Mojo Workin’ fo’ Autumn: Long Street Blues Club’s Next Season….

It’s when you hear those American addresses, like house number 21,456 Park Avenue, you realise Long Street in Devizes is a long street only comparable with neighbouring streets! Even then it’s only averagely longer, and seems quite short to walk along when you know three-quarters of the way down there’s world class blues acts giving it what’s for.

All hail Long Street Blues Club, home of a blues appreciation society as large as the town itself; let’s have a gander at their upcoming season, shall we?

I’m not going to jinx the clement weather by saying it, hopefully, but it will be classed as the autumn-winter season for the established juke joint within a Conservative Club, so let’s pretend the nights are not closing in and view this a preview of what’s to come when it does, okay, good for you? The fun doesn’t end in summer here, y’know?!

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Thursday 10th October kicks it off, with some southern fried and heavily drunk Mississippi delta blues, when Heavy Drunk, Watermelon Slim and Leonardo Guiliani team up for an electrifying Trans-Atlantic tour and see here as why we’re so fortunate to have Long Street!  

Multi-award-winning Watermelon Slim was perhaps best summed up by the late Jerry Wexler (co-owner Atlantic Records, producer for Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin) who described him as “a one-of-a-kind, pickin’ n singing Okie dynamo.” Sons of the South soul outfit HeavyDrunk has made waves with their signature raspy vocals and Americana infused sound.

Their Mississippi delta blues, powerful gospel, and hard-hitting rock ‘n’ roll energy charged their 2023 album You Don’t Know Me, which was released to raise awareness and funds for the crumbling grave of music legend Robert Johnson.

UK based independent musician, guitar player, and singer-songwriter Leonardo Guiliani joins The Mississippi Delta Blues Experience 2024 fresh off the release of his 2023 album Rogue. Produced by four-time Grammy award winner producer Tom Hambridge, Rogue showcases Guiliani’s talents inspired by the acoustic singer-songwriters and electric jam bands of the late ‘60s and the ‘70s.

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It doesn’t end with this Mississippi Delta Blues Experience, for little over a week later, on Friday 18th October, the legendary Wishbone Ash will play the Corn Exchange for a Mayor’s Appeal fundraiser; that’s what you get when the mayor is the key organiser of a blues club!

Wishbone Ash embarked on the nascent progressive rock scene in 1969, far too long ago for me to be around, but if I was I like to think I’d be waving my bell-bottoms and freaking out to it with a flower in my hair. They’ve a distinctive brand of melodic rock, inspired equally by British folk traditions and American jazz and R&B, and still do it fifty years on. 

If that’s not enough to twist your temptation, support comes from our one and only Johnny B. Goode, Ruzz’s Guitar Trio, and if you’ve not heard of him you’ve not been reading Devizine enough!!

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Last gig of October is on Friday 25th, grandson of the legendary RL Burnside and legend within his own right, Cedric Burnside brings his new album Hill Country Love’s UK tour to Devizes. He has built up a formidable reputation as one of the most original blues performers of his generation, and was recognized with the 2024 Mississippi Governor’s Art Award for Excellence in Music, which should be quite enough accolades for us. As with most of them, demand for this gig will be very high indeed so early booking is essential.

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Things are no slow train running when we look at November either, on Saturday 2nd, following a sensational support slot with Giles Robson last year, Mississippi MacDonald makes a return by demand from the clubbers. 

English soul-blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, fronting a four piece band, Mississippi MacDonald is a six times British/UK Blues Awards and three times US Independent Blues Awards nominee signed to APM Records and appearing on BBC Radio 2’s Blues Show with Cerys Matthews. 

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Yes, get in! Sunday 9th November sees Ian Siegal and band return to the club. No stranger around these parts, as part of the Birdsmen project with Jon Amor and the Docherty brothers, as a guest of Jon and within his own right, damn, I’ve mentioned it before, but Ian is the very definition of cool!

He’s the multiple British Blues Awards winner and hot tip of everyone from Mojo to Classic Rock. He’s the songwriter whose recent CD releases sound like career peaks, but are only the start. From one night to the next, he might be a solo acoustic performer or a blood-and-thunder bandleader. Siegal is known as a bluesman, but it’s just one shade in the palette of an artist who slips between continents, eras and expectations.

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Saturday 16th November is the date John Otway brings his big band, and here’s one I know so many cry at me to see, but I’m yet to tick off my must-see list. Pop’s most amazing eccentric English singer-songwriter who has built a sizeable cult audience through extensive touring, a surreal sense of humour and a self-deprecating underdog persona, Otway is punk essence, remembered for accidentally misjudging a step in order to jump on an amplifier and sent it and him tumbling on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test!

Otway’s sixth single, the half-spoken love song Really Free reached number 27 in the UK Singles Chart. An appearance on the BBC’s flagship music programme Top of the Pops, where Otway & Barrett were introduced by Elton John, Otway was finally a star!

Support comes from the foot-tappin’ folk of Billy in the Lowground, a fine choice in my humble opinion.

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And that’s it, save for the, (dare I say it while the sun is shining?!) Christmas Party on Saturday 21st December with The Thomas Atlas Band. Garage funk in style, his band takes in members of The Brand New Heavies and The Brothers Groove. He’s no stranger to Devizes, guesting with Jon Amor Trio’s regular Sunday session at the Southgate, returning to our answer to the O2 in his own right, and playing a gig at the club between them!

A Smile Two Bangs and a Legend support on this one, who I’ve heard about, love the name but not had the opportunity to witness for myself, but it will be Christmas party and a half, even if I don’t like to even mention the C word until December and apologise to like minded others!

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Long Street Blues Club is one of those strange things if you don’t know it. Turn up, observe raffle ticket buying, check out the ham or cheese rolls on the bar, and think what have I done, is this a Saga excursion? Then correct yo’ bad self, when you witness top class blues acts from both near and as far away as possible, and realise this is the Devizes Blues Preservation Society HQ; and they sho’ got their mojos workin’.

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