I bought tickets on a whim when I saw the gig advertised clicked on a video and liked what I heard and also liked the name and photo of the backing band - The Dirty Delta Blues Band. I knew nothing of her music apart from that it sounded both soulful and bluesy from the sample.
It turned out the music was soulful and bluesy and the backing was excellent whilst the band had only one match to the advertised band as far as I could see and that was the keyboard player who led the band brilliantly. However even he was not the longtime keyboards guy who died in April.
The first forty five minutes was a live version of the album 'The Greatest' starting with the title song and proceeding with barely a break between tracks. That song is brilliant and the whole album is good. I also very much liked the changes in tempo with the band being very tight and rhythmic. I also liked her singing which was very musical in the way that Van Morrison is (or was).
The second part of the gig started with Cat offstage and an extended instrumental section from the band playing what was the nearest thing to a faster paced Grateful Dead interlude - I thoroughly enjoyed the piece.
Then Cat came back and the next section included a number of covers and some songs I didn't know. The covers included Prince's 'Nothing compares 2U', James Brown's 'Try Me' and to my astonishment and great pleasure Kitty Wells's 'It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels' although I think she missed the point of the song when she dedicated it to the bad girls in the audience.
In fact her stage presence and general chat towards the end was a bit weird. She obviously felt uncomfortable but didn't take the obvious choice of sticking to singing.
I can't tell you the band members names as I can't find them anywhere. I can say the drummer was very precise, the bassist rhythmic and the guitarist coped with all the styles and sounds required of him very well. Special mention for the keyboards guy who really drove the music for his younger band members.
