12 months ago, Kris Barras sold just 74 tickets to his album launch in the room upstairs at The Garage – this time there were more than 500 fans packed into the main room, and the reception to the band’s set was just rapturous.
Name to watch, Jack J Hutchinson and his trio opened the show with a selection from his new PAINT NO FICTION record, featuring his current touring sidesmen of Felipe Amorim on Drums and Lazarus Michaelides on the bass, and he delivered a quality set of blues rock, with his roots clearly in the old-school blues guitarists, tinged with the Black Crowes, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the British influences from Free and Led Zep all in evidence. The band opened with Hip Slickin’ and Written in Stone, provided a stomping cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well, and wound up with Deal With The Devil and Rattlesnake Woman to get the audience nicely warmed up.
Buffalo Summer had made the day-trip from South Wales to join the tour for this show, and they were a revelation, with a sound that mixes classic southern rock with some grittier riffs that demonstrate why these guys have played alongside Skid Row, and Buckcherry – their influences are the classic British rock acts of the 1970s and 1980s, with Andrew Hunt having one of the best sets of pipes of any of the current crop of blues rock acts doing the rounds – this was a bit of The Answer, Whitesnake and Alice in Chains thrown into a blender, and guitarist Jonny Williams does the work of two men for most of the set. The new album SECOND SUN has recently been released, and we got a set featuring tracks from both this and the first self-titled record.
Kris Barras has been on a rapid upward trajectory over the past two years – having given up his second job of international MMA cage-fighter and gone into full-time playing, and recently released THE DIVINE AND DIRTY album really demonstrates the breadth of his guitar and vocal talents. As well as being nominated as ‘Blues Guitarist of the Year 2017’ by Total Guitar magazine, he has joined the US Blues supergroup created by Billy Gibbons and Lance Lopez, Supersonic Blues Machine, as their singer/guitarist.
The set kicked off with Rock n Roll Runnin’ Thru My Veins, Kick Me Down and Stitch Me Up, and then included a cracking rendition of Led Zep’s Rock & Roll, featuring producer and keyboard whizz Josiah J Manning on the piano / organ. Heart on Your Sleeve and Propane followed, with a crisp drum solo from Will Beavis, before two new tracks in Light It Up and Vegas Son which both suggest the next record could be grittier and heavier than the last one.
There is a bit of emotional history underpinning some of Barras’ work, and he does not apologise for delivering a short and emotional tale of his main influence, his father, who was a guitarist, Kris’ touring bassist, and major support for the young guitarist, who died from cancer before seeing Kris achieve the current successes – the poignant Watching Over Me had half the crowd in tears, and the incredible solo really highlighted the influence of Gary Moore on the young Kris Barras’ playing. Minds officially blown all round the venue. Then we got Wrong Place Wrong Time, and the gospel-tinged Hail Mary, featuring crowd singalong, before the much-deserved encore of Lovers or Losers left us all breathless!
PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Peter Coates at Inside Edge Photography
Kris Barras Band
Buffalo Summer and Jack J Hutchinson
