Main Street Blues- Live at Birnam Arts Centre

Thank God it was Saturday because it had  been a tough week.  I'd been crazy busy working out my notice at my old call centre job while fulfilling my new, admittedly awesome, role at here Small City Big Personality.  If that wasn't enough my shower had stopped working, my microwave is on the blink and I was coming down with a bad case of man flu.  Listen, can you hear that?  It's the World's smallest violin playing just for me.  I had a bad case of the blues but Birnam Arts Centre had the cure for what ails me;  Main Street Blues, Scotland's foremost purveyors of unadulterated acoustic and electric blues.

So I headed to pick up my partner in crime Rhona Maxwell, fellow Small City employee and main writer of our popular family column feature and after promising her husband 'Graeme The Cake' to have her back at a reasonable hour we hit the road on a Small City road trip.

I'd never seen a show at the Birnam Arts centre before but it soon became apparent that it was a great live venue.  I got a great filter coffee in the foyer and the auditorium was set up with bistro style tables and chairs that gave the place a sort of nightclub vibe.  The band started promptly with a slow acoustic blues.  The bass player John Hay particularly impresses taking on the melody line while Derek Smith holds down the rythmn on his acoustic guitar.  There is a seamless change-over as Derek picks up his strat to play a blistering electric guitar solo and finishes the song.

Next up is an original shuffle that has echoes of Eric Clapton's Further On Up the Road.  I love a good shuffle and this great shuffle really had me tapping my feet with some really strong vocals, a nimble piano solo and some really groovy drumming.  Another couple of really strong originals follow with tale of adulterer on the run Before the Bullets Fly.  It starts with and epic guitar sound and keys player Ian Hannah has by this stage switched to Hammond organ and is taking a more prominent place in the mix with a laid back, groovy percussive style that gels really well with the rest of the band.

Derek has some real lead guitar chops which he really gets to exercise on a cover of Robert Johnson's Stop Breaking Down Blues an eighty year old song that in Main Street Blues hands sounds as a raw and fresh as ever.  Covers of Clapton, Bob Geddon and John Hyatt follow and all go done great with the appreciative Birnam audience but it is the Freddie King song Big Legged Woman that does it for me.  I love a bit of Freddie King!

After the interval we are treated to another couple of originals.  The tongue in cheek Devil Whiskey Woman and the epic sounding Blue is Blues which has some truly amazing descending piano with Iain Hanna sounding like a rythmn and blues Rachmaninoff.  When the bass line for B.B. King's The Thrill is Gone kicks in I can't help a little involuntarily fist pump.  I love this song and this arrangement does it proud.  Soon the show is over but there is no time for chips, I've got to get Rhona home to Mr. Maxwell Before the Bullets Fly.

GALLERY

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