“When it comes to the Blues, I don’t like to mess around with the formula too much” says Will Wilde about his new release ‘Blues is Still Alive’. Will is true to his word on that score. There are echoes of the best of the best blues harp legends on here. ‘Don’t Trust Me’ evokes Sonny Boy 2’s rasping harp style, ‘Gypsy Woman’ calls up Muddy Waters with it’s title and ‘St James Infirmary’ in its style, whilst ‘Wild Man’ finds obvious DNA patterns musically with the very first electric blues harp legend Little Water. Wilde goes on to say “I wanted to prove that the blues is as relevant today as it’s ever been”. and again the Man has hit all the home bases on that one too. His lyrics, particularly on the title track are on the button with regard to topicality too: A woman working hard to ‘just’ be able to pay the rent and feed her children, as a man is Kicked down “for the colour of his skin” in a World divided where “everybody’s taking sides…”. Yes indeed, the Blues is, these days, still very much alive.

Johnny Campbell’s appearance at Bonn Folk Club last year was a real breath of fresh air. It’s a long time since I experienced an English folk musician who truly seems to have a mission in his music to rival that of the legendary Ewan MacColl. This is music with a heart and a soul and also a home – True North.

If you’ve never been to the North of England then I recommend purchasing the disc with an extra booklet. In it, you’ll find not just the lyrics, but also discover a background that is as fascinating as the songs themselves. As an example, it’s hard to imagine Leeds as a ‘seaside Town’. For a start, it’s nowhere near the coast (in fact, although it just misses being a part of the Midlands, you can’t get much more ‘mid-land’ than Leeds). Industrialisation though wasn’t to be deterred. To get the woven textiles produced there to the market quickly a canal was built that led west to Liverpool and ultimately to the sea. Not quite a seaside town then – but Nature and Man combined to find the sea. Indeed, it’s this synergy of the two that is behind ‘True North’.

Campbell describes these as ‘Field Recordings’. Which very often, literally they are. Each track is recorded on or around a respective county high point of Northern England. Don’t expect audiophile perfection here. That’s not the aim even. Johnny describes it rather beautifully as “tapping into the psychogeography of northern England”. Traditional songs with music created in the moment and inspired by the often rugged and windswept countryside which itself got swept up in an industrial revolution that changed the people and the landscape forever.

The mood and fears of the time are captured in ‘Four Loom Weaver’, describing the catastrophic outcome that mechanization had on the workforce at the time. “I’m a four loom weaver, as everybody knows. I’ve nowt to eat, and I’ve worn out me clothes. Stockings I’ve none, nor looms to weave on. I’ve woven mesen t’ far end!”.

It’s a lot to aim for – trying to convey the spirits of people and places and history all in one go. Johnny Campbell though has done it on True North with a stunning, simple, honesty. Playing where the history itself took place. armed with just a recorder, a voice, a guitar, and a spirit of defiance. playing this disc makes the listener feel as if they are that check-shirted man on the CD cover enjoying the view with a guitar beside him, surveying the land and the history it has lived. For most people that in itself would be enough. Johnny Campell doesn’t just talk the talk though, he, literally, walks the walk too, recently announcing proudly that he would be taking part in a ‘trespass’ walk on Kinder Scout. For those who don’t know the history: On 24th April 1932, several hundred activists from Manchester, Salford and Sheffield ‘trespassed’ on Derbyshire’s highest point, Kinder Scout, to highlight how walkers have been denied access to the open countryside by wealthy landowners, often using these moorlands for the elite, ecologically damaging, and profitable ‘sport’ of grouse shooting. Things have sadly not got better, and now, in 2024, 92% of land is ‘off-limits’ to walkers.

‘True North’ is not all Industrial Revolution woes though. and visitors to Bonn Folk Club may remember Johnny giving us a shortened version of the old traditional song ‘The Derby Ram’ with its origins in the 18th Century. I wonder when the last verse here was added that refers to: “The manure from the ram sir. It made a great big mound. And now it plays on Saturday, at Derby’s football ground!”

Overall this is much more than an album showcasing old history. It is a wake-up call and reminder that these Cities are as they are because of the land and rivers that themselves decided as much as the people what could be manufactured where and how it could reach its final market. Nature is bigger than any of us, and not a commodity that should be locked away by a privileged few.

A shout out also to Katie Gabriel Allen for creating a stunning artwork cover for the disc. A perfect poster in itself, showing our check-shirted troubador on a hill overlooking many of the famous sights of the area. It all looks so wonderfully tempting to hike through in its chocolate-box romantic splendour. Not a single ‘No Entry’ or ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’ sign in sight. The real ‘True North’ is to be found in the songs here, the sweat of labour and the clank of machines. Also, in the struggle to maintain entry to the land for the sons and daughters of those who sweated and starved. Obviously, a labour of love for Johnny Campbell, this disc and booklet would make great learning material in schools. Music, history and education – all with just a couple of instruments, a voice, and a breathtaking backdrop. What’s not to like?!

In 2018 she was the newcomer on the Blues Caravan alongside Mike Zito and Bernard Allison. In the five years since though Vanja Sky has been building a very solid reputation and an excellent band as shown last year in her appearance at Bonn Harmonie on the mighty Rockpalast. There were some very promising songs on that show from the upcoming new disc. That disc is now coming up for release in July, . Titled Reborn and in comparison to her debut Bad Penny the title could not be more apt.

If you haven’t visited Vanja Sky’s music since her RUF records days then you are in for a surprise, and if you are a fan of hard rock music it will be a very pleasant one. The opener ‘Hero’ gives you a whopping big clue as to where the music has headed with its clap-along opening drum beat perfect for big venues at Rock festivals which is where the current band seems destined to triumph. Indeed, There are big rock riffs throughout the disc and the influence on Vanja’s musical direction of guitarist/arranger Gunther Haas cannot be overestimated. Haas gives ‘Devil Woman’ (remember Vanja wearing those devils horns at Rockpalast – see below pic?) and ‘Rusty Fingers’ a perfect ZZ Top vibe as well as a classic feel to the much covered Humble Pie song ‘I don’t need no doctor’.

Many readers will appreciate the contribution of Roger Innis on so many contemporary blues releases and he was with Vanya Sky in the Studio in Hamburg contributing to the lyrics on ‘can you here life knocking’, ‘Riding high’ and Rusty fingers’ 

Vanja’s rising status is seen in the guest appearances on ‘Reborn’. I remember telling Gerry MacAvoy about a young Croatian girl doing Rory Gallagher’s ‘Bad Penny’ on her debut disc and his promising to check it out – and here Gerry is playing bass on Vanja’s storming rendition of Rory’s live classic ‘I take what I want’. She delivers an excellent version of Ten Years After’s ‘Love to change the world’ too, and there’s Rick Lee from the band on drums.

She may not be the greatest female rock vocalist on the planet, but there’s a quantum leap in Vanya’s voice and confidence here with the songs well calculated to work within her vocal range and kick ass too. Great production work too by Bodo Schulte and Vanya to get a good rock sound from both voice and music.

It’s hard to pick highlights from such a solidly satisfying rock release but certainly ‘Muha’ with the shared vocals of current Nazareth and Don Airey vocalist Carl Sentance is a standout, as is the pop/rock ‘Can you hear life knocking?’. But picking stand-out tracks is literally, well, being picky. Vanja sings on the ballady ‘Runaway’ “I want to fly. Just like Freebird, stay in the sky”, and that tells you where the musical heart of the girl and her band is coming from in 2023 . If you’re a fan of rock heroes like Rory, Thin Lizzy, ZZ Top and co then check out the latest Vanja Sky disc. The cover shows her as a young child on a tv screen next to the lady all grown up in 2022, and, like the lady, the music is all grown up and ready to rock with the best of them.

First a quick catch-up for those who are not familiar with the name Richard Bargel. Growing up in Bonn Bad Godesberg, Bargel started out as a folksinger but even early on was thinking outside the box and formed his own puppet and theatre company ‘Lumpentheater’. The ’70s saw him building up a following in England by playing at some of London’s premier pubs and clubs (100 Club, Dingwalls, Half Moon in Putney). He was in some excellent company too embracing a mixture of styles with the likes of D.P. (Elvis) Costello and Wizz Jones. The ’70s also saw Bargel forging his blues links through concerts with luminaries of the genre such as Champion Jack Dupree and Memphis Slim.

If you’re a Henrik Freischlader fan then you will be playing this with great trepidation. 2009’s ‘Recorded by Martin Meinschäfer’ is unarguably one of, if not THE, best disc the Wuppertal Wunderkind ever put together. Does the new release measure up? Well truth is, it’s not as good – it’s better!

It’s been nine years since Layla Zoe and Henrik Freischlader last collaborated on an album together, the result being arguably Layla’s best to date ‘The Lily’. The intervening years have seen Layla with her own band deliver the excellent double disc ‘Gemini’ and 2020’s ‘Nowhere left to go’ which, despite its patchwork band born out of Covid regulations at the time, was by no means a disappointment (see my review on this site). Certainly, the current world situation has created plenty of fuel for creative songwriters, which Layla most certainly is. It’s certainly significant that the last release by Layla was not a music CD but a book of poetry. Given that Layla pours her heart out in every song I was disappointed not to find a foreword in said poetry book – events to hang the words on, so to speak. The same goes for this new CD. The intimacy of the lyrics suggests nothing is pure imagination, everything is experience. Why else call a song ‘Jasmine’? and have a lyric “I’ll care for you tonight, little black and white pearl”. The devil, as they say, is in the detail. And in Layla’s lyrics here, there is always so much tantalizing detail.

As always with Cable Car releases, the disc is beautifully presented, with an eye-catching black and white ink illustration by Caroline Sandmayer who also designed Henrik’s own ‘Missing Pieces’ cover. The very first two tracks illustrate the breadth of emotions on the disc overall. Track one, ‘Dark Heart’ is indeed a dark tale of life at its lowest ebb, yet track two, ‘Honey pie’ is the opposite – a “child of love and light” who, it transpires, plays xylophone. Again there’s that little hint of detail that this is perhaps from real life, and therein lies for me the strength of Layla’s lyricism. How deep do you want to go as listener?

Tracks like ‘The world could change’, ‘Man behind the curtain’ and ‘We’re all the same’ possibly have roots in the turmoil of War that we currently live in – if we are fortunate, only diffusely – through news bulletins. Elsewhere though there is tenderness as “Baby bird, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you fly” and fierceness as in “Life ain’t worth a shit, if we can’t look fear in the eyes”. Finally, throughout the disc, hope is always there. “Every villain, every house of cards, crumbles to the ground” (Truth song), “Secretly we light a candle, whose tiny flame must never waver” (The world could change), because, quite simply, “In the end we’re all the same. We fight to smile and survive. To live and love and be” Am I suggesting this is a very complex disc? Well it is. And then again it isn’t. Good versus Evil. There’s that “tiny flame to disable the evil plans” and the choice to “Stand up in your courage. You don’t have to lose”. If all else fails, there is the haunting final song/prayer ‘Shine brightly‘ that is for me the discs high-point. With all the world’s troubles we can rise up; physically as individuals, and spiritually too- from birth to death “To shine brightly as we transcend. To shine brightly even in our end”

So, I have written a great deal already. Really a powerhouse performance lyrically and emotionally by Layla. Poetry put to music. But this is a music CD and not a poetry book. Of course, the music side is where Henrik Freischlader very much comes in on this disc – as the player of every instrument bar the keyboards (Henrik’s band keyboard player Moritz Führop keeps things ‘in house’ here i.e. Cable Car records). Ordinarily, The talents of Mr Freischlader would be more than enough to embellish any vocalist’s solo disc. Layla though here has set the emotional bar high, and, whereas Henrik’s guitar playing is always tasteful and doesn’t dominate with its Peter Green/Gary Moore Bluesrock tone, I wish he’d kicked a bit more a*s as he does on his own new release for example on ‘Hall of shame‘. Freischlader understandably lets Zoe do the real shining on here, and that’s maybe a conscious decision. The rhythms and beats he provides are all watertight, no complaints technically. No great guitar solos and no bad ones. When one musician plays pretty much everything a ‘live take’ goes out the window, and I rather miss that edginess. Will we ever get a chance to hear Layla take this on the road with her own band? I hope so. The World can change – believe in the Firegirl and her words from the heart.

The World Could Change is released on 11 November

It’s barely been two years since Grace and Aaron Bond had a musical epiphany.  After eight years of making music largely as the fancy took them, the husband and wife team from Essex discovered they could make a pretty great Blues Rock sound.  In fact, they liked it so much that the duo headed out on the roads of England in an old VW Camper to test out their new musical love – and then came Covid.

At this time you would expect the story to take a downward turn.  Instead, the Pandemic proved to be the making of them.  Proof of that is in a record-breaking four wins at this year’s British Blues Awards.  Alongside Best Emerging Artist, Best Band and Best Album they also picked up the curious Most Inspirational Online Performance award.  All of which makes both band, and album well worth a listen for all Blues Rock lovers out there (and I know there are many around Bonn area!)

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