White Man Blues with Snowy White

He doesn’t have Rock Star attitude, he doesn’t have a great voice, and he barely scrapes in as a pop star courtesy of one 80’s chart hit.  His latest band, The Blues Project, shows however that there’s a lot to like about Snowy White – especially if you also like the Blues.

The only similarity between last weeks Harmonie show with Julian Sas and this week with Snowy White is that both had a bass player wearing a hat.  Where Julian was striking rock gestures and grimacing with every sweat drenched note, Snowy White stands motionless except for his nimble fingers that occasionally break from picking notes and hop over to flick the treble switch of his antique gold Gibson Les Paul.  Very occasionally he might, during a particularly emotive moment, squint his eyes closed.  When he solos he is most definitely THE MAN, but for the most part,  he is more the Circus Master handing over to his hand picked Project Band.

And a super band it is too with an excellent bass player and lead vocalist in Ruud Weber Jr, an excellent guitarist/vocalist in Matt Taylor and flamboyant (and also excellent!) drummer from White Flames Juan Van Emmerloot who today sports a furry Russian Hussar hat.  All Snowy has to do is sit back and play blues guitar – which is just how he (and we) like it most.

The material is, not surprisingly, mainly songs from the new ‘In Our Time of Living CD’.

A couple of older SW standards are also included in the form of ‘Old Grey Mare’ and Snowy’s own ‘Land of Plenty’ and there is also the new ‘Red Wine Blues’ all opportunities for Snowy himself to shine which he does, particularly with his delicate finger-picked soloing on the latter.

For the most part though it’s the band who take the spotlight and they would be worth seeing alone.  I particularly liked Ruud Weber’s vocal style.  Maybe it was the wide hat on his head, but he sounded Texan to me.  Cool, laid back and smiling.  Matt Taylor has brought some excellent songs to the band and provides a twin guitar attack (we’re talking blues here, you won’t find the likes of Lizzy’s ‘Emerald’ in a Snowy White repertoire!).

A highlight was the bands rendition of Skip James’ ‘I’m So Glad’ that saw the all too rare use of a cajon onstage by Juan Van Emmerloot who admittedly headed back to his drum kit for added oomph to close the number.  Everyone onstage was smiling, everyone I could see offstage too.  Should blues be music to smile to?  When it’s this good – yes it should!

Julian Sas’ bass player Tenny Tahamata had told me last Saturday how he’d enjoyed a recent show with Snowy.  Ana Popovic had referred to a recent ‘Symphony In Blues’ concert with “great musicians like Snowy White”.  There’s no doubt about the respect he has amongst musicians, and  great as the band were,  Snowy still blows everyone away with just a carefully phrased note in just the right place at just the right time.

By set end the band troop offstage.  Snowy gets halfway but comes back.  “At my age, going all the way outside just to come back.  I’m too old for that s**t!”. He smiles, picks up his gold Les Paul and picks out an exquisite solo.  It all looks so very easy, but don’t be fooled.  Phil Lynott, Peter Green and Pink Floyd all recognized a master craftsman at work  when they heard Snowy White – and so will you!