Girls with Guitars

John Hurd on 31.01.2011:

Girls with guitars” is the title of this years Blues Caravan. It sounds rather dismissive in words, but how does it sound onstage? A blonde, a brunette and a redhead sounds like the start of a joke but these girls aren’t joking  as they blaze through a high energy set of high quality Bluesrock with youthful enthusiasm and a great deal of musical talent.

Females with Frets, Birds with Bridges, Chicks with Chops… I guess the Tour title could have been a lot worse. Thomas Ruf is as aware as anyone that sex sells and if there are more women in the audience than usual it’s maybe wives/girlfriends keeping an eye on their other halves. Certainly Dani Wildes pronouncement mid-set that German men all look great went down well and I don’t think she heard my sniff of British male disdain.  (It’s all just showgirlship I tell myself).

Dani Wilde

Anyway, lets start at the very beginning as Mary Poppins would say. Denis Palatin puts the hammer down from the off with a thundering drum intro to The Stones classic ‘Bitch’ and when Cassie Taylors bass riff joins it we know these gals might be young and petite, but they can ROCK. Taylor continues laying down a solid bassline to the next one up – ‘Move On’ and that’s just what we do, from one song to another with a momentum that suggests the girls have ten albums worth of material to draw on. In fact, when Dani Wilde was in Cologne late last year she hadn’t even been in to record with the others.

Cassie Taylor

Yet here they were trading solo riffs and vocals as if they had been around as long as Status Quo. As the ‘veteran’ of the show (courtesy of two studio albums) Dani Wilde gets a chance to shine with tracks from the CD of that name but it’s the haunting ‘Abandoned Child’ that steals the show early on as indeed it did in Cologne. There’s a compelling mix of youthful innocence and mature resignation about her phrasing that gets me every time. The same is true when she takes the stage for part two with just an acoustic and a voice –the former sounds as if Robert Johnson was strumming it but the latter is pure Dani Wilde. A heady mixture of both age and youthfulness that is Dani Wildes strength and trademark.

Samantha Fish

If Dani Wilde’s strengths were already known to me then the girl stage centre was a an unknown quantity to both myself and everyone else. ‘Rory Gallagher is alive, and she’s a woman!’ Well, not quite. But Samantha Fish played her telecaster from the heart as Rory did his strat, and she wasn’t afraid to be caught pulling a face as she did so. The playing was what mattered and that’s what impressed me most about her. Oh, and she also plays a mean blues guitar too! Thomas Ruf ‘discovered’ Samantha Fish in the Windy City and she is certainly a breath of fresh air on the blues scene. The press notes say she’s 21 but I know for a fact she’s 22 now because this concert is also her birthday. Well I for one was glad she was having to work on her birthday. A debut CD is planned – and I will definitely buy it!

The girls really don’t run out of steam during their show – it’s fun from start to finish. On as well as off stage. If I say that two of the late highlights were a hard rocking ‘Highway to Hell’ and an almost acapello version of ‘Little Help from my Friends’ then you’ll have some idea of the ground covered. I heard the plan was that they would gradually develop the material whilst on the road. If you’re reading this Thomas Ruf then please book back at the Harmonie at years end because I’ll be interested to hear how they can improve on this for sheer energy and enthusiasm!

Footnote:  Denis Palatin assures me the ‘Loud Bitch’ logo on his bass drum refers to him and NOT to the wonderful girls out front.

Girls just wanna have fun
Link: www.english-network.de