Location: Ljubljana / Ljubljana Castle / Slovenia
Date: Saturday, 29.06.2019
The third and final day of the first-ever Bluesland festival at Ljubljana Castle was kicked off by Shuffle Truffle! They’re an Austrian blues rock trio made up of Jörg “Dr. J.” Horina (guitar, vocals), Michael Scarpatetti (bass), and Helfried Grygar (drums). These are seasoned cats who only joined forces as a trio recently, but they’ve got plenty of miles in their fingers, having played in all kinds of bands before. The band is building its career on a studio debut that came out this year. Their style is pretty predictable, and when it comes to song structure they stick to tried-and-true blues templates. You can tell the guys spent a lot of time playing other people’s songs, and you can feel the influence of the white blues boom bands of the sixties. But on top of the predictable forms, the huge stage stasis was a bit of a distraction. Sure, Jörg can’t stray far from the microphone, but he could at least take center stage during the solos and add some dynamics to the show. So, a solid warm-up to open the third day of the festival, but without that much-needed pinch of salt the crew is clearly still searching for.
Next up was the French duo Rosedale, a relatively young creation in terms of years, but with two albums already in their pocket: the debut “Long Way Home” came out two years ago, followed last year by “Wide Awake”. Amandyn Roses and Charlie Fabert were backed by a rich, full supporting cast at this year’s premiere edition of Bluesland, but they remain the central focus of the band’s tight, polished performance. Amandyn’s gorgeous, finely honed vocals grabbed us right from the start and soaked up a ton of attention throughout the set. Although you could broadly call the band’s sound Rhythm And Blues, Amandyn brought a nice dose of soul flavor to the delivery, while Rosedale, in the way they staged and played individual numbers, went well beyond the “blues” frame, which isn’t really the starting point of their creativity anyway. Guitarist Charlie is still very young and you can tell he’s racking up the miles, but he’s an extremely confident musician, which he showed especially in a stretched-out piece that veered into progressive and even psychedelic rock territory in the second half of the show. It’s still a very long road to Steve Hackett, though. The Hammond sound added a flavor of old-school rock elements from late-sixties bands like The Animals and/or Procol Harum. For the finale, the band hit us with a cover of Nutbush City Limits, which originally belongs to Tina Turner – truth be told, Alvin Lee was more interesting with it. All in all, musically this is a band that’s nowhere near bringing a musical revolution, but it does draw some inspiration from the pioneers of the sixties white blues boom, as well as from the psychedelia of the seventies.
Kirk Fletcher is a guitar ace. No less, no more. With his creamy Telecaster, the Black guitarist put on an outstanding show at Ljubljana Castle. He doesn’t even need a bassist on stage: the bass lines are handled by the keyboardist/organist on pedals, while of course there’s no getting by without a drummer. Fletcher is a British blues singer-songwriter. Despite a long career, he has only five studio albums to his name, but he’s an incredibly experienced guy who is anything but short on miles in the music business. Fletcher’s latest album came out last year, the current “Hold On”, which got a bit more attention at the Ljubljana show. The playful, cheeky musician boasts a wildly infectious smile and incredible likability, but that’s not even the point. What counts is his refinement and the amazing finesse with which he approaches every element of his playing. A meticulous yet utterly instinctive and feeling musician. Every note gets a distinctive touch of sensitive, aching sensuality and character-rich sentiment. Fletcher also proves to be an extremely solid singer, and his vocal expressiveness adds the cherry on top of the show, giving it that pedigree of perfection. Kirk Fletcher’s set was a blues concert from head to toe. In a way, it brought back memories of the late Michael Burke’s performance at the Postojna Blues Festival in 2006. In the music you can of course pick out elements of soul and R&B, even jazz, but this much old-school, true-to-form blues in one piece, the way Kirk Fletcher delivers it in his style, is something Bluesland hadn’t seen up to that point. Fletcher can play incredibly aggressively, practically without brakes, tirelessly weaving sudden jumps between calm, delicate solos and abrupt eruptions of bristling decibel-shaking and guitar-toothed swagger, but one thing is clear. Feel. The incredible feel this perfect guitarist has in his touch is one of a kind and surpasses many names that are much, much bigger on the modern blues scene, even though Kirk deserves more media attention, a higher rank, and more commercial success. No wonder Joe Bonamassa himself invites him on stage, and that he’s even worked with Eros Ramazzotti, to mention just those two calibers. Fletcher’s show was so dynamic, so varied, and so incredibly good that the hour with this guitarist flew by in an instant. Absolutely way too fast.
Eric Gales stepped up as the headliner of the third day of Bluesland. Totally deserved. His set was without a doubt the peak of the entire festival program. Eric performed with the same backing crew as a year ago at the Pordenone Blues Festival. The rhythm section is Orlando Thompson on bass and Nick Hayes on drums, while Eric’s life partner LaDonna Gales handles extra programming, sampling, percussion, and backing vocals. So it’s the lineup he also played with at Jamski dvorec in front of Postojna Cave back in 2013, a lineup that is maximally tight and where there are no secrets whatsoever. Eric showed up with a shaved head and beard and a noticeably different hairstyle, and the same goes for his life partner. This year Eric Gales released the new album “The Bookends” and presented it at Bluesland too. What marks this guitarist out is an exceptional level of unpredictability. Sure, the hefty bulk of his vocabulary rests on blues foundations, but Gales is known as a multilayered artist, a master of the guitar who in fusion often manages to achieve a synthesis of elements of music that “sound incompatible to the ear”. Jazz! You can’t do without jazz! But at the same time with an incredibly penetrating feel for melody. His playing technique is unique and nobody comes close. Like Hendrix, Gales turned the guitar “upside down”, but without restringing it, so his grips (chords) and the playing itself are basically a mirror image of conventional guitar playing (that is, how right-handers play). The funny thing is that Gales is actually right-handed too, but when he was little, his older brother taught him to play guitar, and the brother played left-handed. Other well-known guitarists who approach the instrument this way are Albert King and Coco Montoya, and of course our incredible Matej Magajne (Feedback, Bakalina Velika, Salamandra Salamandra, Poltrona Express). Gales can play anything, and that’s exactly what makes him so elusive. Sometimes, when he wanders into experimental spookery, you can’t predict even one note ahead what move he’ll make next. And that’s why his shows are so appealing. Because he simply keeps surprising you the whole time, firing you up with his astonishing way of playing guitar. During It Just Beez That Way the crew treats itself to some fun, as Hayes hands his drum stool to Gales, and the guitarist cheerfully transforms for a few minutes into a raging drumming beast. For the grand finale, Gales invited Kirk Fletcher on stage too, and the duo staged a phenomenal closing jam that carried the festival to its absolute final peak.
But that’s not all. The festival wrapped up on the main stage, but the action then moved inside the castle, where Kirk Fletcher and Eric Gales slowly made their way with their crews too. There, the revelry went on in an endless blues jam session toward the wee hours of the morning. An outstanding conclusion to the first edition of Bluesland, then. We can safely say the festival was a big success. Everything clicked the way it should, we just wished for more people in the crowd. But the organizer is already announcing a new edition next year, which will once again bring in some seriously resonant names from the world of blues music. The countdown has begun.
text: Aleš Podbrežnik & Primož Novak
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
