Brad Spurgeon's Blog

At the Tennessee bar and the Galway last night I spotted some new things to write about: First was the great use of one of the worst guitars that exists in the world. When I started travelling around the world two years ago playing music I decided to check out all the travel guitars, and I quickly concluded and discovered that it didn’t matter what size the guitar was, the airplane would let you on board or not. So I stuck with my regular guitar, my Seagull S6. But one of the guitars I had tried was a piece of shit, and I could never understand how anyone could buy one for the crap sound it gives off…until last night I saw someone at the Tennessee doing a fabulous thing with it: Slide guitar. Check out the video. And the most mystifying thing about this piece of crap is that it is a Martin!

Then after that came Rony Boy playing this jazz standard on his Godin electric – same company as the Seagull – and he did a mighty fine job of a song that I know well for having been played by Lenny Breau on an amazing recording as a young man, at 20 with Levon Helm on drums and Rick Danko on acoustic bass – both of whom would later make up The Band and play with Bob Dylan.

After that, over to the Galway where for the second time that night Ollie Fury played his wonderful new song, and both he and Stephen Danger Prescott for a change played Dylan, and did it in their own ways, as you can also see from the video. All in all, a satisfactory “new” night.

By the way, Rony Boy will be playing on the same bill with me in his band The Romantic Black Shirts, at the Disquaires on 27 February in Paris when I perform with my little band of gypsies for the first time, and Calvin McEnron will also play a set.