and unexpectedly…drummer Pete sang a cappella and in harmony My Immortal Home in the best bluegrass tradition, the threesome around one mike. After the ballad Hot Burrito (as always pure melancholy) tempo went right up with Las Vegas (probably best known in the version by Emmylou Harris, who assisted GP in his very last year, only to start an impressive career on her own, a career which is still going strong) The Cowboy Angels finished with Dark End Of The Street, song by Spooner Oldham, popularised by James Carr, but Gram also had his own interpretation. By this time Onzia and his cowboys and angel had conquered the hearts.

Howlin' Bill played a home game. But we know from experience that the singer and harp player doesn't need this advantage to tear down the house (we have seen a few good examples of that!) This Sunday that wasn't any different: he scored a regular Strike, the title of his second CD! The Strongest Man Alive, Bimbo, You've Got It, Midnight Hero and Gone Too Soon thundered all over the willing audience, also thanks to the never ending rhythm job by Walkin Winne-Magic Frank. Bill also has a guitarist extraordinaire in his ranks, good old Little Chris Van Nauw. Afterwards Chris told us: ,,You only get one opportunity in a lifetime to do the support of someone like Johnny Winter: this is a chance you have to grab with both hands. From then on it's full throttle!'' In Don't You Know That I Love You Bill leaves the microphone and sings to the people without amplification, no prob for his mighty voice. It's back and forth with the audience. Enthusiasm rises to a climax, certainly while Mississippi Hoodoo Man gets that delicious CCR/swamp execution, with Howlin' Bill as a fully blown shouting marsh monster and Little Chris in a prolongued but masterly solo. The infectious Pick Up Lines, The Circus Is Coming To Town, When Hell Freezes Over (that's ows a lot to ZZ Top but also to…Doris Day: ,,This is our own interpretation of 'Que sera, sera'!'') plus an instrumental encore formed the second part of the set, at least as good as the start. Although this is highly classical blues, R&B and rockabilly, Howlin' Bill never sounds clichéd. Instead it all sounds fresh and new as if it was invented on the spot. And the commitment of the band is never less than exemplary.

Johnny Winter now is 64, but it looks as if is health is improving again, and dramatically, considering the ominous tidings. He may be over his top as a singer (those high notes) and as a guitar player (tiny errors), but it's the total sum that counts. Winter is still a giant, let that be clear, as well technically as in the field of interpretation. He plays them home any time! Moreover, one has to take into account his merits over the years: practically all guitar players from this and earlier Rootsnights are inspired by and tributary to Winter and his contemporaries, that first great generation of electric guitarists of the end of the sixties and at the start of the seventies (we take the opportunity to put in the picture the live recordings of 1977 by Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters and James Cotton, Breakin' it UP, Breakin' It DOWN, a CD that was only released in 2007) Winter played classics like Hideaway, Sugar Coated Love (great solo's!!!), Lone Wolf, Jimi's Red House, Johnny Guitar, It's All Over Now and Mojo Boogie, all of which splashed out of the speakers. Johnny could rely on a sturdy band, with effective players, the likes of bass player Scott Spray. After the last Rootsnight things didn't turn out well for Bo Diddley, but we hope that the albino can go on on this level for many years to come.

We left before the afterparty with Stinky Lou, but in between the acts Susan Vanderstappen of Crossroads Café relentlessly played succulent blues records. We couldn't always recognise artists or titles, which accounts for a good DJ, but not for us, pure amateurs in the blues. Whatever, this bluesy weekend was one to remember.

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