PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight’s gig was the launch party for Danny Bryant’s excellent new album, Temperature Rising.
The night opened with the Tom Killner band, a three-piece from South Yorkshire. They play a nice blues/blues rock set including plenty of guitar solos (and the solos sounded prettty damn good). As well as their own material they included a cover of the Etta James song “Work song”. They do a decent job of it, but it just feels strange hearing it with male vocals. The crowd grew steadily during their set and the band certainly went down well with the crowd. A great opening act.
By the time Danny Bryant took to the stage, the venue was nice and busy – not quite a sell out, but certainly busy enough that the place was fairly packed. For me this was the second time I’d sen him on this tour, having attended the gig at the Robin 2 at the start of the tour, and that gig had been good enough for me to be keen to see him again.
Tonight’s set kicked off with Prisoner of the blues, and right from the start it was clear that he was playing to an appreciative audience as they cheered each song, and during songs when Danny played a particularly good guitar solo (and there were several of those), the crowd broke into applause and cheers. It’s a hard performance to fault – he’s a great guitarist and his vocals are ideal for the blues. The only real fault was during one song where he plays softer and softer lowering the volume – tonight the volume went too low, so while you could see he was still playing, it was totally inaudible toward the back of the venue.
Because Danny Bryant doesnt opt for the Joe Bonamassa approach of swapping guitars after every song and having someone tune the ones he isnt using, then there are long pauses between some of the songs as he retunes the guitar, but Danny Bryant generally does a good job of handling the gaps by chatting to the crowd.
Having seen the Bilston gig, I was expecing the setlist tonight to be the same, but in fact there were plenty of differences – the order had been changed around, and there were songs tonight that weren’t played at Bilston. One of the additions to the setlist, “Hoochie Coochie” was particularly good, but the highlight of the set tonight was the same as in Bilston – the wonderful “Guntown” – which is my favourite from the new album.
Danny Bryant once again gave us a superb night of Blues music.
Danny Bryant setlist:
Prisoner of the Blues
Take me higher
Love of angels
Hoochie Coochie
Heartbreaker
Best of me
Girl from the north country
Greenwood 31
Goodtime woman
Guntown
Razor sharp
Knockin’ on heavens door
Leopard skin pillbox hat
Just as I am
Tell me
