Snowy White MJC 24 April 2009

The Snowy White Blues Project
Mick Jagger Centre 24th April 2009

This was a bit of a stab in the dark but the fact that he was a name and the words blues and project indicated a good evening. After an irritatingly awful drive to Dartford in very heavy Friday evening traffic we got there with about a minute to spare before the scheduled 8 p.m. starting time. I assumed there would be either a support band or they would start a fashionably bit late but I was wrong on both accounts.

I was sure we had seats but hadn’t bothered to check whereabouts we were sitting so it was a bit of a surprise when the guy at the door said that it was to be standing but now it was sitting and you could sit where you liked. If I had known that we would have left a bit earlier to get a better position. We didn’t have time even to get a drink before we were ushered in. We did manage fairly decent seats though about halfway up and just to the left of the aisle.

The band came on and it turned out to be a classic 4 piece with 2 guitars, bass and drums. Snowy, looking like a Kwik Fit mechanic positioned himself to the left of the stage and had a simple Les Paul plus AC30 set up. Matt Taylor the other guitarist went for the much more noticeable white t-shirt and jeans ensemble and suffered a little from constantly changing guitars syndrome. Ruud Weber jr was on bass and the flamboyantly named Juan Van Emmerloot was on drums.

All three of the front men did vocals and Snowy seemed quite happy to let the other two have their fair share of the fun. I did wonder if what with Snowy’s Thin Lizzy connection whether we would get a bit of hard rock but I didn’t need to worry. We got a totally blues dominated set from the word go and very good it was too. They had a CD out at the end of last year and they played quite a few songs from it ranging from some Freddie King to an acoustic I’m So Glad to a lot of tunes they had written themselves.

Apart from the acoustic songs Snowy kept to his Les Paul in standard tuning including the slide work as well. The very proficient Matt Taylor changed from either a white Strat to a black Strat to a lovely sunburst Tele after every song and had a handy guitar tech to sort them all out for him. The Tele was used for his slide work and it is no surprise that he has his own band. Check him out on You Tube.

I think they wanted to play straight through as Snowy said they were told to take a break and would be back in 20 minutes. They aren’t going to sell any beer if the band don’t take a break are they? It did us a favour we hadn’t had a chance to get one earlier and the very efficient barmaid sorted us out with a pint of London Pride and a JD & coke pretty quickly considering the number of those clamouring for a drink. When the band came back on we had more of the same and then the couple of acoustic numbers. For this Snowy and Matt had jumbos similar to a Martin D28 (I was too far away to check the make) and the drummer came out from behind the drums to sit on and play a flamenco cajon box. Juan Van Emmerloot on drums was very good. He played a simple kit and made the most of it. I’m not usually very keen on the drum side of things and prefer them to be unobtrusive but Juan was impressive.

The second acoustic song was the Skip James I’m So Glad. They played close to the original rather than the Cream version and with Snowy doing slide it was very well done. Then we had more electric to the end. Then Snowy stayed on stage while the others left and he explained that rather than go off and hope there was enough applause to come back he’d stay there and play a solo electric number until the band came back on for a final song.

They played longer than I thought which goes to show that the set didn’t drag at all (we got into the car at 10.25) so must have played the best part of 2 hours. It was very good and very enjoyable and I would definitely recommend the band if you get the chance to see them. I even bought the CD (a lot of others did as well) and it’s pretty good. In today’s marvellous way there is even a clip of the band making the album on the You Tube clip below. If you fancy a bit of sheer blues class also check out the Clapton clip below for a blistering version of Freddie King’s Someday After A While that the band might have played but I’m not sure!

http://www.snowywhite.com/?location=/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7rnNs-4cos
www.myspace.com/matttaylorband
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caj%C3%B3n for the cajon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3wX1wn-0go&feature=related Eric clip