Elles Bailey - 3 August 2018

Another support act at The Monmouth Festival that took my fancy. She is a Bristol-based bluesy singer and I went based on a quick youtube of a song from her album. She was much better than I expected, the whole band had a great sound, the music was just to my taste and she stomped around the stage belting out vocals like a cross between Bonny Bramlett and Janis Joplin. The genre of the music was shown by the three tribute songs she had written - one was to Muscle Shoals, one to Chess and one to Janis Joplin. The first of those called 'Perfect Storm' was about my favourite track conjuring up brilliantly the Muscle Shoals sound. Up to that point I had been trying to place the sound and that gave me the clue as one of the main influences. The guitarist was not quite on it at first but he got better as the gig went on and he played lots of slide and by the end he was banging out screeching solos in fine style. The bassist, keyboards and drummer were all on the same page and showcased their talents during brief solos. Elles vocals were front and centre though and there was an edge of huskiness to the voice that suited the music perfectly. There was a fine Levon Helm cover, the Chess tribute featured a lot of great howling,, the moving Janis Joplin tribute was called 'Girl who owned the blues', 'Wildfire' was a great finish to the set. All in all an unexpectedly uplifting experience.

Fleetwood Mac - June 1980

Fleetwood Mac are a band with an amazing history, the late sixties line up with the astonishing Peter Green, the addition of the brilliant Christine Perfect to the line up, the defection of Jeremy Spencer mid-tour to join the Children of God, Peter Green's troubles, the parachuting in of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks - it all seems like too much for one band. Of course the various iterations were quite different in what they produced musically and whilst I had been mainly a fan of the early stuff I was bowled over by 'Rumours'. What makes that album for me is the contribution from the two women in the band, Christine Perfect and Stevie Nicks - their singing astonishing and the best songs, in my view, written by them. The tour I saw was officially a tour of their following album 'Tusk' which had had mixed reviews and which I didn't really know but I, like most of the audience, wanted to hear the Rumours' songs and the band didn't disappoint. The only songs I can recall at this distance that weren't from Rumours are 'Tusk' itself and 'Rhiannon', both of which made an impression. The highlights though were as expected the singing of Christine and Stevie and songs such as 'Gold Dust Woman', 'Oh Daddy', 'Don't Stop', 'You Make Loving Fun' and the superb 'Songbird'.

Speak Brother 31 July 2018

They were one of the support acts at The Monmouth Festival main stage and they seemed interesting from their youtube stuff. I had thought they would be sub-Fleet Foxes but in fact they were more sub-Mumford and Sons quite English and folkie but with a full sound. The band was drummer, bassist, keyboards and two guitars with the rhythm guitarist doing the main vocals. The set was interesting and deserved a bigger audience. Songs I liked were 'Magnificent' and 'Lion's Roar'.