Joanne Shaw Taylor
And here's the latest discovery from the RUF youth work department. It cannot be denied that Joanne Shaw Taylor (22) equals Erja Lyytinen in the eye candy stakes. She hails froms Birmingham and the city's dialect is in her genes but one she starts singing you would never know it because once this perky girl grabs her guitar and plays a few notes, male-dominated blues begins to be a thing of the past. Within a year of performing her first band aged 16, Taylor performed with Dave Steward (Eurythmics) and Candy Dulfer (Prince) in the super group D.U.P, and today she is one of the best femal blues guitarists around. Of course, shes's made her record debut with RUF which was produced by the legendary Jim Gaines (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana), who, by the way, also took responsability for the last RUF records of the late Luther Allison.
The Finns are pretty well known for their love of the blues, not only because of the Kausrismäkis, but even more because of Erja Lyttinen (29). RUF has made this young musician internationally known, partly by installing her into the BluesCaravan two years ago, where she bewitched her audience with her powerful playing and smoking good looks. Erja is also an Elmore James fan but she also likes the laconic and dirty guitar tone the way Jimmy Vaughan dies. Her favourite tool is the bottleneck with which she creates melodies out of nowhere, recalling the blues bands of the sixties.
Take Oli Brown for example. Oli revels in his role as the leader of a tough little bluesrock trio who had their first gig in March 2007 in a small Norwich pub.
