It's not easy being a top undercover sleuth. Over-hearing juicy morsels, having your ear to the ground, a glass to the wall and never sleeping takes practice, an immense amount of unhealthy pleasures and a steely devotion to the cause. I will, therefore, beat about the bush no longer. My recent insider prediction about the spiffing new HBBF site has, of course, come true and even as you hang on my every word it is being further developed and will shortly, I hear, be brimming with moving pictures and other good stuff. I couldn't help noticing that I have been given top billing on the page although, sadly, my handsome picture is rather small. Let the team know what you think about their site. Tell your friends....
As the winter nights close in, when I am not listening to Tom Waits singing about killers and losers, I am inclined to sit with my cat Cozy (think very loud rhythmic paradiddle purring and Splinter Group) and mull over the Meaning of Life, the condition of my hat collection and the state of the blues. I doubt that I'll ever get the hang of the first of these and I threw in the hat on the second some time ago. However, it seems to me that the blues world has never been in better shape.
If you wander around the pubs, clubs and festivals, the one constant that strikes you wherever you go is the extraordinary amount of young talent that abounds. Yes there are all those gifted stalwarts paying their dues with either no hair or too much hair in the wrong places without whom the blues world would surely collapse and yes, occasionally it looks as though all the famous blues gods up there seem to be of an age. However, look closer. Poke a pin anywhere into a blues 'time map' and you will find that there has always just suddenly arrived - as if from nowhere - astonishing gifted and knowledgable Youth, playing and singing its way into our hearts and minds. The number of outstanding young female blues artists seems never to have been greater - they blew us away at the first Hebden Blues Festival - and anyone with an eye for drummers and keyboard players knows that there are a lot out there, who, as they say, are younger than the proverbial policeman.
It has always been thus. Take a glance backwards at the not too distant past. Oli Brown and Joanne Shaw Taylor both picked up gongs at the Blues Awards. They seem to have been on the radar for such a long time and yet both are enviously young. Paddy Milner hit the ground running when he was hardly shaving and took his mum to gigs. The Davey Brothers and Jon Amor could barely legally drive The Hoax gig van when they were on the road. The brilliant Cherry Lee Mewis was a young teenager in North Wales when her talent took off...and so it goes...and the next generation is already out there carrying the standard forward.
This is nothing new but it never fails to excite that the door is always being pushed at hard by such a wall of arriving talents. One of the great joys of the first Hebden Bridge Blues Festival was that it found room for musicians who would normally have a tough time edging their way onto a festival bill dominated by established acts and talent. Realistic economics play a part, of course – blues philanthropy and festival accountants don't like each other and audiences of fifteen may not pay the electricity bill - but what a joy to wander into one of the Hebden Festival 'juke joints' and listen to someone new blowing the place apart. Often, they do it just for love - it's certainly no way to get rich - but all your graft and your talent go nowhere unless someone gives you a stage. Well done team Hebden for your enterprise and maybe a few more festivals will follow your lead.
Before I take Cozy for his evening walk, I have to remind you about the 2nd December Festival BIG Blues Session hosted by Paddy and you can find out all about it on the new festival site. Tickets only a fiver. Go Now. Go. Now.
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat
