Review: Ben Andrews in Bracknell

Subject: Review: Ben Andrews in Bracknell
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 04:43 PM

Just time to post this before going off to Greece for a fortnight:

        On Saturday 14th June, before Mudcat went down, I took Herself for a birthday treat to South Hill Park, Bracknell. A meal in the Atrium restaurant, then Ben Andrews in concert in the Cellar bar. A capacity crowd, including fellow American slide bluesman, Guy Totora, packed the place on a hot and sticky night but fortunately there was hardly anyone smoking and they opened the emergency door to let some cool air in.

        Ben had four acoustic guitars on the go, one 6-string set up for slide and one for ragtime and finger picking, a steel and a twelve string (yippee). His repertoire covered most of my favourites: Leadbelly, Broonzy, Willie McTell, John Lee Hooker, John Hurt, Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Robert Junior Lockwood, Brownie McGhee, Bo Carter, but no Fred McDowell. Modestly, he only played a couple of his own numbers and though he had CDs for sale he didn't do just "this is on my CD" numbers. I already had his two latest CDs Journey and Gallows Pole. He cut short the interval to include more requests and over-ran his allotted time by about 20 minutes with an encore version of Gallus Pole, even longer than on the CD. Entertaining and informative introductions, his voice live is even better than on record and his guitar playing was superb.
        Herself thoroughly enjoyed herself, (though she pronounced the red wine "interesting"!) the only minus for me was there was no decent beer on in the bar so I "had" to opt for cider. I had tried to persuade the Jagz management to book Ben earlier in the year – their loss that they didn't.   This was the last of his "venue" appearances on this tour but he's appearing at several festivals. Catch him if you can.

RtS