Connor Selby, loves Blues. That much is evident even before he plays the song “Love Letter To The Blues”. And even here, playing acoustically and solo, that depth of feeling for the music and the craft comes through. He speaks movingly about “The Truth Comes Out Eventually” which he calls the bridge between my old career pre COVID and my new one. It was the record he said that got him his deal with the Provogue label. He clearly has total skill on the guitar and acoustically the power of songs like “That’s Alright” and “Emily” comes through perhaps slightly better than it did on the record. That record was a fine start, and Connor Selby’s career is obviously heading in the right direction. 2024 is already set to be a big year for him with a tour in the offing and all sorts of plans, expect to see much more of the man and get ready to understand how much he loves what he does.
I’m sure all of you do this. You go to a gig and afterwards, on the way home, you reflect on what you’ve just seen. When I did that after this I concluded that every time I’ve seen Joanne Shaw Taylor she has been better than the last time.
Here, the closest she gets to a hometown show, (having been born just up the road and grown up elsewhere in the West Midlands) is always special.
As she begins with the track “In The Mood” there is just a feeling around the Wulfrun Hall that this could be something particularly sparkling.
She has a knack, does JST, for picking tremendous musicians to play alongside her and you can’t listen to the piano of Phil Whitfield throughout this, but particularly, on “All My Love” and not think this is from the very top draw.
Like Selby she loves what she does. Tallking about the track “If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody” as being “one of my favourite ballads”, while the follow up a cover of Albert King’s “Can’t You See What You’re Doing To Me” packs a real punch with the twin solo.
She has a new album coming out in June and a song she plays from that, “Wild Love” shows a slightly new direction, a sort of natural follow up from the previous records “Nobody’s Fool” album. She plays a song from the aforementioned “……Fool” record the 80s pop inspired “Won’t Be Fooled Again” and it fits in well in the set.
What is interesting about JST these days is when she plays older material like “Watch ‘Em Burn” it’s almost like listening to it again with the benefit of her playing skills and experience being heightened from when she wrote it.
She plays with a lot of soul these days, as “Diamonds In The Dirt” proves, but there is no doubt at all about the most moving track that she plays. “Fade Away” was written about the tragic death of her mother from ovarian cancer and if anyone has lost a parent and wasn’t thinking about them when she played it they are stronger people than I was.
“Oh you’re suitably depressed now” she jokes before she plays “Runaway” which shows a more gentle side to her playing, but as they end the set with the raucous pair of “Sweet Lil Lies” and “Bad Love” there was just a feeling that everyone onstage has enjoyed this just as much as everyone off it’s and these days her songs are shot through with a real class to go with the skill.
She returns for an encore of “Going Home”, which perhaps given the locality has more resonance than usual, but it was something that she said before playing it really underscored the night.
“I was born”, says Joanne Shaw Taylor before she plays “…..Love”, “In Wednesbury in 1985”.
Although she lives in Nashville these days it was here in the West Midlands that her love for this music began. I’m certain that she is better than ever for all her experiences, both musical and otherwise.
We should be proud in the West Midlands to call her one of our own. I would argue that this American resident is amongst the finest exponents of British Blues right now.
