Nothin' But Abattoir Blues Festival

NOTHIN' BUT ABATTOIR BLUES By CA 28 July 2012
Jim Adama, Rik Warren, Black Fiction and longtime MM favourites Hard Luck Child are among the first artists confirmed for a free all-day blues festival on the 8th September at The Castle and Gullivers. It's a collaboration between Adama's own night Nothin' But Blues and Amelia Dean and Dave Brennan's Abattoir Blues night which normally takes place at the Gas Lamp.



The event will feature all sorts of new talent ranging from hard rocking bottleneck blues to raw solo artists, and will be happening across three stages: downstairs at Gullivers there'll be a purely acoustic jamming stage with full electric stages upstairs and over the road, and they're going to run it so the main stage time slots are staggered so if you do happen to find two bands you want to see at the same sort of time you should be able to catch a bit of both. It starts at 3pm and will run well into the night.

We first caught Jim Adama singing unaccompanied between bands' sets at Stroke Club, and immediately enquired as to where we could see him play a full set, which happened to be a couple of weeks later at Salford Music Festival: "Jim is a skinny lad with a local accent, indie hair and a cardigan. As he sits on a stool with his acoustic guitar you'd be forgiven for expecting sensitive Nick Drake-ry. What you actually get is the sort of raw, primal blues that stops you in your tracks - and when (on just his second song) he sets the guitar aside for an a capella tune the room is silenced. Firstly because it's seriously fucking brave to even think of singing unaccompanied in front of a room full of people; secondly because it sounds like one of those "found" tapes of a 1930s juke joint except with an accent not from the Mississippi delta but the banks of the Irwell. This is everything the blues should be, and everything a lot of people playing "blues" aren't these days: his fingers aren't lightning-speed and show-off-y, but his bare bones style and innate sense of the perfect riff - the dirty distorting bass string rhythms, the bends on the high notes and the loosely picked chords - echo those legends of the pre rock'n'roll era."

We haven't seen Hard Luck Child for ages so quite pleased to hear they're still going. We used to write things like this about them.... " Always energetic, they're absolutely playing out of their skins tonight with some pretty ferocious attacks on the old 12-bar blueprint, Andrew Sheffield's bottleneck finger whipping around the fretboard faster than you can actually see it whilst brother David batters the drums as if they have really pissed him off."

There are still a few slots to be filled, so if you reckon you could fill one then get in touch via Facebook.

Resources:
Festival facebook page

Tickets are no longer available for this event