‘BLUESMAN’ DUNNERY TO TOUR THE UK!
Tombstone Dunnery and It Bites gigs will show two sides of the revered musician.
Francis Dunnery returns to the UK in November with a new group, Tombstone Dunnery, and he’ll also play live in 2023 with Francis Dunnery’s It Bites.
Blues-based project Tombstone Dunnery also features bassist Paul Brown, guitarist Quint Starkie and drummer Phil Beaumont. Their eight-date tour begins on November 16 at Carlisle’s Old Fire Station and closes at Oswestry’s Hermon Arts on November 23, with the band debuting songs from an as-yet-untitled album, due next summer.
“I grew up hearing blues thanks to my older brother,” Dunnery tells Prog, “but I was obsessed with Genesis at the time. Then I started playing with Robert Plant [in 1993]. Robert knows everything about the blues; he was the next stage of my education.”
The Tombstone Dunnery idea first emerged in 1990, when Dunnery was living in LA. He envisaged a band with a visual that incorporated a gravestone: “I thought it would say, ‘Here lies blah blah, he was a bastard’ or something like Spike Milligan’s stone, ‘I told you I was ill!’ One day I was meeting [former Sony exec and AC/DC manager] Steve Barnett and I had a great big hat on and a big black jacket. He looked at me and cried, ‘Tombstone!’ It was the perfect name for a blues band, which I kept hold of til now.”
His inspiration for the material was 1930s blues icon, Robert Johnson: “I thought about the loneliness those guys faced back then, in poverty, the legal system against them. It changed my view. I always played blues in my music, putting an emotional voice to progressive rock, but now I’m completely out of my comfort zone, trying to play with a fucking slide. I can’t do it! But I find it exciting.”
After the Tombstone Dunnery shows, Francis Dunnery’s It Bites will play four UK shows (of “prog, prog and more prog”) over January 19 to 22, opening in St Luke’s Glasgow, and closing at London’s Bush Hall. With a setlist drawing from It Bites’ first three albums, Dunnery will be joined by Maschine/Tangent guitarist Luke Machin (“He plays my stuff way better than me!”) and Tiger Moth Tales/Camel keyboardist Peter Jones, who’s a regular addition to Dunnery’s band. “We were the first to give Peter a chance,” Dunnery says. “He’s brilliant – so musical, and the nicest guy on the planet.”
This line-up appears fruitful – an album is proposed for 2024. JK
“I always played blues in my music, putting an emotional voice to prog.”
For full dates for both tours and latest updates go to www.francisdunnery.com.