Venue: Lokal Patriot / Novo mesto / Slovenia
Concert date: 03.10.2015
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: presale €5 / day of show €8
Sadly, it’s rare for a foreign artist with quality blues to stop by on the sunny side of the Alps. But every now and then, even here, a bright exception turns up to delight fans of real, live blues. One of those exceptions happened in early October at Lokal Patriot in Novo mesto, where Welsh blues performer Gwyn Ashton took the stage.
Gwyn Ashton is, you could almost say, a multi-instrumentalist and singer of British origin. He spent part of his life in Australia before moving back to his native Great Britain. Over his career he’s worked with big names who shaped the blues rock scene in the eighties and nineties. So far he’s put out 6 solo albums, the latest, Radiogram, in 2012. The British magazine Guitar and Bass named his album Prohibition album of the year in 2007.
Lokal Patriot in Novo mesto filled up only slowly, but before the show a reasonably decent crowd of music lovers had gathered in front of the stage. The view of the stage was interesting even before the gig: a bass drum, a stand with 6 guitars of different shapes and functions, and a whole heap of small amps, speakers and effects.
Gwyn sometimes plays as a trio on tour, but quite often he shows up on stage all by himself. This time, too, Gwyn came to Novo mesto alone. Literally. He drives himself, sets up his own gear, sells his own merch, packs it all up himself. A pretty undemanding guest. He played in a similar way the night before in Žusterna, and it was exactly that curiosity, how one man copes on stage with all that gear and how it all sounds put together, that drove us to check this show out. Plus the good music, of course, which we’d already sampled in YouTube videos.
You’d expect it to be tough for a musician to stand alone on stage and entertain a crowd while every pair of eyes is fixed on him the whole time. But Gwyn is used to it, so his confidence on stage was never in question. Maybe he’s a little less used to the rather reserved Slovenian audience, which took a while to loosen up even a bit.
Gwyn nails what he does. On stage he added harmonica and his vocals to all his instruments. And the whole thing sounded great. If they’d blindfolded us when we walked into the club, there’s no way we’d have guessed there was just one man up there. A full sound of guitars, drums, harmonica and vocals, and in between Gwyn played around with his effects too. It all sounded authentic, played from the soul, with a full dose of improvisation. Between songs, Gwyn Ashton mentioned several times his idol, Rory Gallagher, with whom he also shared the stage on more than one occasion, and he stressed that he draws inspiration from Muddy Waters and Johnny Winter as well. Over his two-part, 90-minute set he swapped guitars like crazy, from acoustic to resonator, on to steel guitar and back to electric. And just as he swapped instruments, he swapped musical styles – from romantic blues tones to grittier rock versions. All of it with a huge helping of feeling, passion and love for his music. No surprise at all that in 2001 the French magazine Guitar Part Magazine voted him the third best guitarist of the year, right behind Jeff Beck and Gary Moore.
A show that every music fan in Slovenia should definitely have seen. We can only hope that Gwyn Ashton, despite the lukewarm response from the crowd, will come back to our parts.
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