Tony Alles Bluesville featuring P.J. Baker £5 With his deep, rich voice and skilful electric and acoustic guitar talent, local blues man Tony Alles shows his deep love and appreciation for the blues, bringing a fresh and innovative sound to the genre As well as original material, he reworks classic blues standards into funky, high octane shuffles. He is joined by renowned Nottingham harmonica player and vocalist P.J. Baker, Big Wayne Hogan on upright and electric bass and Jewellers Eye mainman Graham Summers on drums.

Deltahead plus Misterlee £5 www.deltahead.net www.misterlee.co.uk "Deltahead's live act is totally unique. A two piece from Stockholm, Sweden, they both sit at 28" Ludwig bass drums, separated by a radiogram type bass speaker emanating Daliesque horns. Benjamin then plays a stand up bass sitting down and David plays slide guitar, while they both sing and drum simultaneously with radio interference and occasional washboard! Has to be seen to be believed. Punk Blues Noir!"

Mike Dowling plus Morgan Findley £6 www.mikedowling.com If fine blues, bottleneck, and ragtime are your thing, don't pass up Mike Dowling. His singing and guitar playing are as natural as oak cask fermentation, leading to a heady brew that is truly pure of spirit. Fluid and precise as a guitarist, his gritty vocals have a sense of playfulness and bounce that's very appealing. He plays country blues, but throws in some really nice jazz and country swing, and covers a spectrum from Mississippi John Hurt to Wynonie Harris to The Delmore Brothers with   better known items as Mean Old Frisco and Key To The Highway thrown in for good measure.

Dawson & The Dissenters plus Cory Danluk & Sarah Card £5 www.dawsonsmith.com Rockin' blues and roots from this eclectic and electrifying band. Featuring consummate frontman Dawson Smith and the guitar wizardry of Simon Faulks both of whom deliver superb original songs and powerhouse vocals. Expect material from Dawson's two excellent solo albums, Valley Boy and the newly released, blues based album The River Road plus a selection of well chosen blues and roots classics from the likes of Lucinda Williams, C.C. Adcock and John Hiatt.

Kansas City Faggots
Elvis: The Band
plus Reid Paley Trio
£5
www.reidpaley.com
From Folsom Prison Blues to Suspicious Minds this really will be a night to remember! So put on your cowboy hat and blue suede shoes and witness first hand the legendary Kansas City Faggots and the fantastic Elvis Band. Leicester legend Dan Britton leads the Faggots while Jason 'Swivel Hips' Spencer heads up the Elvis Band. Both groups feature the amazing guitar talents of Diesel Park West’s very own Rick Willson on guitar and the fantastic Neil Segrott on bass, with Pete 'Ronnie Tutt' Spencer and Lee Spencer completing the line up this really does promise to be a good one! Don’t miss it! “Yee Ha” and “Thank you very much”

Derrin Nauendorf £5 www.derrinnauendorf.com Renowned for his intense live shows and raw emotive music, Derrin Nauendorf’s music is hard to categorise,made up from many roots styles, blues, folk and Americana. Untamed acoustic guitar, cutting lyrics, a powerful, evocative voice and honest songs, delivered with passion, but twisted to a unique sound. “First impressions? One Australian guy with an acoustic guitar and his mate with a homemade drum kit. What would you think? Me too. I then listened to this live album and Derrin, guitar, sidekick and drums proceeded to blow me away.” – David Blue, Net Rhythms.

Paul Rishell & Anne Raines plus The Blues Devils £7adv £9door www.paulandannie.com Guitarist Paul Rishell and harmonica player Anne Raines base their ensemble playing style on close communication, listening keenly to other players to support rather than overshadow them, and their duo work is also marked by this sensitive interplay that has become central to their live performances. Although they have become known for their close attention to pre-war acoustic blues styles, Paul and Annie first found their musical common ground in Chicago/Texas-style electric blues. Their 2000 release Moving to the Country (2000), won them the W.C. Handy Award for "Acoustic Blues Album of the Year."

Big Bill Morganfield £10adv www.bigbillmorganfield.net "Chicago blues is a powerful force in the right hands, which, in this case, belong to the son of Muddy Waters. The comparisons are inevitable, but the big man is up to the challenge." - Entertainment Weekly.   As the son of one of the most influential musicians of the 20th Century, Bill meets many of the burdensome expectations placed upon him. His father's legacy lives on in the tools of his art, Big Bill has both Muddy's touring amp and guitars. More importantly, Bill carries Muddy's spirit and love for the blues. Bill won the 2000 W. C. Handy Award for "Best New Blues Artist".

Ian Wills & The Willing and C.Bob £6 www.ianwillsandthewilling.com Ian’s Wills journey from childhood tearaway to successful entrepreneur and original street poet, is a movie waiting to be made. Live Wills’ lyrics/poems are offset by music from his collaborative partners ‘The Willing’, who feature Jesse Wood (Ron Wood’s son) on guitar. Their music supports and adds theatre to the words, shifting from ‘The Wall’ era Pink Floyd to funk laden grooves reminiscent of Parliament or underlining the weighty comparisons of Ian Wills to Ian Dury. Is this a band? Is this poetry? Is this a kind of musical or rock opera? All we can say is that it is the modern storytelling of everyday people’s, everyday struggles.

Buster James plus Ana Egge £6 www.busterjames.com www.anaegge.com Formed in the late ‘70s Buster James have been thrilling crowds all over the UK and Europe with their own energetic brand of blues and boogie for two decades. A blistering live act, their line-up contains players who have performed and recorded with artists as diverse as Steve Marriot, Dire Straits, Dave Stewart, Mungo Jerry, FM and Iron Maiden. This inventive and exciting band has six available CD’s of mainly self-penned material as well as unique versions of classics such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and Neil Youngs “Rocking in the Free World”.

The Black Diamond Heavies £5 www.blackdiamondheavies.com We like our Southern blues-rockers bestial and destructive and the Black Diamond Heavies slam together piano, harp, slide guitar and drums, growling and spewing with as much poison as bourbon in their blood. Their sound is homicidally distorted and their songs, guttural, juke-joint blues, the kind that shake the moonshine from your ass pocket and transform your fists into the devil sign, aren't immune to the trite sway of nostalgia and romanticism. Those craving no-bass electro-blues could do much worse than the Heavies, but consider yourself warned: By comparison, the White Stripes are a hipster minstrel show.

The Stevie Nimmo Band £6adv www.bluearmadillo.com Over the past decade, as one half of The Nimmo Brothers, Stevie Nimmo has earned the respect of audiences all over the world. Held in high regard by his peers, he is rightly considered as one of the finest blues musicians on the scene today. Though brother Alan who was the more dynamic performer of the siblings in The Nimmo Brothers show, Stevie however brought a certain depth, emotion and above all songwriting power to this extraordinary partnership that saw them captivate and enthral audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Geoff Muldaur plus Blues Connection £8adv £10door www.geoffmuldaur.com One of the great voices to emerge from the folk/blues scenes centred in Cambridge, MA and Woodstock, during the '60s. Geoff made a series of influential recordings with Paul Butterfield's Better Days, his then wife Maria and notables such as Bonnie Raitt and Jerry Garcia. He dropped out of sight in the mid-1980's for a working sabbatical, but continued, to hone his craft, 'flying beneath radar'.  "His voice - reedy, quavering, otherworldly - is so unusual that the music he sings becomes little more than a context, a jumping-off point." - the New York Times   "There are only three white blues singers, and Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them." - Richard Thompson

The Hackensaw Boys
plus The Smokey Grass Mountain Boys
£7
www.hackensawboys.com
With origins that effectively pre-date the Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk revolution spawned by 2000's aptly titled O Brother soundtrack, The Hackensaw Boys are surprisingly well steeped in the picked, howled traditions of the American south. Raw and punchy, their music is more about spirit than study, a spirit that has the palpability of an Appalachian mist. Capable of deconstructing and enlivening age-old traditions with new visions, somehow, the band infuses their grassy tornado with brazen punk attitude and catchy pop structure, while simultaneously remaining vehemently sincere. Think of the Ramones mixed with the Carter Family and you begin to get a clear picture. Somewhere, Bill Monroe is smiling.

Rory McLeod
£7adv £8door
www.rorymcleod.com
Rory Mcleod - ex-circus clown and fire-eater. A one-man soul band, poet and storyteller, singing his own unique, upbeat dance stories. A modern travelling troubadour using tap shoes, acappella, harmonica, guitar, trombone, spoons, finger cymbals, bandorea, djembe and various percussion instruments. Rory has travelled the globe for different reasons at different times, from Asia to the Middle East from Gambia to Cuba, Central America, Australia, North America, Canada, Europe and other nooks and crannies of the earth. "You don't listen to McLeod you travel with him" - City Hub, Sydney