11:27am Friday 29th January 2010
By Alison Phillips
Classic electric blues, masterminded by a guitar maestro whose pedigree stetches back nearly 40 years, comes to Devizes when the Snowy White Blues Project drop in on the Long Street Blues Club on their current tour.
“It’s mostly originals, although there will be some standards and classics in there, and there’ll be an acoustic spot as well,” said Snowy, who at 61 has clearly lost none of the enthusiasm which took him onto the stage in the first place.
But don’t expect to hear a string of hits from his past – after a stadium-filling career which has included stints with Pink Floyd and Thin Lizzy, and an appearance on the ground-breaking The Wall with Roger Waters, these days he’s concentrating on back-to-basics blues.
And he admits there are some sections of his back catalogue he’d be happy never to play again. “I’m always getting asked to play songs like Bird of Paradise – that was 30 years ago, I won’t play it now,” he said.
“I don’t want to disappoint people but that’s all in the past. I’ve moved on down my chosen path. The Project is a blues band, very much so.
“It’s what I love most and what people seem to want from me. For instance, I’m not a strong singer and in this band we have two singers, Rudi and Matt, who have great voices. I’m envious of both of them.”
Over the years Snowy has released many albums with his other band White Flames, and he is not giving up working with them.
In fact he achieved something of a personal ambition when their last album featured both his children, Thomas on drums and Katherine on flute.
“That was rather good, he said proudly. “Thomas plays with some great bands, and like lots of dads I get to hear loads of new music through what he plays round the house.
“I have to admit I tend to play the old favourites, though there is a lot of great new stuff around.”
Although Snowy feels his own musical tastes may not have changed that much over the years, one of the things that has altered radically is the technology involved. Although he welcomes many of the advances, he does regret some of the restrictions they place on performers.
“If you had an idea for a song you could try it out at a gig, and play about with it on successive nights, and get it right.
“Then you could take it into a studio and record it and amend it further.
“Now if I played something new on stage one night it would be on the internet immediately because someone would video and record it on a mobile phone.
“I find that quite difficult, because you really need to do that with my sort of music. It needs to be worked on.”
It was that sort of creative process which led to the Snowy White Blues Project creating the material for their first album In Our Time of Living last year.
“We swapped ideas for songs, and with two of the guys living in Holland we only actually got together the afternoon before we went into the studio, and then we just played and played,” he said.
Tickets for the gig on Saturday. February 6 at the Conservative Club on Long Street, Devizes, are available at £10 adv, £12 on the door, from 01380 722005/752614.
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