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.