Endlessly touring and recording new music, Joanne Shaw Taylor has become a blues force to be reckoned with in recent years. Working with some of the biggest names in the business, including Joe Bonamassa, she has become a firm favourite with blues fans across the planet. Tonight it is the turn of Wolverhampton to see one of the greatest blues guitarists on the circuit.
Support tonight comes from Conor Selby with a solo acoustic set for which you can hear a pin drop amongst the quiet attentive seated audience. I’d write more, but I’m really not familiar with Conor’s music, though I will be aiming to rectify that once I’m home!
With a soft and effortless style of play and vocals, I could have sat all night listening to him play if it wasn’t for the fact the brilliant Joanne Shaw Taylor was about to take to the stage to teach us all about the blues.
Born in the Black Country, this is about as close to a home show as you can get for Joanne Shaw Taylor. Only a stones throw from her stomping grounds, one could expect the home crowd to be out in force and they very much were. No pressure for a professional like Ms Taylor, though, who launched into a typically wonderful collection of songs. We were in for an hour and a half of quality blues rock, including a handful of classic covers.
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Hitting the stage with “In the Mood” , it was clear to all we were in for a blues masterclass of the highest order. We are treated to a couple of cover songs from 2021’s The Blues Album, most notably Albert King’s “Can’t You See What You’re Doing to Me”. She then proceeded to go through a selection of some of her finest work from old to new.
The likes of “Diamonds in the Dirt” and “Sweet Lil Lies” rubbed shoulders with newer songs such as “Fade Away” and “Runaway” from her new album Nobody’s Fool, arguably her best album so far. Which was better? That’s a loaded question given the fact that Taylor has maintained an impressive level of quality from album to album, whether recording her own music or re-recording others’.
What I like about JST is her ability to make a packed venue feel like a local intimate pub gig, but with better sound. Constantly she engaged with the audience with stories and experiences from her life, drawing laughter, but above all else she is just one hell of a musician as well as being a genuinely nice person. She also makes those emotional guitar licks seem to easy, playing with a natural ease that makes each song sound deceptively simple.
If I had one complaint, it would be that she didn’t play my favourite song, “Blackest Day”, but to be fair to her, she wouldn’t know it was my favourite song. And with so many awesome tracks to choose from, there will always be some great ones that miss the cut.
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Photos by SRKLens
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