Tag: Joe Hicks

REVIEW – Ian Parker Band @ Long Street Blues Club, Con Club, Devizes – Saturday 9th September 2023

In The Heat Of The Night

Andy Fawthrop

It must be that time of the year.  Summer is going out in a blaze of heated glory, and Autumn is about to come calling.  We’ve already had the last Bank Holiday of the year and, apart from the ankle-biters being back at school, last night was also time for the annual singalong frenzy of The Last Night of The Proms.  After this you know it’s all downhill to the clocks going back, Halloween, Bonfire Night, and The Big C.  But no point getting miserable and all teary-eyed just yet.  Before we get to the fake-Dickensian marketing exercise that forces the first mince-pies to hit the supermarket shelves, we’ve got plenty to look forward to in D-Town’s music scene.

And last night was just typical with competing gigs at The Cavalier, The Corn Exchange, and The Southgate to choose from.  Or there was always Twilight Cinema in Hillworth Park.  But I couldn’t find my Ray-Bans, so I decided that the best way to start things off was at the Con Club, with the new Autumn/ Winter season of concerts lined up by Ian Hopkins and his team at Long Street Blues Club.  First guest of the new season was the Ian Parker Band.

It was hot and sweaty in there, but that just suited the music.  A goodly crowd had ignored the various other blandishments on offer, including England’s opening game in the rugby World Cup, and turned out to welcome two great guests back to the club. 

First up was support from local boy Joe Hicks. He’ll be touring with his band in November and December in the UK & Germany, but for tonight it was just the man, his guitar, and a few pedals.  Last time I saw Joe was here in the club just before Covid and I remember enjoying his performance.  Since then, he and his songs have matured.  Introducing self-penned songs from his debut album of last year “The Best I Could Do At The Time”, Joe produced an engaging and accomplished performance.  The songs, delivered with understated guitar, and his tell-tale falsetto voice, were mesmerizingly good.  The inter-song chat, self-deprecating humour and snatches of audience participation easily won people over.  Joe is well above yer average troubadour, and definitely worth checking out.

Then we were onto two helpings of the four-piece Ian Parker band.  Ian is a 20-year blues band veteran and has played as a session musician with much of UK’s blues royalty.  His sets contained mostly self-penned material, leavened with just the right amount of covers.  Leading from the front on guitar and vocals, we launched straight into Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man, then settled down into a bluesy groove.  Again, there was great inter-song chat, the clear connection with the club, and with the enthusiastic audience.

The guitar work was clean, sparkling and inventive, with the band behind him providing just the right platform for his inspired and meandering solos.  We were in blues territory, but there was plenty of wandering off into something more inventive and reflective.  There were nods to BB King (Help The Poor), Willie Dixon (Weak Brain, Narrow Mind) and a really stunning reworking of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower.  Cue huge applause, a great finish, and a well-deserved encore.

So, the new season is up and running, with some great talent lined up to play (see the club’s website).  Tickets available online, at Devizes Books and at all the usual outlets.  Do yourself a favour and get along to some of these gigs.

Future Long Street Blues Club gigs:

Saturday 7th October 2023                          Billy Walton Band

Friday 13th October 2023                            Blood Brothers – Mike Zito & Albert Castiglia band

Friday 3rd November 2023                           Susan Santos & Alastair Greene

Saturday 18th November 2023                  Russ Ballard Band

Friday 24th November 2023                        Chicago Blues Trio

Saturday 16th December 2023                   Fullhouse play Franki

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The Best He Could Do at The Time, Joe Hicks’ Debut Album

A little late for the party, as ever, I’ve been procrastinating, and my computer is equally as listless; failing to save my original words on this. Meanwhile Newbury good guy, but welcomed regular on our circuit, Joe Hicks has been busy with a debut album launched yesterday, worthy of a rewrite……

Titled The Best I Could Do at The Time, Joe is seriously playing it down, like the nerd at college who tells you they “haven’t done much” for their assignment, so you follow suit only to find them offering a feasible cure for all known diseases in a presentation with U2 providing the soundtrack, while the best you can offer is a scribbling of your pet cat, which you did on the bus journey there.

The opening tune, Sail Away, for example, is far punchier than David Gray’s appellation of the same name, and we won’t contemplate sailing down the Rod Stewart route. Though it’s best pigeonholed like Gray’s, as folktronica, there’s a whole lot more going on here from this stalwart who could just as easily fit comfortably into a blues dance as he could a folk festival, and does.        

The blurb suggests The Best I Could Do at the Time is “a journey through many of the emotional peaks and troughs we go through as humans,” Joe explained, “and more specifically me as a musician in such uncertain times. It’s about acknowledging them, living in those feelings for a while and ultimately finding the hope we all have within us to take control and rise above the worst of them. It’s about doing the best we can with the tools that we have.”

The first thing to hit you is the sheer production quality, a euphoric yet upbeat anthemic joy from the off, Sail Away, sustains the timeless pop formula, making him balance on the edge between aforementioned folk and blues, and allowing this album to flow tidy, but traverse any given pop subgenre at will, while retaining originality and stylised inimitability.

If One More Step, the timeless pop second track is a prime example, it builds on layers like a contemporary hit of say a George Ezra-Bruno Marrs hybrid, Maybe When It’s Over follows, and this stretches back further, reeking of unruffled seventies soul, like Curtis Mayfield.

Four tracks in and you’re safe in knowledge to accept anything, Pieces is sublime acoustic fluff, and there was a line in the subtle skank of Lost in Love, “oh, such a reckless emotion,” where I paused for thought on a comparison which I couldn’t quite put my finger on, until it came to me; the velvety vocals of Paul Young, especially when he sang Come Back and Stay.

Mirror Mirror reflects an indie side-order, while Out of My Mind surprisingly nods of township jive, designating a hint of Paul Simon’s Graceland. Hand in Hand settles the pace once again to this euphoria, so that even if the narrative traverses the downhearted at times, it’s always a musical ride with the glass half full. And herein is my point; this is ageless pop goodness, borrowing from what went before, but fresh and contemporary throughout, which is the even balance of magnitude.

The final trio of tracks on this eleven-strong album returns to the early eighties pop formula with, Alive, folktronica goodness with the inspiring Make It Home, and Weightless polishes it off with the pop roll of The Corrs, or something along those lines, though the whole shebang holds itself in its own pocket.

It’s a wonderful album, deservedly to be considered a remarkable achievement; The Best I Could Do at The Time huh? Well, the time is nigh. Having made a name for himself as a session guitarist, Joe Hicks was ‘BBC Introducing Artist of the Week’, directly from his first solo single in 2017. Since he’s built up a sizable online following, touring the UK and Europe, appearing at CarFest, The Big Feastival, Are You Listening? Festival, Pub in the Park, over thirty Sofar Sounds shows and slots supporting Sam Fender, James Walsh and Starsailor.

Here in Devizes, he’s regularly appeared at Long Street Blues Club and Saddleback, and is always a delight to chat with; just a genuine modest talent, of which this album truly blows the lid off his cover. I got your number, Hicks; bloomin’ amazing album, my son!

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The Malone-Sibun Band and Joe Hicks at the Long Street Blues Club

A cracking night for our blues club last night, which I managed to finally appear at!

After publishing a run of awesome reviews from our man Andy, and with a flimsy hunch he wasn’t going to make it Saturday night (though he did,) I figured it high time and a good opportunity to break my Long Street Blues Club cherry; can’t let him have all the fun.

If I only popped my head around the door towards the end on a previous occasion, it was plentiful to note in our preview of their new season that, “there’s a lack of background noise at Long Street, the audience don’t chitter-chatter through the act like the backroom of a pub, it’s a fully entrancing appreciation society.” In fact, upon entry I was thanking Ian Hopkins the organiser, only to be shushed by a member. Who shushes at a gig? At least one in a hall chockful of blues aficionados captivated by the music, that’s who!

After pondering out loud, feasibly too loudly for this attendee, if this blues club needs a review at all, being it’s marked with exceptionally high-regard on our music scene and the hall of the Cons Club is bustling, I took heed of Ian’s reply, “any publicity is good publicity,” and tiptoed to the bar as if in a Christian Science Reading Room.

With family ties to Devizes, we’ve mentioned the support act on Devizine in the past, and it was good to finally meet him, even better to hear him perform live. Newbury-based answer to David Gray, Joe Hicks is wonderful, simple as. At ease with his surroundings he chats enough only to tune and give a modest synopsis of the following song, or to praise Livewired, for his last gig at the Electric Bear in Bath. He delivers his original songs with appetite but no strain, and aptitude which he makes look like child’s play. Among others, we were treated to his new single, Swim and another spellbinding comfort song called Rest Your Head. Mildly dreamy rather than sombre, his chants sublime, making a perfect cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere so apt for a finale.

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Now for the main act, you know how levels of cool range? I mean, there’s that mate in the pub with the amusing party-trick, he’s pretty cool, right, but compared to someone like Hendrix, he’s a total nerd. Smoothly Detroit’s Marcus Malone frontstages, oozing cool from his gaze to his fingertips like the lovechild of aforementioned Hendrix and Lenny Kravitz. His talent replicates his persona, and combined with a tight band, and Devizes-own electric blues guitar-legend, Innes Sibun, this is loud, proud and quite simply, mesmerising.

I realise now, witnessing the brilliant Beaux Gris & The Apocalypse, and Mr Amor, I was only a fraction engulfed into my epiphany of contemporary blues, the Malone Sibun Band completes it. Innes may appear more like that air-guitar playing headbanger at school who was asking for bullies to pick on him, drawing metal band logos on his army surplus bag in biro and all, but this guy wows and visually loves that he’s wowing, probably sighting a said school tormenter in the crowd, rocking out! The quality of this duo, this collective, is second-to-none, and their music takes no prisoners.

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It was rock, harking back to times of yore, when the blues influence was prevalent, yet more refined than psychedelic sixties, edging more towards traditional Delta or jump-blues than even Cream and Hendrix did. In contrast it was gritty, persistent and never waived from its ethos. Whether leisurelier tempo or all-out detonation, it was not experimental, rather a tried and tested formula. It neither clichéd or borrowed from previous works, it never waited for you to compare it, it was entirely unique, and it was full on in your face. There was no sing-a-long section, popular covers, there was no idle chatter; they came, they saw, they blasted their labour and treasured every minute of it.

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I was left entranced, my jaw hanging low and my mind whisked away, as said noise restrictions of the club crumbled, and its preconceived barriers collapsed, there was no associating the Long Street Blues Club to a library any longer. In all, this club may attract an older majority, but if you’re thinking fuddy-duddies you’d better think again! Next up, Jon Amor, his full band, on the 12th October, but you’d have known that if your read our preview! Yep, in it I did speculate The Long Street Blues is “simply addictive. Hook line and sinker,” I feared, “they’d have me in the palm of their hands.” It’s confirmed now.

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