NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
The HOKUM HOT
SHOTS
Hokum Hot Shots Work Hard at The King's Head
When Allendale Town is getting ready for its annual Fair, perhaps it's not such a good idea to put on a laid-back acoustic blues duo. Everybody is already in such a pre-fair tizz from which the only resolution could possibly be the successful fruition of the next day's events.
Nevertheless, last Friday night the Hokum Hot Shots managed to persuade the cosy room upstairs at the King's Head that they know a thing or three about quality entertainment, call it the cheerful blues in the face of adversity. It's always hardest of all to work a room that could use another handful to enjoy the music with together.
Pete Mason and Jim Murray provided their own brand of irrespressible humour along with their effervescent music, and the modest gig was simply a delight from beginning to end. Can it be true that these lads have been delighting audiences for 31 years? Certainly their material is known and loved all over the world.
These guys are real artists, real musicians, in every sense of the word, and their blues music is as spell-binding and compelling as anyone's. So they didn't get a fair slice of the promoter's attention, this time -- so they're coming back at the end of the summer, because they love the blues, the real, true, lived-in rootsy blues, and they want to help introduce a real bluesman from Austin, Texas, the renowned Steve James, whose reputation in musicians' circles is the very highest. Look out for the gig, one of the few in the UK, and be there!
