Vanja Sky: The Rising Star of Europe's Live Bluesrock Scene

A female guitarist with long hair performs on stage, wearing a leopard print outfit and black boots. In the background, a male guitarist and a male drummer accompany her in a lively music venue.

If hours spent on the road and playing live were translated into success then Vanja Sky, as one of the hardest touring musicians I’ve come across, would be a mega-success already. As it is, those live shows might not have made her rich but they have made her one of the best live bluesrock acts on the European circuit right now. Add with her cracking band including Mitch Ryder guitarist Sean Athens The Harmonie was certainly THE place to be on Sunday evening for Rock ‘n’ Rollers.

Somewhere in Istria, there’s a pastry kitchen that lost its chef to the blues, and the rest of us are better off for it.

Vanja Sky was that pastry chef in the Croatian town of Buzet, presumably perfecting the art of the delicate and the sweet, when she wandered into a live music venue one evening and walked out a woman with a mission. At 19, she ordered a cheap guitar online, signed up for lessons with the man who’d lit the spark, and never looked back. The rolling pin was retired. The Stratocaster-shaped hole in her life was filled.

What followed was less a career than a sprint. Her 2018 debut, Bad Penny, landed her on the Blues Caravan tour alongside heavy hitters like Bernard Allison and Mike Zito. Then came Woman Named Trouble, an album title she cheerfully admits describes her, and Reborn in 2023, which turned the amps up further while keeping one boot planted firmly in the blues. Rory Gallagher and Stevie Ray Vaughan are on her list of heroes, but the voice is hers alone: a fiery, no-nonsense roar that suggests she’s not here in Bonn’s Harmonie this evening to be polite.

Woman playing electric guitar on stage with vibrant lighting

I first saw Vanja on that 2018 RUF Records tour as a promising newcomer, and then witnessed a more seasoned performance in 2022 at the Harmonie for a Rockpalast show where she came in as a late replacement for the Hamburg Blues Band who pulled out due to Covid. Now here we are in 2026 and I’m keen to see if she has improved yet again on her already high standards as a live act. The answer is a definite yes!

Maybe because it’s a Sunday evening, but advance ticket sales have been disappointing. Why do Harmonie concerts on a Sunday start so early as well? I mean – 7 pm for the main act? Stick in a half-hour break and show’s over by 9:30 pm when most clubs are actually starting. Maybe because of the early start a lot of people turned up shortly before 7 pm so there was finally and thankfully a good sized crowd to welcome Vanja and her new band.

A musician passionately playing an electric guitar on stage, with a focused expression and dramatic lighting in the background.

It was a surprise to hear ‘Devil Woman’ so early in the set – second in after ‘R’n’R Train’) because I think it’s one of her standout catchiest numbers and I remember her donning a set of devil’s horns for it on the Rockpalast broadcast. That 2022 show was a huge step up from the 2018 Blues Caravan and this 2026 show, if not such a huge further step up, was nonetheless a further improvement over the already excellent 2022 appearance. A lot of the difference to my ears and eyes was down to the addition of Sean Athens on lead guitar. I want to make clear that Günther Haas from the earlier show is an excellent guitarist. Athens’ harder rock style and guitar hero postures just gave the show visually an extra dimension. Vanja spotted him playing with Mitch Ryder and now, as cast iron proof of his popularity there are a good half dozen ‘air-guitarists’ pretending it’s their fingers sizzling around the strings.

If Simon McBride were to leave Deep Purple Sean Athens could stand in for sure. He was at his very best this evening with stunning solos on ‘Hit Me With The Blues’ with a sound reminiscent of Gary Moore at times. Maybe down to using a Gibson Les Paul. Hearing him later take on the solo on Rory’s famous ‘Shadowplay’ made me think that this is how it would have sounded with Moore replacing Gallagher on the solo (don’t lynch me Rory fans – it’s only a thought…!)

With the rythm section of Felix Dehmel on drums and Johannes Horas on bass this was certainly the best band I’ve seen both musically and visually behind Vanja. Horas’ Greco Jazz Bass has that thick Fender sound that I love in Rock music. Dehmel too can play heavy but also has a lighter touch to keep the sound from getting too bogged down. Taken together then a top-class trio in front of which Vanja herself is free to concentrate on imprinting her own personality on proceedings, safe in the knowledge that all bases behind her are safely covered.

Two musicians performing on stage with electric guitars, one male and one female, while a drummer is visible in the background.

Sky fans of course couldn’t concieve of a show without her Bluesrock classics like ‘Troublemaker’ and ‘Don’t forget to Rock ‘n’ Roll’ both of course played on the night. In addition it was nice also to hear how much she has improved as a vocalist with a tone-perfect rendering of the Bee Gees classic ‘To Love Somebody’ that pushes the brothers Gibb song successfully into rock territory, and a pumping version of Tina Turner’s ‘Steamy Windows’. But of course the best cover song of the evening had to be a Rory Gallagher one, and the enduring memory of this excellent evening was, for me, hearing a rapturous audience chanting the riff of ‘Shadow Play’ long after the band had taken their bows and left the stage. How could you ever forget to rock ‘n’ roll with Vanja Sky in town? Quite possibly now playing at her best. But maybe it just seems like that until the next tour and the bar raises even higher. There’s a new disc dropping next year from Vanja and hopefully a tour to promote it that brings her back to Bonn. If so I will be there, and I recommend you not to miss the show!