My First Blues Gig ...

A Friday night back in 1994 and my mate Bo and I fancied something different from the local pub, a glance at the paper informed us that a nearby snooker hall had a band night on Fridays and a local band were on there that night. We gave it a try.
It was a four piece band, a rhythm section of Steve on drums, Mick on bass guitar and two guitarists, if my memory serves me right, the one with the beard was called Mike and the final one, a young guy in a baseball cap that also did the vocals was called Ian.
I loved the music right from the start, Bo was pretty knowledgeable on most styles of music and reliably informed me that we were listening to the Blues.
Some of the songs were familiar to him so he gave me a bit of a running commentary of who had performed what originally and pointed out some of the finer points of what the musicians were doing. "The young kid has switched to playing slide now" he said as they played a song called 'Champagne and Reefer', "This is by Muddy Waters and in my opinion better than the original". At the end of the song he retorted "That young lad has just played and sang that better than the King of Chicago Blues" he was gobsmacked and I was impressed, now hanging on every note and lyric we realised that we were savouring something pretty special.
Two more songs followed, both written by Ian the singer, 'Sandman' and 'Last 4 Nickels' wow, he was a good song writer as well, they were both as good as the American stuff that they'd been playing.
At one point we both looked at each other puzzled, we'd both heard the song before but nothing like the version that we were now listening to, something familiar in the unfamiliar if you like. They were mid way through the song before we clicked that it was the Motown classic 'Can't Get Next To You' but done as a slow Blues standard. Ruddy marvellous.
The next song started with a heavy drum beat, I could see Bo's mind whirl into overdrive before he spoke "This should be good, it's a Tom Waits song called 16 Shells and the original doesn't have guitars". This version did, driving heavy chords with the kid growling over them like he was a 60 a day smoker and recreational cleaning fluid drinker. This point was a musical renaissance for me, I bought 12 Tom Waits albums over the next three weeks on the strength of that song.
The climax for the two of us was a song called 'Life's Too Short To Drink Cheap Wine', slide guitar, a terrific tune and fantastic lyrics. Bo was convinced that it was a Muddy Waters song, he hadn't heard it before but it had the guitar of a Muddy Waters song, the great lyric of a Muddy Waters song and the quality of a Muddy Waters song. This was pure Chicago Blues and one of the very best at that. He was wrong, Ian had written it ! To this day, that original version is still one of my favourite classic Blues numbers.
 The encore raised the roof, an amazing version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" to which the whole audience joined in the chorus. That song was to become the band's anthem in subsequent months.
At the end of the night I bought a cassette that included most of the songs that they had done that night. I got it signed by the members of band and little realised what a precious item that cassette would become. Many people would kill for it now, you see the band was called Mr Siegal and Ian, the singer / guitarist would become even better and pretty famous in British Blues circles. I'd witnessed the early Ian Siegal.
Tony Winfield

Would you like to tell us about your first Blues gig ?
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