Meet the Stoke On Trent bluesman who does it with a smile on his face
Joy.
It’s either in music or it isn’t. And when it’s there you can’t fake it. And you can’t help but enjoy it either.
Music is at it’s best when those playing it are doing exactly what they want to, unfettered by expectations and constrained by what people expect. At it’s broadest shouldn’t music just be about a bunch of people plugging in and making a great noise.
Well, a couple of months ago MVM found itself watching Virgil and the Accelerators at The Robin. The support act that night was a Blues troupe called Chris Bevington And Friends. They walked out onstage….
An hour later, so much had we enjoyed the band’s take on a number of old blues classics that we find ourselves chatting with the man who put it all together.
Chris Bevington sips his beer while wearing the air of a man who’s pretty content with his life. “Glad you enjoyed it,” he smiles. “Usually there’d be more with us, but Jim isn’t here tonight.”
“Jim” isn’t any regular Tom, Dick or well, Jim. He’s Jim Kirkpatrick. Guitarist in FM, who MVM were to see a week or so after our encounter with Chris. The reason he isn’t here tonight, however is because he’s currently performing with Bernie Marsden on the latter’s trek with Joanne Shaw Taylor .
This might give you some clue as to what Chris Bevington did with this record: “I decided in 2012 to put together a cd of some of my favourite tracks,” he explains. “In April 2013 I went into the Tremolo Studios with a host of musicians to do that.”
Amongst them were Fitzpatrick, keyboard player George Glover, the fantastic Scott Ralph (who performed lead vocals in the earlier set) and Trumpeter extraordinaire Adrian Gibson.
With a cast like that, it wasn’t going to go wrong, was it?!
The resulting CD was released in January of last year and it is a quite wonderful affair of lovingly put together and lovingly – as well as expertly played – tracks. “Dark Side Of Love” – it’s opener – is brilliant, while the take on “I Don’t Need No Doctor” lives up to the tag line on his website of “this is just damn good.”
It really, really is.
Indeed, so successful was album number one, the collective are going to do it all over again. They are in the studio again where things are said to be progressing well.
For more info – as well where you can see their brilliant live show – check out
http://www.chrisbevingtonmusic.co.uk
