Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden am Wörthersee, Carinthia / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: 03.06.2015
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: advance 32 € / day of show 37 € / Kelag members 27 € / students 25 €
Gorgeous, sunny, warm afternoons like this have to be put to good use with a little trip somewhere. So we decided to hit the road too – but to somewhere familiar, over to our neighbors up north, to Velden and Bluesiana.
Bluesiana is always worth the trip, because it keeps serving up musical treats you’d be hard-pressed to find closer to home. With its simplicity and homey feel, the place practically begs you to visit. This time we went to catch the guitar wizardry of Ryan McGarvey.
So what is there to say about Ryan McGarvey? He’s won a ton of prestigious awards, both as a guitarist and as a vocalist. The Weekly Alibi named him best blues act of the year several years running. At the tender age of 29, he can boast of working with giants of the blues-rock scene like Joe Bonamassa, Jef Beck, Eric Clapton,… In his career so far he’s released 3 albums, the latest, titled The Road Chosen, in 2014.
When we arrived, the first fans were already lounging around in front of the club like lizards in the sun. The warm sunshine was to blame for people filling the place up pretty late, since it was seriously hot inside Bluesiana. But at the first sounds from the stage, everyone quickly moved indoors.
Ryan McGarvey slipped through the crowd to the stage rather shyly, which only fueled our curiosity about what this reserved, unassuming guy would show us up there. The transformation came almost instantly, the moment Ryan first swept across his strings. All the shyness vanished from the stage in a flash, leaving only the music, the emotion, and the magic of the moment that Ryan had captured in his guitar. The guy literally falls into his playing, as if there’s no audience at all, just him with his thoughts, his feelings, and his instrument. The guitar was moaning with pleasure as Ryan’s fingers walked over its strings, sometimes with gentle grace, other times with refined roughness. Ryan has been playing guitar since he was six, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a technique he hasn’t mastered. During the show, Ryan proves himself not just as a guitarist but as a vocalist too. He knows his voice well and stays in a range that’s still safe for his tone and style. He pours the same amount of emotional intensity into his singing as into his playing. And he practically never misses a note. Not once. Beads of sweat left tracks on Ryan’s face, soon trickled out from under his sleeves too, and dripped onto the floor. At the end of each song, the applause brought him back to reality; he’d look out over the crowd, give a bashful grin, thank everyone for the support, and say a few words about the next song. The setlist was obviously being put together on the fly – here too, Ryan trusted his gut completely. His two sidemen – Logan Miles Nix on drums and Sam Miller on bass – followed their leader with surgical precision as he inserted improvised passages into his own songs to his heart’s content, and the whole thing sounded like a perfectly tight trio. You can tell they play a lot and, despite their young age, have plenty of stage miles under their belts.
The show was split into two sets with a half-hour break in between. We mostly heard hits from the latest album, though Ryan also dipped into his previous two records. At the end of the first set, Ryan remembered his great idol with the song Hey Jimi, followed by a long instrumental section with a guitar solo, where Ryan really squeezed his soul out of both himself and his Fender Startocaster. In the second set, Ryan grabbed a Les Paul, and even though he left the long sleeves backstage this time, the sweat came back almost immediately, because with the Gibson strapped on, Ryan showed no more restraint than in the first set. He played the second half of the show with the same enthusiasm and intensity as the first, and we even got an encore. After an energetic finish, the guys took a bow and said their goodbyes – but only from the stage, because soon they were standing behind the merch table, happily signing autographs and taking photos with fans.
A show full of unexpected highlights. With his technical perfection, emotional commitment, and down-to-earth attitude, Ryan won over absolutely everyone in the crowd. Seeing Ryan McGarvey live again is a must, and both Ryan and Bluesiana’s owner Gudrun promise that we won’t have to wait too long for a repeat.
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