Every word of it happened. Scroll on and it plays like the night it began.
It starts some sixteen years ago in Tarascon-sur-Ariège, at the June 21st Music Festival. On stage, some French guys reading lyrics from sheets of paper, singing British rock songs in thick, impenetrable accents. More people on the stage than in the audience.
You know, Ali, a Blues Band would be a lot cooler…
Ali Zaraq, the organiser, agreed at once. Can you make one? Yes, I think so. “Okay,” he shrugged, “you're on next year!”
The name comes from The Church of the Ascension on Balham Hill, London, and its huge creative cadre, who were going to be the band. By the time our founder got back from France, a church plant had taken the entire cadre with it. In the panic that followed came Steve Little, first met on a beach, playing his guitar in a circle of people around a fire.
He looked me up and down and replied, ‘Are you a harmonica player?’
The harmonica had never been played in public before that moment. The answer was yes anyway. They played together for a couple of hours and never looked back.
Year two. Steve in California, Tony in Amsterdam, panic again. An ad went into a Yahoo Group called London Blues Jams and two replies came back: a guy in London, and some strange bloke in Barcelona. The London audition, at The Blues Bar on Kingley Street, did not go well.
Thirty-six bars of mumble and then twiddly, twiddly, bloody twiddly. That's not the Blues.
So that left Barcelona guy.
Barcelona guy was Larry Smith, and he pitched up in a van twenty minutes before the first concert. The venue was a local secondary school, and the kids were only vaguely interested, wandering around outside and in. Then the heavens opened and torrential rain drove everyone into the hall.
Suddenly it took off. The kids went and told their parents, and for the rest of the tour the band had a dedicated following. They never looked back.
Larry and the harmonica have been playing together ever since, with drummers and guitarists joining for a season or two. The spirit of the band stays constant; everyone buys in. Two permanent bass players hold the low end: Philippe Groulard in Finistère, and Jean-Luc, an ex-jazz player who produces magic on a bass, in the Ariège.
We are a very happy crew…
The band has always searched for songs which have been overlooked, songs they can do a completely new version of, rather than relying on blues favourites which get over-covered. A set people have never heard before, with some more well-known songs towards the end of the night.
The template · Sonny Terry's All Alone Blues
