Easdale Island Community Hall
Tam White in Concert

Tam White in Concert

Date of Event: Sat 17 Jul 2004
Event Type: Concert
Time: 8pm
Ticket Pricing: £ (accompanied under 12s free )
 
From an article first published in Easdale People magazine, Issue No 20, Autumn 2004.

Tam White guitar & gravel vocals, with Joost on dobro. Scotland's answer to Broonzy, BB King, Blind Willie McTell & John Hurt, all rolled into one. What a night.

Starting with a 12-bar delta blues, Nothing Blues, Tam soon got us into the swing with John Hiatt's One Kiss, and Booker T Jones' Born Under a Bad Sign. His own Stonemasons Blues was dedicated to the Easdale slate, and rocked the hall to that heavy dragging beat like never before. He had us all singing the gospelly Save Me, and followed that with Sweet Senegal - his own arrangement of Robert Burns' Slave's Lament. This and Leadbelly's Blues Walk Down, and an evocatively atmospheric rendering of Lonnie Donnegan's Worried Man Blues, wound up the fist half and left us all thirsting for more. In all this, Tam's inimitable guitar was ably supplemented by the haunting dobro playing of Dutchman Joost from up Findhorn way.

Tam's down-to-earth, music-is-people approach came to the fore when he let Joost take the first 4 numbers of the second half. A good blues man in himself, although more van Morrison than McTell, Joost gave us his own songs on guitar, with the first dedicated to Catriona Melville who had shown him round the island that afternoon!

Tam came back and soon had us singing again with Small Talk, then went on with Fadin Fast, the funky Freeway, and Minstrel's Farewell - his tribute to Danny Kyle.

Two of his own songs from the Norman Stone film Mandancin' featured in the second half. Hold On is the title track of his latest album, dedicated to Rab Yule who died last year. The heavy funk of Man Dancin set the tone for the tail end of the evening, with that addictive beat that gets you totally absorbed in the blues. He encored with I'm so lonely, and finally tuned the box down to DADGAD for Long Time Coming.

In the Puffer later, Tam promised he wouldn't be a long time coming back. And like all great musicians, he loved the hall and its unique atmosphere which seems to adapt to anything that goes on there.

Adrian Laycock
 
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