King King, Jon Cleary Trio full-on
King King, Jon Cleary Trio Black Sheep Stage Saturday
He’s a beefy guy and the weather was sweltering, but Alan Nimmo was holding nothing back Saturday evening.
Nimmo is the frontman and lead guitarist for British blues boys King King and clearly a guy who does nothing in half measures.
Sure, his red kilt (combined, in fashion-forward manner, with construction boots), doubtless helped ventilate him, but one suspects he would have pumped out those same stinging guitar solos and gravelly vocals even if he’d been wearing a snowsuit.
Nimmo, a Glaswegian who last year led his band in collecting two prizes at the British Blues Awards, gave us the hard-rocking More Than I Can Take, the soulful A Long History of Love and the brawny blues rocker Broken Heal.
His guitar solos are the heart of his show which, on Saturday, suffered in the early going from sound balance issues. Sometimes his playing is so hard and fast you swear he’s out to decapitate you, at other times it’s slow and elegant. Nuance defines everything he does.
Nimmo, who breaks into a smile at the least excuse, clearly gets a bang out of his job.
“If it was up to us, we’d play for you all day,” he said near the top of the show.
The audience wouldn’t have complained if King King, who plays again Sunday on the River Stage, had done precisely that.
Then again, the Jon Cleary Trio’s audience wouldn’t have griped if that threesome had gone on all night either.
Cleary, a Brit by birth but raised in New Orleans (there’s nothing but the south in that accent), plays piano like nobody’s business, sings like he’s done so in every smoky bar in every state of the Union, and wears a very nice Panama hat with a black hat band.
He was accompanied by the thumping good bassist Cornell Williams and drummer Terence Higgins (“Jellybean”), a man who makes knocking out concise rhythmic miracles look as easy as eating a bowl of Cheerios.
Cleary specializes in funky, Big Easy tunes like Unnecessarily Mercenary, a cutting little ditty which he said he wrote for Bonnie Raitt, and Cheating on You (“I wrote it for Taj Mahal,” said Cleary).
He and his band members appeared to have an unusually tight musical connection which helps explain their almost preternaturally concise delivery.
One suspects that Cleary and company will be back at Bluesfest before long.