Cherry Lee Mewis
Support by Terraplane Blues
Thursday July 17th - 8.00pm Town Hall - £9.00
Sponsored by NEWI
Cherry Lee Mewis is the real deal. She’s a 5ft-nothing-23-year-old-white girl from North Wales, who gets her kicks out of scratchy old vinyl, roaring vocals and battered old guitars. She’s adds her own fresh perspective to blues 'n' roots music. Her album Little Girl Blue is a mixture of 'forgotten', obscure blues tracks, and there's a raw, unplugged feel added with her teaming up with multi-faceted guitarist Max Milligan and producer and former Argent singer, John Verity.
Both Max and John's wealth of experience work brilliantly with Cherry’s fresh approach. The result is a mix of warm, vintage, gut-bucket blues with rootsy sparse guitar style, covering songs by Memphis Minnnie, Robert Johnson and Jeff Buckley. These 1920's blues numbers have still been left in their original, impassioned state, but now with Cherry's fingerprints on them. Her repertoire spans around 80 years - from the twenties songs of Memphis Minnie and Jelly Roll Morton up to a nice take on the late Jeff Buckley’s Everybody Here Wants You.
Cherry served her apprenticeship endlessly gigging in clubs and bars developing not only her husky, gravelly voice but her performance and style too. Taking inspiration from Janis Joplin, Koko Taylor and Mississippi Fred McDowell, she sings with raw power and emotion, hurt and pain.
Cherry says, "Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, no censored versions! I put my whole self into every single one of these tracks, I feel like i'm inside of them...."
Like most great blues performers, Cherry is best experienced live. As well as performing all over the UK, she and her band have just returned back from the Tropea Blues Festival in Italy, fresh from performing tracks from Little Girl Blue.
The great hobo bluesman himself, Seasick Steve says, "The only people who are going to keep the blues alive and kicking are the kids picking it up, these young bands out there - they got all the future." Cherry feels she's doing her bit to keep blues music well and truly alive.
Opening nights of the Fringe have become very special over the years and 2008 is no exception.
You can find out more at www.cherryleemewis.com
Terraplane Blues
Terraplane Blues are Paul Barnard (Dobro guitar and vocals), Ian Edwards (guitar, blues harp and vocals) and Ian Johnston (double bass) and together they play an exciting mixture of authentic acoustic blues and hokum ranging from Robert Johnson and Blind Boy Fuller through to Muddy Waters, Elmore James and more contemporary styles. Good time blues music, guaranteed to get your foot tapping!
