Vocal blues and soul master Terry Evans closes out the blues season in grand style (2010)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Venue: Jamski dvorec / Postojna
Concert date: 03/25/2010
Attendance: 250
Ticket price: €14

Everything has to end sometime, that’s just how it goes. And so, sneaking up like a Soviet icebreaker, the end of the 6th season of the Postojna blues festival rolled in yesterday. At least a couple of months too early! Terry Evans and his sidekick took the stage at Jamski dvorec. For those of you who don’t know the name, let’s just say this is a gentleman with a seriously distinguished musical pedigree. You’ll find him on a John Fogerty album, and the list of Evans’s former collaborators includes Ry Cooder and John Lee Hooker. Terry Evans didn’t make his name by playing guitar. His main trump card is an extraordinary voice, one with so many layers that he commands every territory of soul, blues and gospel. Is there really anything left to add?

Evans is actually a real little vocal eccentric (said, of course, in the best possible sense). His voice rattles like a rattlesnake, twisting and unwinding again through countless shades of color. That Evans is a “descendant” of the soul, blues and gospel generation was obvious yesterday from the constant echo of strictly “black” rounded vocal curves, which served up a steady delivery of blues standards chewed over from every angle, from the welcome, slide-spiced Johnson opener “Cross Road Blues” and Elmore James’s “It Hurts Me Too” all the way to McDaniel’s “Before You Accuse Me”. So Evans’s job was anything but easy. No doubt that’s exactly why the old man “armed himself” with the services of an excellent guitarist by the name of Joe Colombo. He’s a master of slide technique, with a healthy feel for the resonator, which the youngster used to wander freely along the banks of the Mississippi. Joe lives in delta blues territory, probably somewhere in Eric Sardinas’s “neighborhood”, though it’s worth pointing out that several playing obligations set him apart from the latter. That simply means that, unlike Sardinas, the guy more often steers clear of leaning on the fervor of slide maneuvers. Those maneuvers, of course, kept the final word of the evening, while Joe added more instrumental variety with a clearly chiseled tone in the otherwise rare subtle moments.

But Evans has another iron in the fire. The musician’s stage approach brings commitment and an energetic way of using mostly very basic instrumental-rhetorical moves, which don’t skimp on stirring up a sense of unpredictability. Despite the narrow room for maneuver that a duo is forced to stake out every night, this keeps feeding the listener a hefty dose of stage excitement. Especially with a thoroughly warmed-up crowd, when the moral delusions bred at home and garnished with žganci slowly give way to primal instincts under the weight of a long tongue of perversity wagging. Well, that’s yet another of Terry’s well-worn routines. Just in case, there’s also the mimicking of various animal sounds, as proof that the idea of homo sapiens as the highest intellect of evolution is a delusion like no other. It’s undoubtedly an important element of his showman stage approach, which at Jamski dvorec reaped an unexpected dose of enthusiastic approval.

Musically, Terry Evans certainly didn’t present anything surprisingly new, let alone groundbreaking. Even if he overdid it a bit by stretching his mischievous perversions out endlessly, it’s worth adding that all the ceremony of this stage circus is ultimately worth all the fuss, and in its own way even the pomp, that swirls around the man. To close out the blues season, Terry Evans unrolled a spicy mix of blues and soul that should find a home in the pocket of every lover of good music.

Photos: Mojca Perdih